I want to take exception to Mr. John Weston’s extraordinary scolding of the District of West Vancouver Council over their unanimous motion to ban LNG tankers from Howe Sound. His intervention is all the more strange for a variety of reasons.
In 2006, Steven Harper’s government was quick to disallow passage for dangerous LNG tankers through Canadian waters into an LNG import facility proposed for Passamaquoddy Bay in Maine, USA. The government under Harper’s leadership argued that “LNG tankers and their highly-flammable cargoes pose an unacceptable threat to the (New Brunswick) populations along their route”. Mr. Harper himself rose in the House to support that statement. Why would a member of that same government scold the District of West Vancouver for having equally-valid concerns for its citizens?
Furthermore, the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM), including the District of West Vancouver, passed a resolution in 2008 urging the Federal Government to ban LNG tankers from the Georgia, Malaspina, Haro and Juan de Fuca Straits. That resolution is still in effect.
The project proponent, Woodfibre LNG, has never constructed or operated an LNG plant anywhere in the world. It held several information sessions in Mr. Weston’s riding over the spring and early summer, attended by hundreds of his constituents. Many became quite concerned with the vague answers being provided by the proponent. Citizens around the Sound and further afield have since made their feelings known.
In May of this year the Federal Government ceded control of the Environmental Assessment (EA) for this plant to the BC government.A May 29th letter accompanying that authorization charged BC with garnering public input both in Squamish and along the tanker route “…from the LNG facility and marine terminal site to Passage Island at the entrance to Howe Sound”. Yet the BC Environmental Assessment office (BCEAO) decided to exclude any representation in its Working Group from the municipalities of Lions Bay, West Vancouver, Bowen, Gibsons and the Islands Trust.
BCEAO did hold one poorly-organized, informationally-starved, open house in Squamish in late June, attended by over 150 concerned citizens. Two dozen other panel discussions and expert presentations were organized by citizens in the riding in the past three months to fully explore the costs and benefits of LNG plants in general, and Woodfibre in particular. Mr. Weston did not attend any of these meetings.
Two days after BCEAO’s open house in Squamish, the government’s own senior staff Project Manager for both the Fortis pipeline and the Woodfibre LNG projects resigned and immediately started working for Chevron on its LNG facility proposed for Kitimat. This defection did nothing to bolster the tattered reputation of BC’s environment ministry and its inadequate environmental process.
Small wonder then that the public’s faith in our elected regulators and regulatory processes is at rock-bottom – after the Gulf of Mexico blow-out, Enbridge Kalamazoo River spill, Cold Lake ooze, Lac Megantic fire-storm and now the Polley Mine tailing pond failure. Citizens have become wary of all statements emanating from our Federal and Provincial institutions and elected representatives. Are they not supposed to represent our interests and pro-actively manage reasonable controls and standards for projects?
West Vancouver Council has every right, indeed obligation, to express concern about projects like the Woodfibre LNG that will affect its citizens and property. West Vancouverites should expect no less of their Council. That fact that it has joined Lions Bay, Gibsons, the Sunshine Coast Regional District and Island Trust in doing so is to be commended and supported – not vilified - by senior levels of Government that have handed off the responsibility, but not the authority, to make wise and informed decisions on dodgy developments.
