Here's what people are saying today about proposals to bring more oil pipelines and supertankers to British Columbia's coast

May 18th 2012

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Here's what people are saying today about proposals to bring more oil pipelines and supertankers to British Columbia's coast

May 17th 2012

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Here's what people are saying today about proposals to bring more oil pipelines and supertankers to British Columbia's coast

May 16th 2012

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Here's what people are saying today about proposals to bring more oil pipelines and supertankers to British Columbia's coast

May 15th 2012

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May 11th 2012

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May 14th 2012

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Two ravens crested the longhouse and caused me to look into the cold rain. They cawed almost mournfully as they alighted on the roof of the church. Hours before, three black fish had appeared out of a foggy mist to cross the bow of the boat. We had also seen bald eagles pause from eulachon hunting earlier on the Skeena River, to watch us steam by on our way to Hartley Bay. The arrival of the ravens had completed an homage to an honored triumvirate.

The appearance of the three reflected the clans of the Gitga’at nation — blackfish, eagle and raven.  This was appropriate for the occasion. A great Tsimshian Chief had left us.  It was March 2004.

Smoogit Wahmoodmx, Johnny Clifton, Blackfish Chief of the Gitga’at — my chief — died only hours after seeing Joe Morita (the owner of King Pacific Lodge) and me.  Johnny had taken time to show me the traditional Gitga’at territory that surrounds King Pacific Lodge.  From the ancient fish trap in Cameron Bay to some of the stands of medicinal trees in secret valleys on Princess Royal Island, Johnny unearthed the stories of the land for me and made it live.  What we think of as “wilderness” is often a product of careful, long-term stewardship of the land and its resources.

He had asked me to help in any way I could to protect the land and the culture of Gitga'at Nation.  I had no idea what a tall order that would be.  It was easy to keep such a promise in the heady days right after the establishment of the Great Bear Rainforest, a time when so many disparate parties came together in a moment of clarity to establish what the World Wildlife Fund would later award its Gift to the Earth prize to.

It the last few years, protecting Wahmoodmx's world has become far more fraught with uncertainty.  The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker project seeks to ship 525,000 barrels a day of heavy crude oil on more than 200 supertankers.  These ships are twice the size of the Exxon Valdez and they will attempt to ply waters half as narrow as Prince William Sound.  Even in the interval before a catastrophic oil spill, the land and sea of the Great Bear will change.  Commercial and subsistence fishing may be stopped all together. Tourism would be finished.  I cannot envision the juxtaposition of remote wilderness tourism and oil tankers.  And though I will battle to keep my business viable, I recognize that in the greater scheme of things, this loss would pale in comparison to the destruction of Gitga'at culture.

The enduring lesson Wahmoodmx left me with is that we are all part of that stewardship.  Under his guidance, King Pacific Lodge signed the first-ever protocol between a First Nation and a tourism operator in British Columbia.  In this unique agreement, King Pacific has pledged to act as a good steward of the land.  We have also become members of the Hartley Bay community and take our role as individual and corporate citizens very seriously.

From this perspective, it is clear we must change the calculus. The current metrics invariably cast culture, environment and nature as boxes that can be checked off as impediments which are dealt with as so-called public reviews move inexorably to the approval of corporate plans.  We seem entranced by a wayward pedagogy that informs the zeitgeist with foolish choices like progress over environment, market forces over ancient cultures and, perhaps the most insidious false equation, profits over balance, over respect, over history, over happiness, over  humanity itself.

Our blithe acceptance of these "truths" forces a cruel portrait of our times. Here intact First Nations' cultures must justify their existence somewhere in the language of the corporate balance sheet.  And along with them, we are all asked to calculate how many trees, streams, fish, bears, whales and cultures are we willing to sacrifice to accommodate a private economic plan.

Put simply:  this cannot be right.

What if the equation was flipped?  What if the question was: given that we will honor ancient cultures and the legacy of Wahmoodmx and protect the nature and environment of his territory, what are the possible activities allowed to enrich our material well-being?  What then would our answer be?

All small ways of bringing attention to the plight of the Great Bear are important.  Protecting the area will be about many of us establishing our own ties to it.  Cooking for a Cause on May 11 at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery in Richmond is a celebration of Gitga’at Culture and the Great Bear Rainforest, an area called the “Wildest Place in North America” by National Geographic Magazine.

The reception will feature an intimate evening of entertainment, including a solo acoustic performance by Matthew Good, and a culinary adventure of wine and cuisine, featuring ingredients from the Great Bear Rainforest and prepared by renowned chefs. Our hope is that by introducing you to this part of the world and the people that call it home, you too will understand why it is so important that we do everything possible to protect it.

I would like to give special thanks to the Gitga’at Nation for all that they have done and continue to do. In an area the world wishes to call the Great Bear, we know there has always been — and always will be — an even greater people. Our hope is that attendees will leave Cooking for a Cause on Friday night with a deeper understanding of what is really at stake and a desire to join the fight to protect our coasts — Wahmoodmx's coast — and everything that means.

In March, dozens of people got to spend some time underwater for the first time thanks to a 24-hour Scuba relay hosted by the UVic Scuba Club. Better yet, the event raised nearly $4,000 for Dogwood’s No Tankers campaign to keep B.C. waters free from the threat of oil supertankers and oil spills.

