It’s been a long time since British Columbia was beset with the kind of highly charged situation that’s currently playing out on Burnaby Mountain.
The mountain, and in particular the Trans Mountain terminal, has become the flashpoint for opposition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion – a $7.4-billion project that has divided the nation and provoked political posturing on a grand scale.
We have the federal government maintaining the pipeline is in the national interest, the provincial government seeking an answer to the question about its jurisdiction on environmental concerns, U.S.-based Kinder Morgan threatening to pull the plug, and Alberta’s premier threatening to put the squeeze on oil shipments to B.C. so we pay more for gas.
Right here at home, we have Burnaby city councillors continuing to speak out against the project and one NDP member of Parliament, Kennedy Stewart, facing the possibility of criminal prosecution for his part in anti-pipeline protests.
Not to mention the host of folks from all walks of life taking stands on the pipeline issue – both for and against – in a variety of ways, from turning up to block the gates of the Trans Mountain terminal to carrying on passionate debates on social media.
Mayor Derek Corrigan suggests in today’s front-page story that, should the courts allow the pipeline expansion to go ahead, we can expect to see “chaos” and “massive civil disobedience.”
He’s right.
The big question now is whether mass protests à la Clayoquot Sound will have any effect at all on the outcome of this debate.
Is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau really prepared to stare down the kind of opposition he’s likely to see should he attempt to force the pipeline through?
Will the collective power of protesters – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – be sufficient to stall the project long enough for some kind of compromise to be reached?
Or will “regular” folks whose voices could be the difference-makers find themselves less devoted to the anti-pipeline cause once they start paying $2 a litre for gas?
It’s like one giant game of chicken – with the highest possible stakes.
All we can do now is wait to see who blinks first.
