Mr. Speaker, I am going to talk about the risk of bitumen spills from oil tankers on B.C.'s coast. I am going to talk about the fire risk at the Burnaby tank farm, the broken promises to respect first nations consent, the harm to Orca whales, and a long list of broken promises by the Liberal government in relation to the Kinder Morgan pipeline approval.
Some of those promises were:
...ensure that decisions are based on science, facts, and evidence, and serve the public’s interest....
We will use scientific evidence and the precautionary principle and take into account climate change when making decisions effecting fish stocks and ecosystem management.
[And we will] give coastal communities more say in managing the resources around them.
As a representative of a coastal community, along with my New Democrat colleagues, we represent the waters that a 2013 tanker safety review panel identified as one of the four areas of Canada with the highest probability of a large oil spill and one of the two areas in Canada with the highest potential impact of an oil spill. I want to talk about that risk and what the government's plans are to accommodate it.
A sevenfold increase in oil tanker traffic laden with bitumen means that inevitably there is an increase in risk. The impact of bitumen is something that we are still learning about as a country. It is an unrefined product. It is viscous, sticky, and it needs a diluent in order for it to flow through a pipeline, and the volatility of diluted bitumen was identified in the Kalamazoo spill in the United States several years ago as being extremely volatile and having a big human impact.
At Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, only two days after the spill happened, oil spill expert Riki Ott was on the scene. She came to Vancouver Island University and spoke about some of those impacts. She said the diluents, containing benzene, toluene, and micro polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, began gassing off in the area, causing symptoms of nausea, dizziness, and headaches among the local population. This had a big impact on the first responders to that spill. She was also on the ground after the Exxon oil spill back in the 1980s, and she reported that the same impacts caused cancer, asthma, and hormone reproductive problems by jamming immune system and DNA functions. Again, this is an enormous risk to first responders when there is inevitably some form of a spill.
Vancouver's Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Tsawout First Nation commissioned a study in 2015 saying “collecting and removing oil from the sea surface is a challenging, time-sensitive, and often ineffective process”. Even in the calmest conditions it is very hard to control. Here we have both the human impact to people on the front line, and the environmental impact if we do have a spill in marine waters.
In 2013, Environment Canada said that spilled bitumen exposed to sediment in marine settings sinks and chemical dispersants sprayed on dilbit were not effective. In fact, they made the oil sink beneath the water, which made it even harder to recover. If we end up with tacky tar covering our seabed, our aquaculture leases, it would be a total mess for British Columbia, with impacts on the economy, tourism, and ecology. I do not understand how the government approved the sevenfold increase in oil tanker traffic if it did not know how it was going to clean up the marine environment, yet it approved the pipeline despite that lack of knowledge.
In 2011, when I was elected as the Islands Trust council chair, which is a local government in the Gulf Islands, we figured out that this was already a risk. We already had bitumen coming through the Salish Sea and the risk of the Kinder Morgan pipeline was really going to exacerbate that. We repeatedly wrote to the federal government and got no response. When there was finally late-breaking science that came to the National Energy Board, it refused to hear the evidence, so the pipeline was approved without any inquiry into that issue.
Another issue is the tank farm fire risk. The Burnaby Fire Department said the design of the tank farm for Kinder Morgan creates situations where firefighting is not possible, and there is a very real risk of inextinguishable multi-tank fire events.
My friend and constituent, Bob Bossin writes:
No-one wants a major tank farm...fire, including the oil companies. So everyone employs the best safety measures they can. And yet there are two or three disastrous oil depot (tank farm) fires every year. That is why, for decades, nowhere in the developed world has a facility like this been built in a city. Let alone on the side of a mountain in an earthquake zone, with a university above and thousands of homes below....
That is why tens of thousands of us on the coast, the people whose health and safety are at risk, are committed to protecting ourselves and our environment when our government refuses to.
I will move to broken promises to first nations. The government said it would recognize the relationship between indigenous people and the land, will respect their legal traditions and perspectives on environmental stewardship, yet over 50% of the pipeline and the tanker route involves first nations who are taking Kinder Morgan and the federal government to court.
In my riding, Stz'uminus leader, Chief John Elliott, said that as a nation and a community, for a short-term gain, it will be a lifetime impact to our ecosystem.
In the Snuneymuxw First Nation in my riding, former Chief Kwulasultun, also known as Doug White III, said, “this project puts at risk our way of life.” He also said the decision was “premised on a denial of aboriginal people’s rights and voice.”
We also had evidence from the Sechelt First Nation and from Raincoast Conservation Foundation at the National Energy Board that orca whales would be harmed by increased noise, decreasing their ability to communicate, acquire food, and to survive. That is from existing shipping noise, but exacerbated by the sevenfold increase in oil tanker traffic through the Salish Sea. Despite that evidence before the National Energy Board, the NEB approved the pipeline and specifically in its report acknowledged that adverse impacts would be extensive and unmitigable.
We also had evidence from Tsawwassen First Nation, which said it saw this as a serious assault both to the species at risk and also to their own way of life.
I will finish by saluting my friend and neighbour, Paige Harwood, who just two days ago was arrested at the Kinder Morgan site. This is a young person who is very discouraged by the Prime Minister's betrayal of his promise to renew the National Energy Board process before approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
For all these reasons, I will continue to support first nations and community opposition to the Kinder Morgan project. I will be voting against the Conservative motion that supports the Kinder Morgan pipeline. I will be standing up for the coast, and standing up for a renewable future and a sustainable coast.
