Madam Speaker, I am rising to continue discussion based on a question that I posed in the House on May 25 that had to do with the potential of oil spills on our coast. I asked the government whether it would support a tanker ban on the Pacific north coast inland waters, given that a tanker spill could be four times more catastrophic than the Alaskan coast spill by the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
The answer given was that there is a moratorium in British Columbia and no tankers are allowed into the inside passage, but I subsequently got a different answer from a different minister a few minutes later, in which the government representative said that the government has no plans to open the 1988 exclusion zone on tankers travelling between Alaska and Washington and this is, of course, in the external waters.
Following a period in which government representatives were not willing to give a clear stand on protecting our inland coastal waters of British Columbia, the Liberal Party of Canada took a clear and decisive stand to formalize this historic ban through legislation. This is a ban that had been in place through policy for 40 years through five different governments of different parties.
In addition to committing to legislate a formal ban to get past the confusion that the government ranks were sowing on this issue, the Liberal leader also committed to put an offshore oil spill plan in place, to ensure the best emergency safety measures are part of the cost of doing business for offshore drilling where it occurs, to uphold the moratorium on offshore drilling off the coast of British Columbia and to put in place a moratorium on further leases in the Arctic pending a complete examination of the risks related to petroleum activity in the north.
This is because of the Liberal Party of Canada's strong commitment to safe and healthy economic activities and a safe and healthy environment.
Talking a bit about the economy, this tanker ban on the west coast and the inland waters around Haida Gwaii is about having a sustainable economic development. The first nations throughout that coastal area are united in saying that it is not worth the risk of an oil spill. They are fully involved in the economy of the coast, in fisheries, tourism and other activities, which provide 46,000 jobs, which depend on a healthy environment. In fact that is a hundred times the projected number of permanent B.C. jobs that the proposed pipeline, which would require tanker traffic, would provide for British Columbians.
Formalizing this ban, protecting the coast from a risk that is not worth taking, is a sound economic and environmental policy as well as a social policy for coastal British Colombia.
The benefits of bringing a pipeline to Kitimat and requiring more than 200 tankers in those inland waters are negligible simply because the Alberta oil producers already cannot keep up with the demand from the United States and that demand—
