Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition circulated by the Dogwood Initiative in British Columbia and signed by over 57,000 people, which reflects the large number of people in B.C. who do not support the Enbridge project along our coast.
This petition notes that the pristine coastal waters of northern B.C. have been protected from bulk crude oil tankers by a moratorium on oil tanker traffic since 1972. The petitioners call on the government to convert the moratorium into a permanent ban on tanker traffic. They say that tanker traffic on the west coast poses an unacceptable environmental risk and that an oil spill would be devastating to the economy, to the fragile ecosystem of northern coastal B.C. and to the coastal communities that rely upon it for their livelihoods.