Mr. Speaker, when I was last debating this issue of paramount importance to the coast of British Columbia and my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith, the Minister of Natural Resources said some stunning things, given how deeply the federal government has since invested itself in the Kinder Morgan pipeline. He challenged me on my numbers and said that it is not a sevenfold increase in tankers but only one tanker a day. Well, in fact, the National Energy Board said that it is a 680% increase. Just last week, a Tyee magazine quoted economist Robyn Allan as saying that it is more like a 1,200% increase; from 30 tankers a year to 408 tankers a year, which is a colossal increase.
The minister also said that this is happening at a time when indigenous people for the first time had been involved from day one and were becoming part of monitoring and safety. Here is another deep betrayal of that promise. The Heiltsuk first nation are heroes on the coast for being the on-water response in a very ad hoc way. There was not a government-led response to the sinking of the Queen of the North when the ferry went down, nor to the Nathan E. Stewart. These were very high-profile sinkings and attendant oil spills on the coast.
Therefore, the Heiltsuk bid to the federal government to be able to own and operate a standby tug, which we sorely need. Washington State has it, but Canada does not. It is to be able to have a strong tug capacity to take vessels that are in trouble into safety, so that they do not create an oil spill.
The Prime Minister just the week before had stood with the Heiltsuk people, shoulder to shoulder, proclaiming his allegiance and solidarity with them, and recognizing their stewardship and ownership of the waters. Well, the tug contract was given to an Irving subsidiary on the Atlantic coast, not to local people, and not to very strong indigenous leadership. What a betrayal that was.
The minister also said to me that “we believe we are going to leave the backyard of indigenous people better than we had found it”. What a totally patronizing comment that is. Indigenous leadership has been the stewards and occupants of the B.C. coast since time immemorial. To think that the lauded oceans protection plan is going to leave the coast better than when we started is an embarrassing statement for a minister to make, particularly in light of the court case that has since come down.
Coastal people had been saying all of these pieces loudly on the coast, and coastal MPs brought them into this Parliament: about the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, such as the biggest risk on the coast is from oil tanker traffic, which had been insufficiently studied; that the orca whale impact had not been accommodated, although it had been identified; and that indigenous people had not been consulted.
The strongest court ruling came down affirming that all of those were barriers to the Kinder Morgan pipeline. It is now, of course, the Prime Minister's pipeline, because he spent $4.5 billion of taxpayers' money buying it. Then, on the very same day, we had the finance minister say that the pipeline will be built and, oh, they will also do more consultations.
How can the government square all of these inconsistencies, and how will it move forward, given all of these broken promises?