Carney fast-tracks oil pipeline, promises environmental protection

Ending months of speculation, the Carney administration today designated the West Coast oil pipeline a project of national interest, setting aside environmental safeguards that have been in place for decades and charting a course that could irrevocably alter the Salish Sea.

The pipeline will send one million barrels of oil per day from the oil sands of Alberta to a new terminal at Roberts Bank, south of Vancouver. The Roberts Bank area sits in the Fraser River Delta, a globally important ecosystem that supports one of the world’s largest salmon runs and the endangered southern resident killer whale population.

While details about the project remain sketchy, the oil would be loaded onto very large crude carriers — super-sized tankers the length of three football fields that are unique to the wildlife-rich Salish Sea.

Announcing the designation of national interest in Fort McMurray, with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith at his side, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the project – now called the Pacific Link – will help reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, which currently buys about 90 percent of Alberta’s oil.

“The oils are part of Canada’s unprecedented opportunity to become a global energy superpower,” Carney said, adding that the pipeline project would create 140,000 jobs across the country and generate more than $20 billion in GDP annually.

He said Ottawa will invest $10 billion to expand the Roberts Bank Terminal.

The project, which is largely funded by taxpayers, is estimated to cost up to 43.7 billion dollars.

The area around Roberts Bank is also a critical node on the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds, and home to the largest congregation of wintering waterfowl and shorebirds in Canada.

Carney promised to strengthen protections for “the marine life that call these waters home,” including “a series of measures to protect killer whale habitat during construction.”

But the government’s environmental assessment of the already-approved Roberts Bank Terminal 2 port expansion project — a separate project slated to begin construction in 2028 — concluded that the second container port would cause severe and permanent negative impacts on struggling killer whale populations, Fraser River chinook salmon and migratory birds such as western sandpipers that rely on their intertidal biofilm in Alaska for their breeding journeys. burn Siberia.

Widespread concerns of experts and stakeholders

Scientists, conservationists, legal experts, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and the state of Washington raise significant concerns about the effects of the new pipeline, terminal and boost in tanker traffic in the increasingly busy Salish Sea.

Georgia Lloyd-Smith, a staff attorney with West Coast Environmental Law, called the decision “financially and legally risky,” while Kathisha Paul, the women’s representative for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, told the Tyee that it is “inappropriate” for Carney to talk about addressing environmental impacts when they are not fully known, in the absence of an environmental assessment.

The national interest designation means the new oil pipeline, which will largely follow the sometimes troublesome route of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, has already been approved before many details are known and before a formal assessment of environmental impacts or substantial consultations with affected First Nations takes place.

Carney said Canada’s Major Projects Office will work to finalize the terms of the project — including ownership, benefits and environmental protection — by next September, “clearing the way to get shovels in the ground.”

The national interest designation gives the federal cabinet the power to exempt the pipeline project from a host of federal laws and regulations designed to protect wildlife and water, including the Fisheries Act and the Species at Risk Act.

Last month, the Carney government exempted interprovincial pipelines, including the West Coast oil pipeline, from the Impact Assessment Act.

The reviews conducted under the Act identify project risks, examine alternatives, ensure benefits outweigh costs, and detail how projects may affect communities, wildlife, climate, water and natural rights.

Instead, the pipeline project will be more narrowly scrutinized by the Canadian energy regulator, making it more difficult for the public to get involved.

“There are probably fewer opportunities for public voices to be heard,” Lloyd-Smith, who leads the marine program for West Coast Environmental Law, told the Tyee.

Carney said Canada was “weighed down” by “well-intentioned, but onerous, often duplicative, regulatory processes.”

“To build again at scale and speed, we have to do things differently,” he said, adding that Canada “remains a country of high standards.”

Today’s announcement comes after Washington state asked Carney not to designate the pipeline a project of national interest, saying shared waters are “too valuable” to accelerate a project that would lead to a catastrophic oil spill and harm ecosystems and the maritime economy.

In a letter to the Carney administration, Casey Sixkiller, director of the state Department of Ecology, the lead agency for oil spill prevention and response, wrote that an oil spill from a Very Large Crude Carrier could be up to eight times larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and “impose catastrophic environmental and economic consequences for our state.”

Lloyd-Smith said geological assessments of the ground around Roberts Bank suggested the area would be susceptible to liquefaction in the event of an earthquake. It’s “alarming,” she said, “when you think about crude oil being stored there, and the potential for a land-based spill into the Fraser River estuary — [it’s] scary.”

Carney’s environmental promises

On Tuesday, during a stop in Vancouver, Carney announced new measures to protect the ocean in the event of an oil spill, as part of a $1.2 billion commitment “to better protect Canada’s oceans and the life they support.”

The commitments include spending $740 million over the next four years on ocean conservation measures such as strengthening “incident prevention and preparedness,” developing a forecasting system to improve real-time emergency response and maintaining a new framework on each coast to recover from oil spills and other marine pollution incidents.

Carney also pledged $136 million over the next four years for initiatives such as a national marine mammal oil spill response plan to “act quickly to protect marine mammals and their habitats in the event of a spill,” and to improve capacity to monitor and reduce underwater noise.

Noise pollution makes it more difficult for whales to communicate with each other and use echolocation to find prey.

Lloyd-Smith said the West Coast oil pipeline project “will likely drive the precious southern resident killer whale population to extinction.” She also noted that it will increase greenhouse gas emissions.

No free, prior and informed consent from First Nations

Paul, who is from the W̱JOȽEȽP and Lil’wat Nations, said the pipeline project does not have the free, prior and informed consent of all affected First Nations – one of the pillars of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada has adopted and legislated – and legal action is likely to ensue.

“There is frustration, anger, pain, [and] above all sadness that we have to have another generation of young indigenous leaders who have to fight against big projects and resource extraction from our lands,” she said.

In August, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs wrote an open letter to Carney and Smith, saying the pipeline proposal threatens the inherent rights of First Nations and accelerates the expansion of the fossil fuel industry at a time when communities are already experiencing devastating climate disasters.

The pipeline and additional tanker traffic would expose First Nations lands, waters, marine ecosystems, cultures, economies and ways of life to “unacceptable risks from oil spills, environmental degradation and accelerated climate change,” union president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, union vice-president Linda Innes and secretary-treasurer Marilyn Slett wrote to Carney and Smith.

They wrote that Canada and Alberta must respect the decisions of First Nations that withhold consent and ensure that any assessment addresses the oil spill and marine shipping risks and impacts on lands, water, salmon and other species, as well as the climate consequences of the pipeline.

In late September, at the Annual General Meeting of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, delegates adopted a women’s statement sounding the alarm about the “rapid progress” of federal and provincial major projects without free, prior and informed consent.

The declaration also points to “the erosion of environmental protection and the rights and security of women of First Nations” and the increased risk of gender-based violence and the missing, murdered indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people crisis in relation to resource extraction.

Paul said the West Coast oil pipeline project would bring “man camps” and an increase in fear and instability due to concerns about the safety of women, girls and two-spirit people. “When the land is exploited, our women are exploited. Environmental justice is therefore also women’s justice,” she said.

The pipeline project will also pose significant problems for killer whales, salmon populations and kelp forests, she said, adding that “the entire ecosystem will be at risk because of the increased tanker traffic.”

She called Carney’s announcement about new funding for oil pools “a warning sign on its own.”