Skip to content

Money better spent on healthcare and education than fighting pipelines

While a campaign promise by both parties to stop the Kinder Morgan expansion, the fact is most British Columbians support the pipeline. It is an important project that will benefit all Canadians and open up new markets for our resources. Today we are hog-tied to the U.S. with regard to trade and the U.S. knows this and uses it against us to achieve lower prices for our crude. This is especially true given how the new administration is looking at trade.

While a campaign promise by both parties to stop the Kinder Morgan expansion, the fact is most British Columbians support the pipeline. It is an important project that will benefit all Canadians and open up new markets for our resources. Today we are hog-tied to the U.S. with regard to trade and the U.S. knows this and uses it against us to achieve lower prices for our crude. This is especially true given how the new administration is looking at trade.

While environmentalists are absolutely correct and we need to protect our water supplies and coast, they tend to paint the most dire picture as if it were a certainty. Pipelines are the safest way to transport crude period and pipeline companies have no interest in a spill occurring. Enbridge can attest to that with the Kalamazoo river spill of 27,000 barrels, where the cleanup cost is approaching $1 billion US. The revenue to Enbridge for transporting the crude would have been in the area of $145,000. So for any pipeline company the cost associated with a spill far out exceeds the revenue for transportation, so they do operate to ensure spills do not happen.

The Greens, NDP and environmentalists all sing the same tune about tankers off the coast and quote the Exxon Valdez (a single hull tanker) disaster as an example of what could happen. Today, tankers on both our coasts are required to be double hulled and since the introduction of these tankers, there has not been a single spill anywhere they are used in the world. The investigation into the Exxon Valdez concluded that if it had been a double hulled tanker, the spill would not have occurred.

We all love infrastructure, schools, hospitals etc. and they all cost money. The energy industry contributes to the revenues of this country and this pipeline will contribute not only in revenues but help Canada in establishing new markets for this important resource.

I don’t want the provincial government wasting time and my tax dollars that should be directed towards education, healthcare or other social issues that are needed in this province. For them to be willing to fight against a pipeline and tankers where every effort has been made under the toughest regulations to protect our environment and coast for political purposes is just simply wrong.

Robert Simoes

Chilliwack, BC