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MP makes Cowichan Bay stop in crusade against tanker traffic
News Articles Featured | Canada.com | March 18, 2011
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Like everyone along the coast of British Columbia, residents of Vancouver Island have a vested interest in keeping oil tankers away from the north coast.
So says Joyce Murray, Liberal Member of Parliament for Vancouver-Quadra. Murray was in Cowichan Bay on Wednesday evening as part of a tour of the Island to inform residents of the dangers of shipping crude oil along the B.C. coast. Murray has a bill before Parliament that will extend a moratorium on tanker traffic that has existed since 1972.
Murray is particularly concerned about traffic around Haida Gwaii — formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands.
A proposed pipeline carrying crude from the oil sands of Alberta to a new port in Kitimat would result in increased traffic along the north coast, and that is a big part of Murray’s concern.
“There are dangerous and high winds in that area,” she explained. “And narrow, rocky channels. A BC Ferries boat ran aground there a few years ago. Imagine if an oil tanker ran aground carrying eight times as much crude oil as the Exxon Valdez?”
In March 1989, the Exxon Valdez spilled as much as 750,000 barrels of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in one of the biggest-ever man-made environmental disasters. Murray hates to think what might happen if a larger incident took place on the B.C. coast.
“It would be a disaster for so many jobs that depend on the ocean,” she said, noting that the fisheries, aquaculture and tourism industries would be devastated.
A proposed pipeline carrying crude from the oil sands of Alberta to a new port in Kitimat would result in increased traffic along the north coast, and that is a big part of Murray’s concern. The pipeline might create as many as 50 jobs in Kitimat, but that number pales next to the jobs that could potentially be lost in an environmental disaster.
“That doesn’t compare with the tens of thousands of jobs that depend on the coast,” said Murray.
Murray cited a poll in which 80 per cent of British Columbians are against lifting the shipping moratorium. On her current tour, she is finding that those numbers match up in face-to-face meetings.
“One person at a meeting I was just at said we’d be crazy to have tankers in that area,” she said.
Among the most fierce opponents to tanker traffic on the north coast are the region’s First Nations.
“Every First Nation in the Fraser Basin has declared that they are against this,” she said. “And every First Nation on the north coast.”
The Union of British Columbia Municipalities passed a resolution at their last conference opposing the pipeline, as well, said Murray.
Getting the support of Vancouver Islanders is key to Murray’s crusade. Island communties, particularly those on the north end, which rely on eco-tourism and sport and commercial fising, could be seriously affected by an oil spill. Islanders have set an example for balancing ecology and the economy that she would like to see continue.
“I think people on Vancouver Island have lived the truth that we can have prosperity and protect the environment by being careful about where and how we develop,” said Murray.
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