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CBC
10-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Some voters say B.C. oil tanker ban must be lifted for national unity. Others warn it will reopen an old fight
If a ban on oil tankers off British Columbia's North Coast is lifted, Arnie Nagy is ready to fight. A member of the Haida Nation living in Prince Rupert, more than 700 kilometres up the coast from Vancouver, he spent his career working in fish canneries that once employed thousands, and still takes to the ocean for salmon. He didn't hesitate when asked what is at stake for him in the upcoming federal election. "Our way of life," he replied. "My family's way of life since time immemorial: The protection of the marine environment, the protection of our rights to go food fishing, the protection of the salmon resources and the marine resources that we used to build the economics in coastal communities." Nagy, now 61, said he's been fighting proposals to put oil tankers in B.C.'s oceans since the 1970s. Today, the issue has been brought back to the agenda by the federal Conservatives, who are running on a promise to repeal Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act. And the question of which message resonates more — getting oil to market or protecting coastal waters — could help decide the outcome of a federal election, in which this riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley is shaping up to be a key battleground if the Conservatives want to form government. Passed in 2019 under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, the moratorium act prevents tankers carrying more than 12,500 metric tonnes of oil from travelling along B.C.'s coastline between the north tip of Vancouver Island and Alaska, and was celebrated by Nagy when it became law. But Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre argues the legislation is choking Canada's resource industry and has promised to lift it should he become prime minister. He's attacked Mark Carney for saying a new Liberal government would keep the ban in place. Poilievre has also framed the issue as a matter of national security in the face of tariffs and economic threats from the United States, arguing there is a renewed importance on opening up overseas markets for oil produced in B.C. and Alberta. WATCH | Nagy says he'd fight tanker ban reversal: Haida fisherman ready to fight any repeal of tanker ban 1 day ago Duration 2:09 Arnie Nagy says he's been fighting oil transport proposals through B.C.'s coastal waters since the 1970s, and at 61 years of age, he's ready to do it again should a new federal government seek to repeal the ban put in place in 2019. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, meanwhile, has put out a list of demands for whoever becomes prime minister. It includes lifting the tanker ban alongside several other measures aimed at getting Albertan oil to market in order to "avoid an unprecedented national unity crisis." "Albertans will no longer tolerate the way we've been treated by the federal Liberals over the past 10 years," she wrote on X. Nagy, however, believes that's simply a smokescreen, dressing resource projects up in a message of patriotism when in reality they would reopen old conflicts. "We've got to be united as Canadians, not divided on silly proposals that don't really benefit the Canadian people," he said, arguing the money from projects goes to companies rather than communities, while putting marine environments at risk. Divisive Northern Gateway pipeline still looms large Down a gravel road through farmers' fields north of Red Deer, Alberta, are the historic Leduc Oil Fields. Leduc kicked off Alberta's post-war oil boom in 1947 and today crews are still working to power the local economy — and, as they see it, that of the country as a whole. WATCH | Trump's threats puts controversial pipeline back on the agenda: Trump tariff threats put scrapped Northern Gateway pipeline project back in the political spotlight 3 months ago Duration 2:13 With U.S. President Donald Trump threatening tariffs on Canadian products as early as Feb. 1, some Canadian business leaders and politicians are opening up discussions on the Northern Gateway pipeline project to secure alternative markets for Canadian oil. As CBC's Katie DeRosa reports, even some First Nations leaders who once opposed the pipeline are now open to it. But, they say, they often feel ignored or worse, maligned by other parts of the country — a feeling Bryan Gould, CEO of Aspenleaf Energy, believes is about to boil over depending on the outcome of this year's election. "I see a sort of crossroads, frankly, where we either leverage the great strengths and the bounty that we have as a country, or we put barriers in place, don't realize our potential, and that can have, you know, really dramatic unity impacts in a negative sense," he said in an interview with CBC Radio's The Current. Chris Simeniuk, a former oil worker, expressed enthusiasm for Poilievre's plans to streamline the regulatory approval process for new energy projects. "Let's get something happening," he said. WATCH | Oil and gas workers on their election priorities: 3 Alberta voters want economic prosperity — and a voice 3 days ago Duration 0:46 He also lamented the death of Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, a project whose name is often brought up in discussions around efforts to get Canadian oil overseas. That development would have seen about 525,000 barrels of petroleum