Communities Protecting Our Coast is hoping to give people an in-depth understanding of pipeline and tanker traffic issues with a film screening next week.
Sheri Plummer of Communities Protecting Our Coast (CPOC) said the group competed with a group in Nanaimo to get a screening of Directly Affected: Pipeline Under Pressure in Qualicum Beach, which is one of three stops on Vancouver Island for the film’s screening tour.
Directly Affected will be showing at the Qualicum Beach Civic Centre (747 Jones St.) May 10 at 7 p.m. There will be a question-and-answer period with filmmakers Zack Embree and Devyn Brugge, and marine transportation expert Dr. Richard Wiefelspuett will be speaking on the topic of social license for the marine shipping sector. The event is hosted by CPOC, along with the Dogwood Initiative.
“Personally, I would love to see more people persuaded to take a stand against (the pipeline), but we’re trying to come at it at a point of view of come and see it and understand more in-depth what some of the issues are related to the residents in Burnaby and Vancouver; related to the tanker issue,” Plummer said. “We’re called Communities Protecting Our Coast; the ocean out there, the Salish Sea, is ours.”
Directly Affected, according to its website, “weaves together the stories of people impacted by the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project, the broken National Energy Board review process used to approve the pipeline, Canada’s commitment at the Paris Climate Talks and the innovators working towards the low-carbon economy.”
The film’s Facebook page says Embree “set out on a mission” five years ago to understand the impacts of the Kinder Morgan pipeline on local communities and to give a voice back to those who had been ignored by the NEB process.
Embree interviewed the residents affected by the 2007 inlet drive spill, covered protests on Burnaby Mountain and journeyed to First Nations communities to witness the impacts of fossil fuel extraction.
Plummer said the pipeline and tanker traffic “affects us every day in all ways.”
