Battles that will shape nation.
From the epicentre of pipeline politics in British Columbia to one last clash between old buddies in Nova Scotia, Star columnist Tim Harper travelled the country to find the regional battles that will shape the nation on Election Day. This was his first stop: Burnaby North-Seymour.
VANCOUVER— On late summer Saturday, Burnaby Mountain is a lush, green-canopied oasis of silence. The only sound is that of unseen hikers whose words bounce from the narrow trails.
On the main road heading up the mountain is written: “This Pipeline Shall Not Pass.’’
This visit is stirring up some ghosts for Lynne Quarmby, the Green candidate, who is in turn stirring up the race in a riding in which pipeline politics and the future of the country’s resource sector play out in the backyards — literally — of voters each day.
Tanker traffic, ruptured pipelines, million-dollar properties sullied if not ruined, the English Bay spill, the closed Coast Guard station at Kitsilano, concern for their children and their children’s children. A national debate is playing out on the streets of Burnaby North-Seymour, a newly-created federal riding that will be the most closely watched in British Columbia.
It should be a battle between New Democrat Carol Baird Ellan and Conservative Mike Little, who both have traditional bastions of strength. Liberal Terry Beech is also a factor, but the wild card is Quarmby: scientist, activist and pain in the butt to Kinder Morgan, the company which is seeking to twin its pipeline.
The $5.4-billion Kinder Morgan proposal would expand the existing pipeline system by 987 kilometres, tripling the amount of bitumen being carried from Alberta, drastically increasing tanker traffic and drawing protesters to the mountain.
Quarmby has been arrested here. She has been here at protests when demonstrators numbered a halfdozen and when they numbered 800. She has been sued by Kinder Morgan, but she has not backed down.
“What did I do wrong?’’ she asks. “I wrote an op-ed. I sat in a forest. You’re not supposed to pick a flower there. Kinder Morgan cut down trees.”
An internationally known scientist, Quarmby stood at the foot of Burnaby Mountain one day last November and spoke to a crowd about civil disobedience, the Stephen Harper government’s abuse of power and ignorance of science.
“I stood at the bottom of the mountain and I said, ‘I’m going to walk up that mountain and be the best citizen I can be,’ ” she said, defying an injunction. It got her arrested, but it also led to her Green party candidacy. She announced it on the road to the mountain.
Beech, a 34-year-old who looks many years younger, was elected to city council in Nanaimo at the age of 18 — he campaigned as a 17-year-old — reading microfiche articles from the local paper from 20 years back, before he was born, so he would be conversant on the issues.
He holds the record as the youngest elected politician in Canada — and would have held the North American record if not for a rabblerousing filmmaker by the name of Michael Moore, who was elected a school trustee as a teen three months younger than Beech.
He was, after all, a teenager who got cable not to watch sports or movies, but CPAC, the Parliamentary channel that provides live coverage of the House of Commons.
He did his own analysis, based on traffic congestion statistics, to determine the best intersections to place signs where they would be seen while motorists were idling in traffic, and he has been knocking on doors here for 15 months.
At the door in Burnaby, one in four raises the issue of the pipeline, he says. On the more Conservative North Shore, one in five raises it. “It is the defining issue in this riding, no question,” Beech says.
He lives on Inlet Dr., site of a major Kinder Morgan pipeline rupture in 2007 that forced 250 residents to be evacuated and cost $15 million to clean up.
He hears opposition from his own neighbours who are “vehemently” opposed to increased tanker traffic.
Liberals would “revise or redo” the National Energy Board process to make it more equitable and scientific, he says. Hearings were halted after it was revealed that a consultant who provided evidence on behalf of Kinder Morgan was later appointed to the federal regulator.
Baird Ellan is a former provincial chief judge who said Harper’s “alarming” treatment of Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin over the Marc Nadon appointment helped spur her to get out of her easy chair and run for office.
She says people are “deeply concerned” about the potential of a bitumen spill, deeply disturbed about tanker traffic going from six to 34 per month through their inlets, and the integrity of their coastline.
“I know what a hearing is. It means listening. And the National Energy Board is not listening. This is a ram-you-through project.”
The NDP would also bring in a new NEB process, an independent process with the teeth needed to do its job, Baird Ellan says.
The Conservatives’ Little, who was unavailable for an interview, released a statement saying it would be “premature” to comment before hearings have been completed.
But voters on Oct. 19 may render an ultimate decision irrelevant and decide it is time for new environmental regulations in this country.
This riding is the laboratory for the bigger environmental question, and the country will be watching. tharper@thestar.ca