Thank you very much for the invitation to appear before the committee. It is a real privilege.
I've been a member of Burnaby's city council for 30 years, and I'm now in my 16th year as mayor. I'm very pleased to represent the City of Burnaby at this committee meeting, and I am most certainly in support of the moratorium on oil tankers provided in this bill to the north coast.
I am experiencing the problems associated with oil tanker traffic right here in our city. We are threatened by the imposition, against our will, of a significant new shipping risk on our shores from oil tankers, which includes the new risk of oil spills from crude bitumen oil, often, in the vernacular, called “dirty oil”.
I certainly believe that the environmental values of British Columbia's coastline in the north are worth protecting. It shows that the federal government has the power and the will to do the right thing in protecting our coast for future generations. The ban should be extended to our harbours in Burrard Inlet. The environmental values of our southern coast are at least equally deserving of protection as those in the north. In our case, we are dealing with protection of the lands and waters of a dense, urban population of nearly two and a half million people. Our citizens deserve equal protection.
This bill should also consider the risk of barges, which, under the bill, would not be included, yet pose a realistic risk to our coast. The dilemmas faced by Canada in dealing with the Enbridge northern gateway project and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain project are similar. They show the problems that arise with an NEB process, where proponents drive the options that are considered, rather than common sense choices of the best option. They show that corporations, sometimes foreign ones, whose sole interest is profit do not have the best interests of the people of our country or our environment in mind.
One of the things that interested me most in entering this process.... I did not want to learn as much as I've had to learn about the transportation of oil through our country, and the potential for the transportation of oil along our coast. When the issue of the Kinder Morgan pipeline came up, I began to get educated. One of the first things I did was go to the National Energy Board and ask it about its policies, about the strategic plan that was being considered in regard to the options it was choosing.
We, in cities—and I'm sure Ben will support this—are always planning. We're also looking forward, thinking of ways to protect the interests of our citizens in an organized way, in a way that makes people believe there is certainty in the future. I wanted to see the plan and the policy for this. I was truly shocked to find out there was no national oil policy. There was no national strategy. The National Energy Board was making it up as it went along, essentially on the basis of the submissions that came from individual pipeline procurers and the oil industry.
The situation is one in which the National Energy Board simply considered what Kinder Morgan wanted, and then both the National Energy Board and the Governor in Council decided they would proceed, even though they would go through the heart of metro Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, New Westminster, and Coquitlam, to a tank farm next to family neighbourhoods and an elementary school, on the only evacuation route for Simon Fraser University. They would then require the loading of tankers at the back end of Burrard Inlet, a location that certainly would never reasonably be considered for any new facilities, the busiest port on the west coast.
I certainly think this is a situation close to lunacy. It does not show a sensible planning process. My entire city has been concerned about this issue. Throughout the Lower Mainland, we've had the support of other jurisdictions, including metro Vancouver, in opposing this pipeline coming through Burnaby, Burrard Inlet, and along the southern coast.
If we have a pipeline to tidewater for bitumen oil that is in the national interest, it should be part of good public policy to choose a shipping route that causes the least risk and the least damage. That is not a choice that should be made for us by the oil companies.
In our case, the National Energy Board refused absolutely to consider any alternative routes, and refused to even allow Burnaby to ask for evidence of alternatives. Both Canada and the National Energy Board argued before the Federal Court of Appeal just two weeks ago that a process that fails to consider alternative locations is perfectly lawful.
It is a shame—