Mayor Marianne Alto is expected to prepare a submission that opposes building the 1,250-kilometre pipeline or labelling it of national interest.
Victoria city council has weighed in against a new oil pipeline from Alberta to B.C., and the federal government’s move to have it declared in the national interest under the Building Canada Act.
Council voted Thursday to have Mayor Marianne Alto prepare a submission that opposes building the 1,250-kilometre pipeline or labelling it of national interest.
The pipeline, expected to carry as much as one million barrels of crude oil per day to Delta, is a central component of an energy agreement between the federal and Alberta governments.
Declaring a project to be in the national interest allows the federal government to fast-track approvals and skirt some environmental laws. Ottawa is taking submissions on the national-interest designation until Sept. 18.
Coun. Susan Kim, who suggested the council motion, said the federal government is ignoring the climate crisis with the pipeline.
“We are looking at misting stations, cooling stations like it’s part of the new normal when it really shouldn’t be,” she said, pointing to city measures in response to hotter temperatures.
Kim said the motion will both register opposition to an attempt by the federal government to appease Alberta and draw a line under the fact that B.C. is lagging on tackling the issues around climate change.
Coun. Jeremy Caradonna said the West Coast Oil Pipeline proposed by the Alberta government and to be owned by Trans Mountain Corporation, the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission and Pembina Pipeline Corporation, seems to have flown under the radar due to the ongoing trade dispute with the U.S.
“I think the overwhelming majority of Victorians would not want to see this and would understand the risks to our coastal environment.”
Two members of council — councillors Chris Coleman and Marg Gardiner — voted against the motion.
Coleman said he understands the environmental argument against the pipeline, but the timing is poor for the city to be making such declarations.
He said there are groups in Alberta, which is heading into a referendum this fall about staying in Canada, that will see the motion as the capital city of B.C. pushing a stick into Alberta’s eye.
Gardiner called the motion hypocritical, given the prevalent use of petroleum products in the city, and said it was another example of council spending time and money on issues that are far removed from the workings of the city.
“We’ve got residential tax rates doubling every six years, out-of-control spending, disorder and drugs on our streets, but we’re going to go solve the wildfires in all of the world,” she said.
That prompted Alto to ask her council colleagues to “resist the natural inclination to pontificate in what are clearly campaign issues” over the last few council meetings before the Oct. 17 election.
Alto also moved to temper some of the language in Kim’s original motion by removing the phrase: “But amid a summer of climate disasters, the government of Canada is lighting a match to one of the world’s largest carbon bombs.”
Alto said the hyperbolic language undermined the credibility of the statement.
The statement will now say instead that as Victorians watch wildfires threaten communities across Canada, they worry about their own safety from future climate disasters, which are caused by climate breakdown accelerated by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, so the “only responsible course of action” is to transition away from fossil fuels as a source of energy.
It calls the proposed West Coast Oil Pipeline a failure of climate leadership. “It consigns Victorians, our friends and family across the continent, and future generations to choking wildfire smoke and floods from atmospheric rivers.”