Liberal tanker ban sinking
Promise never made sense: Ivison
Marc Garneau probably wished he were back on the space shuttle.
The transport minister — the government’s point person on C-48, the oil tanker moratorium act that is currently being dismembered by unco-operative senators — was called upon to defend the bill before the Senate transport and communications committee Tuesday. The committee is made up of Conservatives and Liberal-appointed independent senators, who are proving more non-aligned than the government might wish.
Paula Simons, a former journalist who is now an independent senator representing Alberta, suggested to Garneau that Bill C-69 (the government’s environmental assessment reform that is also bogged down in the Senate) is a robust piece of legislation that would subject any plans for a new port on the west coast to the same rigorous scrutiny as any new pipeline. “Isn’t C-48 superfluous and redundant?” she asked.
Garneau brushed off the suggestion by saying C-48 is specific to a region — namely, it prohibits tankers carrying “persistent” oil (a defined list that includes crude but does not include propane or liquefied natural gas) from unloading at ports on the west coast, from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan border.
But he slipped up by acknowledging the real reason the Liberals are intent on driving the bill through parliament, in the teeth of fierce opposition: “It follows from an election promise that was made.”
Voters should generally commend governments for fulfilling the promises on which they were elected. But not if they were made in haste and don’t make sense in a shifting geopolitical landscape.
Over the past year, I have spoken to a number of people involved in the 2015 Liberal election campaign while researching a book on Justin Trudeau. More than one person used the phrase “third-party promises” to describe the Liberals’ electoral commitments. “This sprawling platform was created by a third-place party that had been out of power for a decade and was throwing stuff at the wall,” said one person with close knowledge of the campaign. “When someone asked: ‘How are we going to do all this stuff ?’ the response was: ‘We’ll only have to if we get elected.’”
The tanker ban, announced by Trudeau at Jericho Beach in Vancouver at the end of June 2015, fits that description. At the time, the Conservatives criticized the Liberal leader for “not understanding the implications of his policies.”
Once in government, the announcement of the moratorium killed the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, B.C.
But since then the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has faced all kinds of difficulties and the Energy East project to ship Alberta crude to Atlantic Canada has been abandoned.
New projects, such as the Eagle Spirit pipeline corridor from Fort McMurray to the northwest coast near Prince Rupert have been proposed. Thirty-five First Nations along the route support the development.
But C-48 kills it, even though the proposed port of Grassy Point is only 10 minutes from open ocean.
Garneau said his government is open to any amendments senators might suggest, but when Doug Black, an independent senator from Alberta, asked if there were any prospects of a potential ocean corridor to Prince Rupert for oil products, the minister said no. “The analogy is a café where there is no smoking but one table is allowed to smoke. You can’t guarantee any spillage will stay in that corridor,” he said.
Some Liberals would be quite happy to see C-48 die on the order paper. There is no agreement for third reading in the Senate and no guarantees that it will be read before the end of the sitting.
If it does, it is likely to be sent back to the House heavily amended. At the transport committee meeting, independent senator Julie Miville-Dechêne pointed out that the Nisga’a Indigenous people oppose the moratorium, which they believe does not respect the treaty they have with the Crown because it imposes limits on their economic development.
In his response, Garneau said the government and the Nisga’a don’t agree, but the majority of First Nations on the coast are supportive of the ban.
Conservative senator David Wells pointed to Placentia Bay in his native Newfoundland and Labrador, “the foggiest place on earth,” as somewhere that has managed the risk to the natural environment with oil tanker traffic.
Garneau said Newfoundland’s oil development predates his government but that northern B.C. has not been “subjected to development and we want to keep it that way because of its ecological fragility.”
That explanation did not seem wash with many of the senators, who felt Trudeau’s mantra of the environment and the economy going together “like paddles and canoes” has become unbalanced.
For some, C-48 traps Alberta’s oil; for others, it impinges on First Nation sovereignty.
The tanker ban smacks of an idea that was flung at the wall before the last election. It should probably have stayed there.