B.C. Tory leadership candidate would build oil pipeline to coast
VANCOUVER — A would-be leader of the B.C. Conservative Party pledged to build a new pipeline to carry Western Canadian oil to the coast if he is elected.
Dan Brooks, who quit as leader of the party in January — only to announce five months later that he wanted the job back — said in a statement Wednesday that he would create a publicly owned B.C. Energy Pipeline Corporation.
The Crown agency, which he said would have a mandate to improve the provincial economy — similar to those of B.C. Hydro, B.C. Ferries and B.C. Rail — would build and operate a pipeline to take Alberta and Saskatchewan oil to the coast for export to the Asian market.
Brooks did not say how his project would differ from two existing pipeline projects — Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway and the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline.
But he said later that both projects are “in a quagmire” and that the public would benefit from having a pipeline built by a publicly owned institution.
He said his new Crown corporation “will confer with existing refinery companies, as well as new proponents, to determine levels of interest in participating in our pipeline project, and those discussions may be helpful in locating the route and terminus.”
With just nine months before the May 2017 general election, the B.C. Conservatives face significant challenges. They have been without a leader since Brooks quit in January, and will hold a leadership convention Sept. 16-17 in Prince George. Three others — Jay Cross, Chloé Ellis and Konrad Pimiskern — are running for the leadership.
The B.C. Conservatives stopped being a significant political force in B.C. more than 60 years ago, when W.A.C. Bennett’s free-enterprise Social Credit Party swept to power. When the Socreds fell apart under Bill Vander Zalm in the early 1990s, most conservative voters put their support behind the renewed B.C. Liberal Party, a coalition of federal Tories and Liberals.