Add your voice No images? Click here photo: Kim Howcroft Dear supporter,In 2018, the government of BC was ordered by the BC Court of Appeal to reconsider the project conditions it placed on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. This court decision gave Premier John Horgan a last opportunity to follow through on his promise to defend BC’s coast. This past summer, thousands of GSA supporters just like you wrote to the Premier telling him to ensure those new permits protected BC’s land and water. We are very disappointed to report that once again, the Premier and his government have failed to deliver on their promise. The BC Environmental Assessment Office has just released its draft report and proposed conditions, and what we have are lots of words and very little action. What the BC EAO has put together will do little to protect BC’s coast and its communities. Why? Essentially the EAO failed to do its jobs to set clear, measurable and enforceable rules for this project - the kind of rules that would move the risk from spills from coastal communities to Big Oil. Instead, they focused on tweaking language in their conditions, making minor changes to a condition about research into how bitumen behaves in water, and on creating a new condition demanding a report on the health impacts of a spill. While this health report could provide vital information for the safety of oil spill responders and coastal communities, without an actionable or enforceable plan, it’s just information about how bad a spill will be for human health. The BC EAO has left huge areas of oil spill safety unaddressed. This is an unacceptable result from an agency that has the power to do more. They simply chose not to. Even though Trans Mountain’s own reports make clear any significant spill will result in the majority of oil ending up onshore, this report offers no clarity on where the workforce that cleans it up will come from, how they will be equipped, and what kind of training they will receive. The report also fails to address the problem of how to get the polluter to pay for the impacts of spills. As demonstrated in the Nathan E Stewart and Marathassa incidents, polluters can try and walk away from their responsibilities, adding a burden to communities that could be alleviated by clear rules. And in some cases, like the Marathassa, the polluter succeeds. The issues of how to repair the damage of a spill, to the ecosystems and economies and communities of this coast, are left to the federal government to figure out in the future, instead of the EAO setting clear, measurable, and enforceable rules right now. The overarching failure of the report is to put its trust in the federal government’s proposed and preliminary initiatives regarding spills - essentially telling us that “we don’t have to use our power to protect the coast from the Trans Mountain pipeline project because we hope Ottawa will”. These proposed initiatives don’t have the clear rules this risky project needs. They are hopes for the future, plans to have plans, vague deliverables and speculation about how things may become better. This report is a failure from top to bottom. It’s not good enough for this coast, and it does not live up to the promise of using every tool in the toolbox. We must make clear to Premier Horgan that his government has a duty to act here, and not wait for the federal government, the owner of this pipeline, to take actions to protect the Salish Sea. Anything less than measurable and enforceable standards which protect this region, its workers and communities, will be a failure of leadership. Take action now and help defend BC's coast. Andrew Radzik Donate today to say YES to a thriving coast and clean energy future. We acknowledge that our work takes place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. |