It is not the pipeline that is the problem. Pipelines are the safest way to transport oil and oil related products. The problems are where the bitumen oil is being delivered. Tankers, especially in close shoreline and island dotted passageways are the first problem.
Vancouver harbour experienced an intentional oil spill lately (not from an oil tanker). Response time was not effective enough to stop local beaches from being soiled. Vancouver city spent $1.5 million cleaning up. Federal response was to limit their liability to 27 per cent.
The second problem is the product. Bitumen will just sink to the ocean floor killing everything and, like the Exxon Valdez spill, will never be cleaned up properly or completely.
As newspaper mogul Mr. Black suggested, the processing plants should be built here. With Canada’s own plants built in northern Alberta, the processing of oil and the disposing of waist in the appropriate ways would save Earth from experiencing more third-world waist disposal.
If jobs are your platform, then build our own refineries here. Canadian oil to Canadian products for Canadians.
Hugh McDonald
Okanagan Falls
