B.C. COAST GETS AN EARLY TASTE OF NO-PIPELINE PAIN
And the first victim of the Trans Mountain pipeline work stoppage is ... oil spill protection in British Columbia.
A $150-million program to improve ocean spill response has been halted because the company involved can no longer be sure of toll revenues from pipeline shippers.
This follows last week’s Federal Court of Appeal ruling and subsequent halt of Trans Mountain construction.
That’s the first coastal domino to fall, and it’s unfortunate.
Last month in Nanaimo, I spoke to a worker who was proud and happy to be working on better spill protection.
He explained that his company, Western Canada Marine Response Corp., was ramping up spending of $150 million.
There would be 43 new response vessels and six bases on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. A $10-million Island headquarters was to be built in Nanaimo.
On the day we talked, seven response vessels were docked in the harbour. They included a couple of small modules and several sizable ships. All bore a big “Spill Response” logo with a Maple Leaf.
Now, the whole program is stopped as cold as the pipeline.
“We started working with Trans Mountain about five years ago on proposed enhancements for spill response on the coast,” Michel Lowry, the company’s communications director, told the Nanaimo News Bulletin.
“So these enhancements have always been tied to the pipeline.”
He also told the CBC: “Without that pipeline, these enhancements don’t go ahead.”
It won’t be the last of B.C.'s economic, environmental and safety losses if the pipeline does not proceed.
Now, you might wonder if Ottawa intentionally launched this warning flare over the coast.
The new owner of Trans Mountain, after all, is the government of Canada.
Ottawa might have kept the spill response work going by offering the company financial assistance to tide it over until the tolls start coming.
But Ottawa didn’t do anything. Inaction led to a very public consequence.
You can see this as a subtle sign of things to come. And it can’t be directly pinned on the feds.
This does not mean, however, that Ottawa is planning to shut down its $1.5-billion Oceans Protection Plan.
Ottawa says this policy proves that a lot of the marine work demanded by the Federal Court has already been done.
Obviously, cancelling it now would not be the best idea.
Oceans Protection is also a national plan with benefits on the East, West and Arctic coasts.
In B.C., there will be new super tugs to enable quick rescue of large vessels and container ships. The northern B.C. coast will get its own spill response program.
This is not a quid pro quo for the pipeline. But the timing
— it was announced in November 2016 — is clearly linked to winning support for the Trans Mountain expansion in B.C.
I’ve had emails from people who sneer at all these measures. They’re obsessed with stopping this project, no matter how safe it is, how much it helps the economy or how many workers it employs.
But the reality is that when (or if ) it’s all done, B.C.’s coast may well be the safest on the planet.
In Calgary on Thursday, Premier Rachel Notley again said pipeline construction has to start in “weeks, not months.”
There are indications Ottawa is developing some kind of plan to trigger a reboot with legislation or legal action.
After first saying the feds would focus only on meeting the Federal Court’s requirements, they now suggest there could be a restart before that consultation and marine work is done.
Politically and economically, the project can’t be allowed to stagnate while talks drag on.
How a restart happens without provoking a storm of legal challenges isn’t yet clear to anyone.
But it must happen. Thursday’s little coastal drama shows that if this fails, everybody pays.