Dear Editor:
These are black and greasy days for Canadians who dare to believe that a livable environment is more important than wringing profits from shipping the world's dirtiest fuel.
The European Union proposal to accurately label the Alberta tarsands product as more harmful than most oil was temporarily halted after Mr. Harper's frantic lobbying and threats of retaliation. Mr. Harper's Transport Canada bureaucracy has ruled that inviting hundreds of super oil tankers to challenge the narrow, stormy channels of the B.C. coast is tickety-boo. Kinder Morgan is planning to expand its Rocky Mountain pipeline to load more lumbering oil tankers at Vancouver.
Our prime minister and his henchmen continue to label opponents of the $5.5-billion Enbridge northern crudway as radicals and a danger to the Canadian economy (and Big Oil's profits).
It's time to remember the massive Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster in Alaska in 1989. There are some scary parallels with the Harper plans. For example, U.S. federal government politicians and bureaucrats scoffed at the possibility of a major spill when the tanker traffic began. But the Exxon Valdez hit a reef and spilled between 21 million and 32 million gallons of crude, which has never been cleaned up. Four people died during cleanup efforts.
Big Oil had assured everyone that it was ready to fix any such spill, but the oil fouled 2,100 kilometres of shoreline, ruined or damaged the lives of 32,000 Alaskans, killed 2,500 sea otters, 250,000 seabirds, 900 eagles and decimated salmon stocks.
How reassuring is Transport Canada's rubber stamping of tanker traffic on our coast? In 2006, Ian Bron, chief of marine and aviation security regulations for Transport Canada, left his post and filed a report citing gaps in marine security and "unethical management practices." As a whistle blower, in 2007 Bron said he was being punished for his report and sued the federal government. Apparently the litigation was settled, because last year Bron appeared as principal consultant, program evaluation, at Public Works and Government Services. Was Bron's report ever made public? Were there gaps and unethical practices? If so, have they been fixed?
We radicals would like to know.
Tony Eberts, New Westminster
