Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to this opposition day motion to protect British Columbians from environmental destruction and future oil spills.
I would first like to thank the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam for his tireless work on this topic and bringing this very important motion forward.
Every year I help the Wildlife Rescue Association of British Columbia secure positions on the Canada summer jobs program. It is a very good program. It trains young people about wildlife and does a lot of good for our province. The association is headquartered in my riding, and to date it has helped save almost 100,000 animals from harm.
Last week the volunteers and workers at the Wildlife Rescue Association were busy cleaning oil off ducks and euthanizing them because they had been caught in this spill that the Conservatives are trying to dismiss as nothing, completely cleaned up and handled by some kind of world-class response system. That is simply not true. This has had a real impact, both psychologically and physically, on the people in metro Vancouver. It showed up in Burnaby. It showed up in ducks coated in oil that had be cleaned off. Some of them had to be put down.
I would say this marks a watershed moment for us in metro Vancouver. We have to decide what kind of metropolitan region we want to be. We have to decide what metro Vancouver is going to be.
One of these visions is pleasant and one is not. I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to picture yourself sitting on a beach in Honolulu which is a city region with about a million people. It has a very busy port, one of the busiest ports in the United States. When picturing yourself on the beach in Honolulu, think about having a nice time, vacationing, probably with a non-alcoholic beverage, enjoying the sunshine.
Mr. Speaker, I would also like you to picture yourself on a beach in Shanghai. Shanghai has not really achieved the balance between port traffic and livability. These are really the kinds of duelling visions that we face in metro Vancouver, whether we want to become more like Honolulu, which is destination place where people live, work and play next to the shore, or some place like Shanghai where they cannot enjoy the waterfront and it is only dedicated to port traffic.
While you are envisioning those two things, I will let you know that I will be splitting my time with the member for Halifax.
Metro Vancouver is caught between these two visions. I think the government on the other side is on a collision course with how most people in metro Vancouver envision themselves, their future and their children's future. The government, supported by the Liberals, is trying to ram giant crude oil pipelines through our province with no real public consultation. There is a farcical NEB process where even if someone's house is slated for expropriation, they cannot even send a letter to the National Energy Board.
The government has no regard for public safety and no regard for how the pipelines will affect how we enjoy the outdoors. This spill in English Bay is a real wake-up call for people in British Columbia, because it brings clearly into focus the fact that it could have been way worse than it was. It makes people think about whether this is the kind of future they want for the place they live.
It is really a harbinger of what our region could be, and I would say it is pushing us more towards the Shanghai-Rotterdam version of what we want metro Vancouver to be rather than the Honolulu vision.
The plan for the region is to build a giant new crude oil pipeline that will take bitumen from Edmonton to Burnaby and put it on ships, with one tanker a day leaving the port. Now the spill in English Bay was not a crude oil tanker cracking up. It was a brand new ship that just sprung a leak, and 2,700 litres of a very toxic substance was released.
We have been hearing nonsense from the other side, that only a third of a litre is left to clean up. There was more than a third of a litre on the ducks that are sitting in Burnaby recuperating. We have heard nonsense about a world-class response system. We have heard nonsense that the cuts have not made a difference. They have. Everybody in Vancouver, everybody in British Columbia knows they have.
The government has gotten itself into a lot of trouble. It has been cutting, cutting. It has gotten caught with its pants down. Who pays for it? The people in metro Vancouver.
I clearly support this motion, which is to reinvest and reopen the institutions that have been closed down, because as much as we get from this side about public safety, the Coast Guard centres and the marine response centres are for public safety. It seems bizarre to me that they could talk about moving from one oil tanker a month to one oil tanker a day coming through the port of Metro Vancouver but could reduce the capacity to respond to an emergency.
This is a crucial motion to support, which is to reopen the Kitsilano Coast Guard station, reopen the recently closed the Ucluelet marine communications and traffic services centre and that we definitely halt the plan to close the Vancouver and Comox Marine Communication and Traffic Service Centres.
I have to say that the Prime Minister is not a very popular guy on the west coast. I think it is because of actions like this. It is because the interests of large oil companies are being put ahead of the people in British Columbia. Kinder Morgan, for example, if it managed to get its pipeline built to the west coast, would transport close to one million barrels a day of crude oil. None of it is for us. None of it is for refinement. None of it is for Canadians' use. It is simply to ship to overseas.
The pipeline would make about $5 million a day for this company, yet it would only create 50 long-term jobs for the entire country. It would most likely, as admitted by the president of Kinder Morgan and other pipeline companies, be built by temporary foreign workers. The advantages are very slim. Yet we see in English Bay what the risks are, and we know that in Burnaby this could be much worse.
The spill in English Bay was only 10% of the spill we had from a Kinder Morgan pipeline in Burnaby in 2007. That pipeline ruptured. There was a court case. Kinder Morgan was found guilty of causing the spill. We had 270,000 litres run through our neighbourhoods and into storm drains, with half of it running into the Burrard Inlet.
It is a joke that this was some kind of world-class response for cleanup. The Western Canada Marine Response Corporation was right beside the spill. It was literally a stone's throw away from where this oil went into the Burrard Inlet. I went for a tour, and they were boasting, because they got 15% of this oil. It still washes up on the beaches on the shoreline of Burnaby.
The Conservatives and Liberals are playing with fire. They are putting local communities at risk. The Conservatives are making it even worse by making cuts to the Coast Guard and the response capacity in these areas.
We have to do more. First of all, we have to make sure that British Columbians have a voice in these projects. They have been almost completely shut out. In the protests in my riding, 125 people were arrested, because they are not being heard in these processes. Again, the Conservative government is just ramming these things through. Now, of course, with the falling oil prices, who knows where that has left our economy, but I think the disregard for local citizens is astounding.
An Auditor General's report recently noted that Canada is not prepared to deal with even a moderately sized oil spill. This was not even a moderately sized oil spill. This was a small spill of 2,700 litres. It was caught by a sailor who happened to notice it. It took 12 hours for the City of Vancouver to be notified. Volunteers were cleaning up before there was any kind of federal response.
This is not FEMA in the U.S., and it is not something we can be proud of. This is something we should be ashamed of, and the shame falls on that side of the House. The Conservatives have done a bad job and are continuing to do a bad job, and it is even going to get worse. I very much fear for my region, my city, and my constituents if this is allowed to continue.