a day shipped from just northeast of Edmonton through more than 1,700 kilometres of pipeline to Kitimat, B.C., just east of Prince Rupert, for export overseas. The pipeline was approved by Stephen Harper's Conservatives, and protested by hundreds of people in both Kitimat and further afield. Its approval was reversed when the Federal Court found Ottawa had not adequately consulted Indigenous people along the project's route, and effectively killed once Trudeau came to power and announced the tanker moratorium in 2016. But the Conservatives already have a strong foothold in Alberta, where the tanker ban is maligned. Where they are attempting to win new voters is on B.C.'s North Coast, in the vast Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding which has returned NDP candidates since its creation in 2004 and where opposition to Northern Gateway and oil shipments remains strong. In January, when Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip said he was prepared to rethink his opposition to the pipeline in the face of tariff threats, he was quickly faced with backlash and retracted his comments the next day. Indigenous leaders, including the elected Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations and Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, reiterated their opposition to the project, warning they would do everything they could to stop if from moving forward. 'Not a risk people are willing to take': NDP Also opposed to reopening the debate is Taylor Bachrach, who as mayor of Smithers joined in a council vote opposing the project. Today, he is running for re-election as the NDP MP in Skeena-Bulkley Valley, a riding so large and remote that he visits some of his constituents by canoe. "For 10 years, people in this part of the world — communities, First Nations, ranchers, fishermen — stood together and said, 'We don't want crude oil coming through our watersheds or going up and down our coast.' It was one of the greatest acts of unity, I think that I've ever seen," he said. The impact of the ban being repealed, he said, would be "really devastating" for the region, with the potential it would last long after a Trump presidency is over. "The implications of an oil spill in a wild salmon river or on the North Coast would last for over a century," he said. "It's not a risk people are willing to take." Also prominent in his opposition to the pipeline, at the time, was Ellis Ross. As the chief councillor of the Haisla First Nation, he went so far as to join a lawsuit against Enbridge for failing to consult with Indigenous communities on the project. In a 2012 interview with CBC, he echoed many of the same points made by Nagy, saying a single oil spill would devastate the marine life that his people have long relied on. At the same time he was fighting Enbridge, Ross supported the development of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, saying that while it, too, had risks, they were not nearly as great as those posed by oil tankers, adding the economic benefits to First Nations and local communities could not be ignored. He rode that message in the 2017 provincial election campaign, where he ran under the banner of the centre-right B.C. Liberals, flipping the riding away from the provincial NDP. And now, he's hoping to do it again, this time as the hand-picked candidate for the federal Conservatives. He joined Poilievre at a campaign stop in Terrace this week, where the party leader vowed to unleash the natural resource industry by creating a "one stop shop" to speed up approvals for natural resource projects, specifically citing the Canada LNG plant currently coming online in Kitimat that Ross had championed. WATCH | Poilievre campaigns in Terrace, B.C.: Conservatives promise 'one-and-done' project approvals to cut wait times 2 days ago Duration 2:10 Pierre Poilievre campaigned in Terrace on Monday alongside Skeena-Bulkley Valley candidate Ellis Ross. The former MLA helped bring LNG Canada to the region. But as Jon Hernandez explains, not everyone is on board with the party's pledge to support more megaprojects. But shipping LNG isn't nearly as divisive as oil tankers, and the industry has received the backing of both the federal Liberal and provincial NDP governments. Meanwhile, Poilievre's speech in Terrace made no mention of his promise to allow tankers into the nearby Douglas Channel, in contrast to an appearance a week earlier in Newfoundland, where he checked "repeal the tanker ban" off of a giant to-do list and criticized Carney for opposing Northern Gateway. Neither Poilievre nor Ross took questions from the media on the tanker ban while speaking in Terrace, and Ross' team has also declined multiple interview requests put forward by CBC News to clarify his position on the topic. Ross did, however, tell a special senate committee meeting in 2019 that he feared opposition to resource development, including the tanker ban, is based more on ideology than fact. He has also been vocal on social media saying there needs to be more pipelines in order to diversify the economy. That message isn't particularly at odds with that coming from Carney, who has said he wants to work with Canada's energy industries and First Nations to move more resource projects forward. But Nagy said no matter who wins the election, coastal First Nations are clear: no tankers in B.C.'s waters. "We've been through this battle … and we've come to the conclusion that it is not a safe proposal," he said. "It may be another fight."
