The following letter was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on June 7 from Ecology North and copied to premier Bob McLeod amd NWT MP Michael McLeod. It has been edited for length.
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau;
Ecology North has been around since 1971 and is actively engaged on climate issues in the North.
Much of the NWT population lives along the Mackenzie River watershed, directly downstream of the Athabasca oil sands operations. A major tailings pond spill would have dire downstream consequences for us. Living with this fear makes us empathize with the First Nations and citizens of British Columbia who are concerned about the bitumen to be transported over the mountains and out to the Pacific Ocean.
There will be spills, and we know that even world-class clean-up of spills of regular crude oil only recovers about five to 15 per cent of the spilled product. Information is lacking about recovery rates for spilled bitumen: we only know that they are likely to be worse.
We in the North are struggling to see how Canada’s purchase of a diluted bitumen pipeline is in the national interest. We have difficulty understanding how the Liberal government intends to keep its promise – to both Canadian voters, and to the international community – of reducing carbon emissions in accordance to the Paris Accord while using our taxpayer dollars to prop up oilsands development.
Analysis out of the University of British Columbia shows increased emissions as a result of this pipeline will make it almost impossible for Canada to meet our existing Paris targets or to participate in the next round of international discussions on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We Northerners await your answer to this conundrum.
We respectfully request that the decision to pump billions of taxpayer dollars into the Trans Mountain Pipeline be reviewed using the evidence-based decision making that your government outlined in your 2018 budget.
From an economic perspective, the world needs to transition to a low-carbon economy over a much shorter period of time than the oil-and-gas industry typically considers to be the operational life span of oil pipelines. The federal buy-out of Trans Mountain seems to us to be not only a poor environmental decision but also a poor financial investment. Wouldn’t $4.5 billion be better spent protecting our environment, keeping step with the global transition to clean energy and creating jobs in the renewable energy sector?
Last but certainly not least, it is against the spirit of reconciliation to push an unpopular pipeline across the traditional territories of First Nations. We need a clear process that is followed by all parties (including the federal government) to build consensus for large projects such as this. Many Canadians have put heartfelt effort into building trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians in the years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report was issued. This action has the effect of undermining those efforts.
The world is changing, and here in the North we are witness to that change; we are impacted by that change. To spend taxpayer dollars to build a pipeline while forest fires worsened by climate-related drought threaten our communities and tailings ponds threaten our waterways sends a clear message that this government values short-term gains for southern businesses over the future health and security of those of us who live in Canada’s North.
Sincerely,
Craig Scott, executive director
Ecology North