Mr. Speaker, the word “urgent” is used in the motion before us, and there is no doubt that is the correct word.
I would like to begin by quoting from Kai Nagata, who wrote in the Dogwood Initiative blog the following:
One week ago Vancouver residents woke up to the news that a grain freighter at anchor had leaked bunker fuel into English Bay. No reason to panic, right? Conditions were sunny and calm, there was hardly a breeze: a golden opportunity for the federal government to demonstrate its “world-leading” spill response.
It’s pretty clear now what a meaningless phrase that is. After watching federal officials trip over themselves for the past seven days, one thing is clear: it makes absolutely no sense letting Kinder Morgan run 408 crude oil tankers through Burrard Inlet every year. What spilled from the Marathassa was equivalent to 17 barrels of oil. Aframax tankers carry 800,000 barrels of oil.
So what do everyday British Columbians do when we're told to expect more and more oil to keep washing up on our shores? We grab our clipboards and get to work, channeling our frustration into something productive.
Something productive would be to get rid of a government that has disdain for the coast of British Columbia, whose priority is to save $700,000 in closing down the Kitsilano Coast Guard station but has no trouble spending $7.5 million to tell us about its budget and political triumphs.
We get it in coastal British Columbia. I live in an island riding. A number of people over the last two weeks have brought to my attention their disdain for the government. Its priorities, as my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley has said, are skewed. On October 19, or as soon as possible, we have to get rid of a government that cares so little for coastal British Columbia.
Closing a coast guard station might not sound like a big deal to people in central Canada. It is a big deal. It closed not just the Kitsilano Coast Guard station, but the one in Ucluelet, the Ucluelet marine communications and traffic services centre. It will soon close the Vancouver and Comox marine communications and traffic services centres, cutting 25% of the coast guard staff in British Columbia.
What does it mean in Ucluelet, not far from where I live in Victoria? It means, in the case of that particular station, an officer in charge, 17 marine communications and traffic services officers, 5 electronic technicians, and 2 administrative support people gone.
This was a minor spill in the grand scheme of things, and it was a wake-up call for everyone on our coast. Those stations cannot be closed in good conscience. The cost-benefit analysis is simply ridiculous. It is lunacy, and people get that.
Do not just take our word for it. The commissioner for sustainable development proved it 10 years ago. He said there is no way that we are prepared to deal with even a moderately sized oil spill. With the incredible increase in tanker traffic that is expected, how could we possibly cope if the government continues to close these stations down? Its priorities are skewed.
The Kitsilano Coast Guard station was the subject of an opposition day motion. I want to commend my colleague, the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam, for his leadership on this. He brought an opposition day motion forward back in June 2012.
The official opposition has been all over this issue. What has the government done? It has done nothing. In fact, the Conservative member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, in responding to a question from another of my colleagues back then, assured the House that safety would not be affected by the closure. He boasted that the newly acquired hovercraft would “better service this area”. Apparently hovercrafts do not do oil slicks, as we have now discovered. They just do not work. The government found that out, thank goodness with a small spill, relatively speaking, of toxic bunker fuel oil.
The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans told Parliament that “the level of search and rescue service in Vancouver...will remain the same”. The folly of that particular claim was exposed last week. The spill response did not take the six minutes we were told by the former base commander it would have taken to get the ship out and put the booms on the spill, et cetera. It could have taken 35 minutes from Sea Island station. That did not work either. It took six hours.
Finally, twelve and a half hours later, they told the people in Vancouver who are responsible for public safety and beach closures that they had a tiny problem. “Houston, we have a problem. Vancouver, we have a problem. Canadians, we have a problem”. This was directly traceable to the choice the government made to close down, for a $700,000 saving, a Coast Guard station.
I want to commend my colleague for his leadership in bringing this up over and over again, with the current government saying, “No problem. Do not worry, be happy”. Well, we are not happy in coastal British Columbia. We are very concerned. Why? As Professor Tollefson of the UVic Environmental Law Centre has noted, this was an easy one. The vessel could have been much larger, the conditions far worse, and the response time much longer.
Let me explain. First is the location. Even setting aside the proximity to the shuttered station at Kitsilano, the spill occurred remarkably close to a Coast Guard station at Sea Island. What if it had happened midway between Victoria and Vancouver, at Turn Point? Turn Point was identified at the National Energy Board hearing as the most challenging section of the route from Vancouver to international waters. The tidal conditions and the currents in that area can be devastating.
Second is conditions. The spill occurred in daylight in calm, protected waters. What if it had happened at night when the currents were running strong? What if it had happened in a storm?
The Marathassa is a brand new Japanese-built grain carrier. It is large, but many vessels that transit the waters are much larger. What if, instead, this had happened to another vessel in a port that day, the 340-metre long container ship Hyundai Global, a vessel twice as large as the Marathassa in gross tonnage? Of course, there is the catastrophic scenario of a tanker full of bitumen.
The Marathassa was flagged in Cyprus and owned by a Greek company, which is apparently fully co-operating with Canadian authorities to pay the cleanup costs. However, the prevalence of flags of convenience makes it very difficult to hold owners accountable. Who pays? Do I need to remind this House that the cost of the catastrophic oil spill in the case of the Exxon Valdez was $7 billion? Currently, maximum liability is $1.3 billion, but after that, it is the public that pays these costs. I am not just talking about cleanup costs; there are the ecological costs as well.
The substance was bunker oil. I grant members that it is a serious toxic substance as well, but diluted bitumen is far worse. It would sink, and it contains chemical dilutants that are highly toxic.
One of the many failings of the National Energy Board's rubber-stamped review of the plans to expand the Kinder Morgan pipeline in Vancouver was its refusal to assess just how a number of chronic spills that could happen would increase the risk if there were a problem with tanker collisions.
There has been a complete breakdown in communication, which we saw in Vancouver. We had the silly response by government officials that the response was excellent, that they were going to get 80% of the English Bay spill. As the former Coast Guard base commander Fred Moxey said, that is simply not true. It is likely false; they are not going to get anything near that amount.
There is another point that Dr. Ross, of the Vancouver Aquarium, discussed. He was one of the many DFO scientists fired by the federal government as it cut millions of dollars in funding from the DFO in 2012. Dr. Ross said that there is no official clarity as to who is to monitor the effects of a spill. Yes, it is the Coast Guard's job to respond to the immediate aftermath, but we do not know who is supposed to be monitoring it. He is, on his own, with the Vancouver Aquarium, doing the monitoring. One hopes that the government has woken up and is doing its own monitoring. However, with more than 50 scientists having lost their jobs, including Dr. Ross, whose marine toxicology program was shut down, one wonders whether that is going to be the case.
Monitoring is a problem. We clearly find that this excellent response was nothing of the sort.
The motion started with the word “urgent”. I commend to this House this motion. We have to open those coast guard stations and not close the others. We have to move on in British Columbia to protect our sacred coastal environment.