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| I took this photo of Telegraph Cove, on Vancouver Island's northern tip, last week |
This comes after Kinder Morgan issued an ultimatum that it would pull out of the project before B.C. could resolve the issue in court about whether it has the right to prevent the pipeline expansion.
The action by Trudeau basically says "Damn the torpedoes; it's full steam ahead."
And then they made each and every Canadian a shareholder by buying the existing pipeline for $4.5 billion and planning to spend at least another $7.4 billion of taxpayer money on the new project.
What a gut punch.
When completed the pipeline will see a tripling of the amount of diluted bitumen shipped out of Vancouver to refineries overseas. British Columbia fears the increased tanker traffic will inevitably lead to an oil spill that will devastate its one-of-a-kind marine environment.
We just returned from a month-long trip to B.C. Life there revolves around the incredible beauty and bountiful island archipelago of its coast. This is the salmon capital of the world. A major industry is whale and orca tours. There are ferries everywhere linking the many islands.
It is sickening to think of what an oil spill will do to this lush and wonderful region. And make no mistake, eventually there will be one. If anything can go wrong, it will, given enough time.
The tarsands oil (Alberta wants us to call it oilsands) is the world's most-polluting form of petroleum. It produces far more greenhouse gas than any other type of oil production.
We all hoped Trudeau's government, called the only current left-leaning government in the world by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, would curtail the tarsands extraction and put its workers to work on green energy production.
Instead it has done exactly the opposite.
