Kitimat to cast ballots today on Northern Gateway’s bid

KITIMAT — Residents of Kitimat will cast votes in a local plebiscite Saturday for or against the multibilliondollar Northern Gateway pipeline.

The District of Kitimat has remained neutral on the $ 6- billion project, but the vote will decide council’s position.

“We’ll see what the people of Kitimat want,” said Mayor Joanne Monaghan.

The city on the North Coast would be the end of the pipeline and home of a marine terminal for loading oil onto tankers. Kitimat council’s neutral stance went so far as to keep the city from participating in a federal review panel on the project.

That panel recommended in December that the pipeline be approved, subject to 209 conditions.

Kitimat residents are being asked: Do you support the final report recommendations of the Joint Review Panel ( JRP) of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and National Energy Board, that the Enbridge Northern Gateway project be approved, subject to 209 conditions set out in Volume 2 of the JRP’s final report?

It’s a question about “as hard to nail to the wall as a bit of Jell- O,” said Murray Minchin, a volunteer with the grassroots Douglas Channel Watch, which opposes the Enbridge proposal.

He describes a campaign that has been outspent, outmanned and outmanoeuvred from the outset. Enbridge’s campaign started months — if not years — ago, Minchin said.

Enbridge faced no spending limits, as provincial election laws don’t apply to a municipal vote. Northern Gateway had paid canvassers, full- page ads, glossy brochures, a new website and billboards, Minchin said. It ran an annual campaign for youth that saw 50 iPads distributed to winners of essay contests, he added.

And yet, Minchin is hopeful the vote will go his way.

“Four weeks ago we had $ 200 in the bank. Then we started making lawn signs and started putting those around town and people started coming up to us in the street and handing us money,” he said.

“Somebody even anonymously dropped off a $ 2,000 money order into one of our mailboxes. Then we got a website that had a donate button.”

More than $ 14,000 and 2,000 doorsteps later, Douglas Channel Watch members believe opponents of the pipeline outnumber supporters 3 — 1.

“Our goal will be to try to get all of those people who said they were going to vote No to actually get out and vote Saturday,” Minchin said.

Ballots will be counted on the weekend and Kitimat council is scheduled to meet Monday night to discuss the results.

The federal government is expected to announce a final decision on the pipeline in June.