Protests will stop pipeline, Vancouver mayor says

Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion of an oil pipeline to the Pacific Coast will never happen because local opposition to the project that’s dividing the nation is only going to intensify, according to the mayor of Vancouver.

“I don’t think this project will go — I really don’t — based on the resistance on the ground,” said Gregor Robertson.

Robertson spoke the week that protesters against the pipeline began appearing in front of a judge on contempt of court charges. On Monday, Ian Angus, a retired Simon Fraser University professor who was taken into custody along with others for violating a court-ordered injunction at the Burnaby work site, was fined $500.

About 175 people have been arrested so far at the Kinder Morgan site and Angus was the first to plead guilty.

As well as the public protests, opposition to the pipeline is coming from the British Columbia government, which has launched a constitutional challenge. Despite the moves, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr reiterated to reporters in Ottawa Tuesday that the federal government is “determined that the pipeline will be built.”

Kinder Morgan has threatened to walk away from the $7.4-billion project, setting a May 31 deadline for the federal government to neutralize opposition from a British Columbia government that’s vowed to use “every tool” to block it. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who’s staked his economic and environmental agendas on the pipeline, has pledged to get it completed to ensure landlocked Canadian crude flows to Asian markets.

Legislation to push the project ahead remains an option, Carr said, without elaborating. The federal government, along with the province of Alberta, are considering financial support for the project, which would almost triple capacity on a line that ends in a terminal near Vancouver.

“I’m confident there will be a solution,” Carr said.

That solution shouldn’t count on local opposition giving way, according to Robertson, whose decade-long tenure of Vancouver ends in October.

“I don’t think the resistance on the west coast is going to fade — I think it will only intensify,” he said. “Escalation looks likely.”

On Wednesday, two protesters in kayaks attached themselves to a floating fence that surrounds the Kinder Morgan construction site at the Westridge Terminal in Burnaby blocking workers from entering the site on the water. Two people were later arrested.

For Robertson, 53, the issue goes beyond a single pipeline in the fight against global warming.

“I think there’s a much bigger question here,” Robertson said. “We have to get off of fossil fuels. It’s really a question of how we implement that transition.”

Alberta’s oil and gas sector “represents such a tiny fraction of the overall economy and a job count,” whereas cities like Vancouver and Toronto are driven by newer technology and innovation-related sectors, he said.

The most strident opposition to the project has been centred in Vancouver and Victoria, according to polls. There is broad support in British Columbia outside the two urban centres.

Asked if he was ready to be arrested to halt the project, Robertson said, “Potentially.”

“But I’d much rather see things de-escalate and a cooler heads prevail, which is why I haven’t — yet,” he said.

Indigenous groups opposing the project addressed Kinder Morgan’s annual meeting in Houston Wednesday, warning of more resistance ahead.

“No matter what the Canadian government does to address political or financial risk, it will not change our resolve to oppose the project,” Chief Judy Wilson of the Neskonlith First Nation, part of the Secwepemc people whose territory is the largest Indigenous tract of land that the proposed expansion seeks to pass through. “This will result in more delay, risk and uncertainty.”

A Nanos Research poll released this week indicated that while six in 10 Canadians want the project to proceed, an equal proportion are concerned that the dispute challenges how Canada functions as a federation.