Editor:
I am disgusted at the stance of Prime Minister Trudeau in his support for the expanded Kinder Morgan pipeline. He has the audacity to suggest that this pipeline is in the national interest. It is not. It is in the interests of a private, American-owned petroleum infrastructure corporation. What is in the Canadian national interest is the long-term protection of the B.C. environment, and in particular, the marine environment.
Trudeau misled us by promising that Kinder Morgan would not be approved under the flawed, industry-friendly, Harper-designed National Energy Board process. During the 2015 election campaign, he stated that the NEB process needed to be revamped and that all existing pipeline proposals would be evaluated under the revised process. He broke his promise and now has the gall to side with Alberta in its attempt to ship vastly increased amounts of diluted bitumen (dilbit) through B.C.
Premier Horgan is absolutely correct in putting a stop to any increased dilbit shipments across B.C. A marine spill of this garbage would be impossible to clean up. As evidence, look at Enbridge’s 2010 spill of dilbit into the Kalamazoo River in the U.S. Millions have been spent dredging the river bottom trying to remove this poison. The problem is that as the more volatile fraction of the dilbit evaporates, the bitumen sinks. Therefore an ocean spill cannot be cleaned up.
What Trudeau is doing by his action is threatening the long-term viability of the Pacific coast ecosystems. What Alberta should be doing is to support the construction of an oil refinery in Alberta to process the tar sands bitumen. Ideally, Alberta would heed the calls of climate scientists and leave the vast majority of the bitumen in the ground.
Norm Funnell, Roberts Creek
