Evidence of meeting #77 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was product.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
When something goes wrong, is it often in that range, in the billions?
4:15 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association
No.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Okay. It's an exception.
To our municipal counterparts.... I guess I'll start with the mayor.
Do you have money allocated in your budget for cleanup, if something were to go wrong?
4:15 p.m.
Mayor, City of Burnaby
No. In fact, we don't even have the money to deal with the issues surrounding the tank farm, in a potential conflagration at the tank farm. The expectation of the Kinder Morgan corporation is that somehow our firefighters will look after their tank farm, even if there is a major incident. We don't have the capacity. Our firefighters have said that it is impossible to deal with this and it would require simply burning out. That is a tank farm right below Simon Fraser University.
The concerns for us are that there has not been the level of study in the protection in case of incidents that would allow us to feel confident that the federal government has this issue under control.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Councillor, you mentioned that you have a position of opposition. Did that come from the council? Were there town halls held? Was it from the residents? How did that come about?
4:15 p.m.
Councillor, City of Victoria
That's a good question. All the data is available on the City of Victoria website, and also the Capital Regional District website.
It began by way of a notice of motion and a resolution adopted by our council. We proceeded to have a town hall meeting on the issue of the Trans Mountain pipeline application. We heard overwhelmingly from the public that this application was not supported.
That public input formed a part of the city's contribution when we were an intervenor in the National Energy Board process. There were ultimately resolutions, by both the city and the regional district, adopting that position of opposition and calling on the National Energy Board and the Government of Canada to decline the application.
In terms of your question to Mayor Corrigan around cleanup, it's thinking about things like needing police officers to go down to the beaches to prevent members of the public from trying to walk, or children from trying to play, in dirty sand that's made toxic by bitumen. It's literally hundreds of millions of dollars of cleaning up the intertidal areas—
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I apologize. I'm going to cut you off because I only have six minutes here.
Ms. Bérard-Brown, I completely understand the hindrance that you face in reaching your markets, but at the same time, I don't know if that can necessarily come at a detriment to our planet or the environment.
You said a whole bunch of stuff that I want to clarify. You were asking for an exemption, and to the best of my knowledge, an exemption is based on dry material. You were also talking about how some of this is persistent. You talked about the viscosity. Could you dive into that a bit and describe what would be a dry material in order to get an exemption?
4:15 p.m.
Manager, Oil Markets and Transportation, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
I'm sorry. For clarity, I did not refer to a dry material. What I was trying to elaborate is that there is a distinction between a persistent and a non-persistent oil, and currently, the definition used refers to the distillation curve. What I was saying is that there are other factors that should be taken into account when considering the persistence. For example, if there were a spill, whether it's dilbit or a conventional oil, all oils would weather. That means it changes composition based on the environment, the temperature, or if there's a tidal wave in the environment. That's the purpose of the studies we're undertaking. We're trying to better understand how that changes over time, how that affects the behaviour of the crude oil, and what the best measures are that we can take.
The consideration of looking at condensate is that many experts would consider condensate to be non-persistent. We're just asking that there be further exploration as to whether or not condensate belongs on that list.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
No, you just pre-empted my last question, so that's perfect. Thank you.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
I want to drill a bit deeper with respect to the emergency resources that are not available and emergency preparedness protocols. I'm going to ask the question of the mayor and the councillor, as well as the industry, with respect to this specific area.
In my former life as a mayor for many years, as Mr. Lobb described, we had incidents happen on the Great Lakes. We take our water from the Great Lakes into our inflow treatment plant and of course out to the taps, bathtubs, showers, and sinks of our residents. There are a lot of challenges attached to that, especially when it comes to an incident, and of course then there's the shutting down of a treatment centre and getting back online within the minimum time of a week.
With all that said, what is in place currently, from the municipality's standpoint, with respect to your emergency preparedness plans and the protocols attached to it? I'm going to ask the industry the same question.
We'll start off with the mayor.
4:20 p.m.
Mayor, City of Burnaby
Obviously, we have general emergency preparedness plans that would deal with any kind of emergency or disaster in our community, but this is outside the scope of anything we could anticipate. First of all, the reality of the tank farm, which is situated on Burnaby Mountain above residential areas and schools, is one that causes me loss of sleep on a regular basis. I worry about what would happen to our citizens and to the university if that facility went into a major meltdown.
As far as Burrard Inlet is concerned, no one in their right mind would be building a facility to transport oil in the deepest part of our inlet, through two narrows, at this stage. The reality is that it was built some 50 or 60 years ago, when circumstances in Burrard Inlet were significantly different. Now you have this incredibly busy port, where Aframax tankers are going to be going through two narrows. If, in fact, there is an accident in that heavily trafficked area, it would be impossible to clean up. It would be 1,000 years before we'd be able to clean up the mess that was left for us. The impact here in the Vancouver area, on tourism and our economy, would be devastating. The problem, even though they keep telling you it's a minimal risk, is that the consequences of the risk are so devastating that it would be impossible for us to recover or to cope with it.
There are no plans in place and no plans available. They previously decimated the Coast Guard. There are not any plans from the federal government to deal with it. They've passed it on to industry to look after it.
4:20 p.m.
Councillor, City of Victoria
Similar to Burnaby, we have formal emergency management plans in place. It's under the authority of our fire chief, who reports to council. Prepare Victoria is an agency of the fire department that has three employees and about 100 volunteers. They primarily respond to fires and residents who are displaced by fire. They put a lot of attention into seismic risk, which is a major risk on the west coast of Canada, as it is in the Ottawa Valley. There has been an exercise in the last year with Western Canada Marine Response Corporation, the Coast Guard, and Transport Canada, which is the operator of the port of Victoria.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
That's great. I'm going to move on to the industry. I only have about a minute left.
4:20 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association
It's incumbent upon the shippers, the pipelines, to have emergency response plans in place. There are two things. There is a requirement for the companies to have the financial resources to be prepared and be able to cover anticipated or possible emergencies. There is mutual aid amongst the industry. If there is an incident, then the pipelines that are part of CEPA, the transmission pipelines—
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
4:25 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association
Yes.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Due to the fact that they have very few resources available to them...?
4:25 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association
The industry does emergency response exercises. They have the resources. The government has put in place additional resources, and that's going to be taken care of.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today.
I don't have as much time as my other colleagues did, so I'll get right to the point. Given that this bill, Bill C-48, as was discussed in our last meeting and confirmed by departmental officials, does nothing to change the voluntary agreement that was put in place in 1985, and given that this current government has killed the northern gateway pipeline project, do you believe there is a pressing need for Bill C-48 today?
This is to either Ms. Brown or Mr. Bloomer.
4:25 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association
I think there is a need to go back and do more consulting, more science, and more evaluation of what this really means and what the implications are. I think there's not a consensus around whether or not the folks in northern B.C. should have access to tidewater to produce resources and so on. More work needs to be done on this.
4:25 p.m.
Manager, Oil Markets and Transportation, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
I would concur. I think that there needs to be more scientific evidence. There needs to be an identification of the gaps and maybe potential mitigative measures in order to address the need.
I think what you referred to a bit earlier is the exclusion zone. I'd just like to point out that it was in place for production coming from Valdez for the lower 48. It does not apply to any vessel moving in or out of Canada.
