Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Elmwood—Transcona.
Tonight we are debating the critical situation around Line 5, an Enbridge pipeline that transports crude oil and natural gas liquids from Alberta through Michigan to refineries and other facilities in Ontario, notably in Sarnia, and Quebec. It is capable of carrying 540,000 barrels per day. A similar pipeline in the Enbridge system, Line 6, also serves these markets, with 667,000 barrels per day.
As others have mentioned, including the Leader of the Opposition, this emergency debate is not at all like the debates we have had here about other pipelines, such as Keystone XL or Trans Mountain. These are expansion projects designed solely to increase the amount of raw bitumen exported from Canada at a time when world demand has flatlined and the climate crisis requires that it decline steeply in the future.
This is a debate about the impending closure of a pipeline that brings western Canadian oil to eastern Canada, creating Canadian jobs. This is about maintaining the status quo, at least for the moment, and maintaining those jobs in the industrial heartland of Canada.
One similarity between this and the other pipeline debates is that at the heart of it, there is credible environmental concern. I would like to start by laying out the positions of the two sides in this confrontation: the Canadian workers and companies that need the pipeline to continue supplying oil to Ontario and Quebec, and the State of Michigan, which is concerned about the prospect of environmental damage.
Line 5 was built in 1953, and the Michigan section operates under an easement granted by the state. Back in November, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer stated that the pipeline is a threat to the environment, particularly if a rupture occurs in the section that travels on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. That section has been a bone of contention for years, and it has suffered damage on occasion from dragged anchors. However, fortunately there have been no leaks in that water section.
Michigan has also pointed out violations in the easement conditions, including inadequate supports for the pipeline on the bottom of the strait. For its part, Enbridge has proposed to enclose the underwater section in a concrete tunnel to protect it from future accidents, and it has obtained some of the permits necessary to carry out that work.
Michigan, however, has claimed that because of past violations and present concerns, the pipeline is “a ticking time bomb” and will revoke the easement as of May 12, which is only six days away. If Enbridge is still using the pipeline after that date, the governor's office has stated that it will be breaking the law.
What will the impact be if this pipeline is shut down? There are about 4,900 jobs in Sarnia that directly rely on the supply of crude oil that Line 5 now supplies. One of the products that plants in Sarnia produce is jet fuel, which supplies large airports such as the Toronto Pearson Airport. The oil not diverted in Sarnia is carried on to refineries in Quebec, so the impact could be huge.
There is some debate on how alternate supplies could mitigate these impacts. Pearson airport stated in a recent article in the National Post that it is not too worried about a shut down of Line 5, as it has diversified its sources of jet fuel. The refineries in Quebec said that they have made arrangements to get their crude oil from another pipeline. Industries in Sarnia may be able to get some crude oil through increased flow in Line 6, since they managed oil that way when Line 6 was ruptured in 2010. At that time, they got alternate supplies through Line 5.
It is clear that the petrochemical sector in Sarnia could be facing significant shortages that would have to be made up through transport by rail and truck. That is not an ideal situation, and it is one that could result in a direct loss of jobs in the Sarnia industrial complex and indirect job losses throughout the region. We have to have a strategy to keep Line 5 going and protect those jobs. That strategy goes through convincing Michigan that it is in all of our interests to keep Line 5 operating.
What are the environmental risks that Michigan is citing in its decision to cancel this easement? One of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history happened on another Enbridge pipeline in Michigan. As I mentioned, Like 6 goes through Sarnia via Michigan and goes around the south end of Lake Michigan instead of crossing under the Straits of Mackinac. In 2010, Line 6B ruptured and sent about 20,000 barrels of bitumen into the Kalamazoo River just east of Battle Creek, Michigan. The spill contaminated over 50 kilometres of the river and took five years to clean up. The people of Michigan are therefore very well aware of what could happen. Line 5 itself has suffered a number of leaks over the years, totalling over a million gallons in all.
In the order to cancel the easement for Line 5, Michigan has pointed out numerous violations of the original agreement, including the design of the support systems of the pipeline on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac. Recent assessments show that the underwater part of the pipeline is suffering from thinning walls and other stressors. Another study makes it clear that a rupture in this section could damage hundreds of kilometres of shoreline along Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Also, the Ojibwa of Michigan consider any agreement to allow Enbridge to continue operating Line 5 a violation of their treaty rights.
We need to protect the Great Lakes ecosystem and the thousands of jobs in Ontario and Quebec. The federal government needs to have a plan that would do both. All I have heard from the minister is that Line 5 is not negotiable. However, I think it is obvious that the only way out of this dilemma is through negotiation, proving to the State of Michigan and everyone else who cares about the environment, me included, that Line 5 will not have a history similar to Line 6B. We should point out the economic impacts that this closure would have on Michigan itself. Michigan and the neighbouring states of Ohio and Pennsylvania also receive some of the fuels carried through Line 5, including over half of Michigan's propane supplies.
As usual, experts are advising that a diplomatic solution would be best, but Enbridge is counting the 1977 transit pipelines treaty if talks fail, and right now it does seem that both sides are the length of a continental pipeline apart. The treaty states:
No public authority in the territory of either Party shall institute any measures...interfering with in any way the transmission of hydrocarbon in transit.
It also states that the treaty is “subject to regulations by the appropriate governmental authorities”. I will leave that to the courts to decide, but the treaty is clearly a last-ditch strategy that may work.
As I said at the beginning, we have been debating this pipeline dispute in Canada over the past decade or more. This is an existing pipeline that supplies oil to Canadian industry and maintains good jobs. It is an integral part of the economies of Ontario and Quebec. We will be using oil and gas over the next three decades, albeit in declining amounts, as we transition to zero emissions by 2050, and Line 5 is an important delivery mechanism for that purpose.
This dispute has been a wake-up call. The public is increasingly unwilling to live with the environmental risks associated with pipelines and the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels. We in the NDP, and I think everyone in the House, are concerned about workers in the oil and gas sector, whether they work in the Alberta oil patch or the industrial cities of Ontario. We need a plan, not just empty promises, to provide good jobs for those workers over the coming decades. We need training programs that will allow them to move to jobs in building retrofits, electrification, electric vehicle manufacturing, battery technology and the myriad of other sectors that will provide good employment for decades to come. We need government programs to provide those jobs to prove to workers that we are serious about helping them.
As that transition takes place, we need to protect the jobs that Line 5 provides and protect the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. The federal government must have a clear and effective plan to do both.