Should Nathan Cullen decide to end his political career, a career as a stand-up comic might be an alternative.
In the first few minutes of a talk in Penticton on Saturday, March 28, the NDP MP for Skeena-Bulkey Valley had a room full of 100 people laughing. But while Cullen’s light style and storytelling kept the audience engaged and entertained, he was serious about communicating his message of opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal.
“He has presented a bill in Ottawa to ban supertankers on our wild west coast,” said Merle Kindred, an organizer for the Dogwood Initiative, which was collecting pledges in opposition to the pipeline at the NDP-sponsored event.
Kindred said they had many pledgers at the meeting, and 17 people took pledge sheets to gather more signatures. The Dogwood Initiative, she explained, is one of the many ways people are finding to empower themselves in this critical year.
She points out that while there won’t be supertankers on Okanagan Lake, valley residents would still be affected should a tanker spill a load of bitumen pumped out to the coast via a new pipeline.
“We are going to pay for it financially, we are going to pay for it environmentally and we are going to pay for it right here in the Okanagan, even though it may not be directly on our territory,” said Kindred.
That part of Cullen’s message was sombre.
“You can take the word clean-up right out of the conversation,” said Cullen. He told the audience that it took some time for him to get an answer to how bitumen reacts in saltwater during the Enbridge hearing, asking the question more than 30 times. Since the answer was that it sinks, he said, it is unlikely that a spill could ever properly be cleaned up in the deep, rough coastal waters.
Cullen told the audience that giving the pipeline proposal federal approval was not only a “deeply flawed decision” but also indicated a deeply flawed process for how Canada conducts business.
With his private members bill, C-628: An act to defend the Pacific Northwest, coming before parliament next Wednesday, Cullen also stressed the power of people working together, talking about the petitions, and pledges that have been gathered to show federal and provincial leaders the extent of opposition to Northern Gateway.
“I think it is very beautiful that when we are gathered together, good things happen,” Cullen said.
