British Columbians are waiting patiently before taking a hardline stance in favour of or against Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.
According to a new Angus Reid poll and CBC News, 59 per cent of the province opposes the pipeline, but almost half of that number (24 per cent) said they could change their minds.
Angus Reid surveyed 804 adults from the province. It also said hard-line opponents outnumber hard-line supporters five-to-one, while 51 per cent are waiting for more economic and environmental guarantees and updates before their fully make up their mind.
Half of those polled also oppose Kinder Morgan’s possible expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline, which runs from Edmonton, under Burnaby and out Vancouver. The Kinder Morgan expansion would increase the pipeline’s flow from 300,000 barrels of oil a day to 750,000.
In 2007, a neighbourhood in Burnaby’s Inlet Drive was left with oil spills after a Kinder Morgan pipe was punctured by work crews.
The Angus Reid poll also indicated that 37 per cent of those surveyed were satisfied with Christy Clark’s stance on the issue, while 47 per cent are dissatisfied.
Clark has been strong in her stance that B.C. must receive more of the economic benefit from the Northern Gateway pipeline if it is to allow the project to go through, and has come up against Alberta premier Alison Redford in the dispute.
In a poll on CBC’s Community Blog last week, 53.8 per cent of respondents sided with Clark, while 33.64 per cent backed Redford.
“Alberta gets a large bulk of the benefits, takes very little of the risk,” Clark said in July. “B.C. takes most of the risk and we get very few of the benefits.”
“We will not share royalties and I see nothing else proposed and would not be prepared to consider anything else at this time,” Redford responded.
——————–
(Guest editor of the Cloverdale Reporter)
