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Coffee klatch solution

The British Columbia government, numerous towns and First Nations people opposed to the Trans Mountain pipeline have every right to be concerned. Anyone in their right mind would.

The British Columbia government, numerous towns and First Nations people opposed to the Trans Mountain pipeline have every right to be concerned.

Anyone in their right mind would.

As many of our readers know, I have gone on record that I support the project, but I have been against how the Alberta government — first Rachel Notley’s NDP and now Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party (UCP) — have tried to convince their provincial counterparts onside.

Basically, both governments have tried to bully B.C. to toe the line.

Notley enacted a short-lived boycott on B.C. wine and then introduced Bill 12, the legislation which was formalized by Kenney and the UCP to allow the Alberta government to restrict the flow of oil and gasoline to British Columbia, pressuring their government by spiking gasoline prices.

As I write this on June 8 in Kelowna, gas prices range from a high of $1.28.9 to $1.32.9.

Kenney is also funding a $30 million war room to combat what he perceives as negative press from everyone from the media to environmental agencies opposing not only the Trans Mountain pipeline but other oilsands projects.

He is also launching a $2.5 million public inquiry into foreign funding of groups campaigning against Alberta oil headed by forensic and restructuring accountant Steve Allan.

Referencing the work of Vivian Krause, Kenney says that the public inquiry will look into environmental groups that the Alberta government says have been bankrolled by American philanthropists who want to keep Canada’s oil and gas from reaching overseas markets, where it would attain a higher price per barrel.

Krause is a researcher-reporter who works the self-assigned beat of “who donates money to Canadian environmental groups.” She’s discovered that a portion of that money comes from a handful of deep-pocketed American charitable foundations — the Tides Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, in particular — and that these groups are also donors to an American activist group called CorpEthics.

I’m not sure what the inquiry will find out beyond facts we already know, regardless of who is footing the bill.

Let’s be honest here: oil, and unprocessed bitumen, in particular, is an environmental hazard, one that governments and companies need to do their best to mitigate.

And unfortunately, many people (even those who support the pipeline) don’t think both parties have done enough to safeguard the environment.

According to the National Energy Board (NEB), there have been 11 leaks spilling from the existing Trans Mountain line since 2002.

Janice Antoine from the Coldwater reserve in B.C., discovered in 2014 that a field of hers was contaminated from a decades-old leak from the aging pipeline and she is still waiting for it to be cleaned up properly. Until it is, she will continue to lose what she would have otherwise earned leasing out the land for agricultural purposes.

What really is needed (based on an informal poll I conducted at a coffee klatch) is a large fund of, say, $100 million, for the “world class” clean-up plan the NEB requires and the government and citizens expect.

We require such a fund for gravel pits, but unfortunately, when it comes to the oil and gas industry, these types of funds were pretty much an afterthought, as we are seeing first-hand after the dissolution of Trident Exploration Corp.

Having said this, perhaps it isn’t too late to learn from that mistake.


Barry Kerton

About the Author: Barry Kerton

Barry Kerton is the managing editor of the Barrhead Leader, joining the paper in 2014. He covers news, municipal politics and sports.
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