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'Should I just laugh?': Energy experts question Freeland's pledge to push LNG
OTTAWA — Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland's pitch to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to allies is drawing skeptical reactions from those who say her government neglected the sector over the past decade. The former finance minister's policy statement on jobs and growth, released on Feb. 5, includes a pledge to "seize the opportunity to make Canada an energy superpower, from powering our grids with hydro to exporting liquefied natural gas to our allies." That line is part of a package of proposals Freeland made to diversify Canada's exports in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to impose steep tariffs on those exports. But critics — even those who agree with her ideas for LNG — found it to be a tough line to swallow. "Should I just laugh?" said Martha Hall Findlay, director of the University of Calgary's school of public policy. "It would be funny if it weren't just so frustrating." Hall Findlay said Freeland was a central figure in the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for nearly a decade, as it "did everything it could possibly do to limit our ability to export energy." The Trudeau government shelved the Northern Gateway pipeline project in 2016. It also passed Bill C-48 in 2019, which prohibited tankers off the northwest coast of British Columbia. Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation, said Ottawa's track record over the past decade has "not at all been friendly to the development of natural resources" and that "nobody was speaking up for the oil and gas industry." 'They're the right things to do," he said of Freeland's energy policy proposals. 'The question is whether she has credibility to say these things." Freeland's campaign cited the Liberal government's purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline project, which kept it alive. John Manley, once a heavyweight blue Liberal who now describes himself as "post-partisan," summed up his reaction to Freeland's policy proposal in two words: "Totally agree." But Hall Findlay, a former Liberal party leadership contestant herself who later left and backed centrist Conservative party contenders, noted the absence of any mention of oil in Freeland's platform. She suggested Freeland's strategy here is to try to "please the environmental keep-it-in-the-grounders, the anti-oil people in the Liberal party, but also trying to sound like she wants to do the right thing for the economy." "She's trying to play both sides by saying, 'Well, we'll look at expanding the friendlier fossil fuel … but we'll avoid mentioning the one that really is the fundamental economic driver,'" Hall Findlay said. "She's trying to please everybody and I just don't think that pleases anybody. "Canada's been spending an awful lot of time shooting itself in the foot so that a few people in Ottawa can pat themselves on the back, and unfortunately Chrystia Freeland's one of them." But UBC politics professor Kathryn Harrison, who specializes in environment and energy policy and is a member of the B.C. Climate Solutions Council, said Freeland's platform here is consistent with the Trudeau government's track record. "The emphasis on exporting LNG is not inconsistent with the Trudeau government's track record in that they have approved new LNG terminals during their time in government — LNG Canada, Cedar LNG," Harrison said. The federal government also pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into LNG Canada's complex in Kitimat, B.C. "It's a popular line right now," Harrison added, suggesting it "plays well with voters because gas seems cleaner than oil" and it gives them a sense Canada would be doing the world a favour by helping other countries move away from more emissions-heavy fuels. "But I think it's fraught on environmental grounds and economic grounds as well," she said, adding LNG takes a long time to receive permits and build. She also cited reports suggesting global demand for LNG may peak around 2030. Environmental groups insist doubling down on LNG would only benefit wealthy Canadians who invest in the fossil fuel industry. "Whoever wants to be Canada's next prime minister must focus on solutions that will bring Canadians economic relief, and certainty without jeopardizing climate security," said Ecojustice lawyer Matt Hulse. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 8, 2025. Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press Sign in to access your portfolio
