Wilderness Committee condemns “project of national interest” designation for new west coast oil pipeline

VANCOUVER / UNCEDED xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh AND səlilwətaɬ TERRITORIES — 
With no remorse in his voice for sacrificing the iconic southern resident killer whale for a $44 billion dollar oil pipeline, Prime Minister Mark Carney moved ahead with designating the “Pacific Link” pipeline as a project of national interest today. The Wilderness Committee is outraged and terrified of the consequences of this shameless announcement by the federal and Alberta governments.

“The extinction of the southern resident orcas could now have a name and a price tag: “Pacific Link” for $44 billion of mostly taxpayer money,” said Conservation and Policy Campaigner Lucero Gonzalez. “Mark Carney’s one review, one permit, approach to fast-track this pipeline and the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project will never take into account the beauty, the cultural significance and the ecological importance of these orcas. It will simply fail to understand the love many of us have for this species, because this process and this government simply do not care.”

This project of national interest designation will allow the Pacific Link oil pipeline project to fast-track review processes and compress permits into a one-year timeline, a pre-approval that is happening before crucial basic questions are answered. When asked how much public money the pipeline would cost Canadians, the prime minister refused to answer. This lack of accountability and clarity could leave taxpayers with 90 per cent of the $44 billion bill, as the sole private sector proponent for the project, Pembina Pipeline, holds only 10 per cent stake so far.

“The federal government bought the Trans Mountain pipeline, whose $35 billion debt sits on taxpayers. Instead of learning from this experience, the Carney government is doubling down, proposing another enormous oil pipeline despite there being no clear benefits — and only massive harms — from the last time we did this,” said Climate Campaigner Isabel Siu-Zmuidzinas.

Pipeline would add oil exports to Roberts Bank Terminal 2 expansion

The Wilderness Committee is also extremely concerned by the prime minister’s unclear announcement that the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (RBT2) expansion could serve as a marine terminal for Alberta oil as part of the Pacific Link project. RBT2 has been through more than a decade of environmental reviews and legal challenges because of its adverse effects on endangered southern resident killer whales and the surrounding Fraser River estuary ecosystem, most of which could now be ignored by its looming project of national interest designation, and made worse by the addition of Pacific Link.

“The possibility of changing the footprint of the Roberts Bank Terminal expansion to turn it into an oil project or adding an oil terminal next to it, after more than a decade of public opposition — while simultaneously weakening its environmental conditions and allowing it to bypass the Species at Risk Act — is absolutely disgusting, dangerous and reckless,” said Gonzalez. “And for Mark Carney to be as deliberately ambiguous as possible about this move while pledging tens of billions of public dollars for it, is as cowardly and cynical a political move as it gets.”

The proposed pipeline is also being packaged with the Pathways carbon capture project. Carbon capture technology has never proven effective in mitigating the effects of fossil fuel projects and it is simply not a climate solution in the face of a new pipeline.

“You cannot build a pipeline to move a million barrels of crude oil every single day and build a carbon-capture project and call that climate leadership,” said Siu-Zmuidzinas. “This is the same old greenwashing fossil fuel agenda with a shiny new toy next to the same old pipeline”

For more information please contact:

Lucero Gonzalez | Conservation and Policy Campaigner
lucero@wildernesscommittee.org

Isabel Siu-Zmuidzinas | Climate Campaigner
isabel@wildernesscommittee.org