Canada's Green Party leader says she's not surprised at the outrage expressed towards the Prime Minister at his town Hall in Nanaimo, the "Harbour City" over his insistence the KinderMMorgan pipeline will go ahead despite BC's concerns.
Elizabeth May says the National Energy Board process was flawed, and when Justin Trudeau was a candidate he promised British Columbians he'd put the pipeline to a more vigorous review, but that never happened.
May used to practise law and appeared in front of the NEB many times. She says unfortunately not everyone across Canada understands the NEB Process that looked at the Kinder Morgan project ignored key issues -- including concerns over how diluted bitumen would be cleaned up if spilled our waters:
" And that's one of the reasons that our Environment Minister George Heyman has picked on one of these issues that needs addressing. Which is, as far as the science that is most current, no one knows how you would clean up diluted bitumen in an ocean environment. We've been unable to clean it up in a fresh water environment, and that was in Kalamazoo, Michigan."
May says she the BC government is doing the right thing, while the Prime Minister is doing the wrong thing -- putting Alberta's economic interests ahead of BC's very real environmental concerns.
" I had a very strong expectation that even if the Liberals wanted to approve the Kinder Morgan pipeline they wouldn't do it until they had obtained more science. They didn't bother. They did it because they wanted Alberta to sign onto their carbon tax, and it was a political tradeoff that violated core promises. "
May says she is concerned for Alberta's economy as well but says KInder Morgan isn't the answer. She adds the NEB did not look at an assessment of jobs or what was good for the economy because it wasn't in their mandate. May adds testimony from Unifor, the largest union in Northern Alberta, which said the Kinder Morgan project would COST jobs in Canada was simply rejected by the NEB.
She calls statements that the project is good for the economy "propaganda in the absence of evidence."