Yes, there’s a glimmer of light at the end of the pipeline
By Shachi Kurl, Executive Director
It must be a confounding reality show to people watching from east of the Rockies: protesters outside Vancouver being hauled away in their fight to stop the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion; B.C. Premier John Horgan remaining rock-hard in his resolve to keep up the legal battle in the face of the company’s ultimatum to walk away; Albertans erupting in fresh rounds of exasperation and threats; and Justin Trudeau jetting home from international summits to instead hold emergency summits in Ottawa.
Amidst all this, support for this fraught project’s completion has grown to majority territory in B.C.: Fifty-four per cent favour it.
What exactly is going on in the minds of British Columbians? New polling by the Angus Reid Institutegives us two critical answers – and a possible pathway to peace in the dispute over twinning a pipeline that would carry oil from Alberta to a terminus in Metro Vancouver.
First, for the majority of those living in Canada’s Pacific province, this conflict isn’t about adding a second pipeline parallel to one that has already been in the ground for decades. That’s a sideshow. The real sticking point is what happens once the diluted bitumen in those pipelines makes its way to open water – and the risks associated with a tanker accident or spill at sea.
For the rest of this piece, please view it on the Ottawa Citizen’s site, where it was initially published.