“Once they have experienced Scuba diving first hand, their concern for the marine environment becomes a passion, which is why supporting the No Tankers campaign was a logical choice for our club members,” explains Tyler Preston, president of the UVic Scuba Club.

The group’s substantial generosity is testament to the depth of feelings on campus about the urgency of the threat oil tankers pose to the future health and prosperity of B.C. Participants collected pledges for their time underwater, which was spent taking part in buoyancy challenges, pool poker, a dance party and even underwater movies. Instructors with the club volunteered their time and skills to offer “pay-what-you-can” introductory scuba classes.

The Scuba Club partnered with the Ocean Students Society, which offered a series of seminars and films highlighting ocean research being undertaken at University of Victoria and the serious environmental challenges facing our oceans. The event combined action, awareness and fun all directed towards making positive change.

Preston, who studies environmental psychology, knows the importance of experience in shaping our views. “I’m a firm believer that getting people underwater helps them to take care of the ocean,” he says. Divers have a visceral fear of the impact that even a “minor” spill would have and for these young divers their ocean experience propels them to take a stand against oil tankers.

Dogwood Initiative is grateful for the support we receive from campuses across B.C. and for the very special efforts made by the divers of the UVic Scuba Club.

UVic Scuba Club has prepared this video celebrating the 24-hour Relay.

Remember it was Prime Minister Trudeau’s despised National Energy Program that spurred “western alienation,” “The West wants in” and ultimately the creation of Harpers’ Reform party.

The seminal provincial/federal tensions of the 1980s National Energy Program fable are worth noting: An aggressive prime minister responds to perceived (but debatable) national interest by imposing an unwanted national energy program on an unwilling province over the province’s strenuous objection. Political impacts reverberate for decades.

It’s amazing to watch Harper making the same mistakes as his historic antagonist. Over the last few months we’ve seen Harper and his appointed minister bully their way into a supposedly independent process, attack and attempt to demonize any opponents (including the 4,000 concerned Canadians who signed up for the public hearings on Enbridge’s proposal), then undermine the consultation with affected First Nations by asserting his government would “justify infringement.” Just for good measure, then Harper flew off to communist China with Enbridge’s CEO in tow to negotiate energy deals and give press conferences, and he is now vowing to cut the Enbridge Northern Gateway hearings mid-way through the process.

Talk about heavyhanded! What ever happened to Harper, the champion of decentralized federalism? What happened to Harper’s promise that Ottawa would listen to the provinces? What happened to the new way of doing politics that spurred the Reform party? I guess they quickly disappear when one gets hooked on becoming an energy superpower.

The questions now are:

1. Is Harper willing to try to force an unwanted oil tanker and pipeline project on an unwilling British Columbia?
2. Will this oil tanker and pipeline project become Harper’s re-enactment of Trudeau’s vilified National Energy Program?

Fortunately for British Columbians, despite Harper’s majority he can’t just snap his fingers and make the pipeline happen. There are many avenues that concerned British Columbians, especially First Nations, can take to kibosh Harper’s plans.

The fight will be tough, and protracted. Harper and his Big Oil buddies will play dirty — they’ve already started — but the collective efforts of British Columbians acting together strategically are a force that can’t be overcome.

British Columbians have beat back unwanted oil tanker and pipeline proposals about every decade since the 1970s. The groundswell in opposition indicates Harper is going to have to relearn the National Energy Program lesson the hard way.

Dogwood staffer Charles Campbell was messing around with the P.A. system. Bill Gannon and Rod Marining –  both veterans of the oil supertanker battles from the ’70s – had arrived and were mingling at the front. Bill had his ukulele and copies of his song “BC Waters,” which the Gettin’ Higher Choir was going to help us sing to kick things off.

Full disclosure: I don’t sing so I made sure to hang at the back.

The most powerful moment of that sunny afternoon, for me, was when former Shell Oil advisor Anita Burke took to the microphone. She told us of the moment when her and a small crew of first-responders stepped off a helicopter on a beach oiled by the Exxon Valdez spill.

Immediately, she said, they had to run into the forest and bend over sick because of the smell. “I didn’t know how to fix it,” she said. “I had all the technology in the world, Exxon was going to give us a billion dollars, and we didn’t know how to fix it.”

That’s when it really hit home for me what we were up against. At the end of the day an accident could happen, like they sometimes do and the veil of corporate promises would lift to reveal the reality of oil spills: shovels, buckets and people getting sick.

I think most British Columbians understand rightly, in their gut, the folly of allowing crude oil tankers on our coast.

They understood it back in the ‘70s and they understand it now. B.C.’s coast, its magic and its bounty has imprinted itself onto our collective provincial and national identity.

That deep-seated, gut instinct to protect our coastal waters is one of the reasons the No Tankers petition has grown from that sunny launch on the legislature steps through two main iterations to include over 100,000 signatories nation-wide.

The No Tankers petition is not some stale stack of paper. Yes, we do submit them (thanks to MPs Denise Savoie and Joyce Murray for presenting our first petition to the House of Commons!), however the power of the petition does not lie in it's official submission. Signing it is a springboard.

It’s a petition’s ability to create an active and engaged network that’s truly powerful. In Dogwood Initiative’s case, those who sign the No Tankers petition are given the opportunity to participate in or organize their own local actions. These additional actions then combine to produce an overall impact that far exceeds that one initial signature.

For example, the weight of so many connected and coordinated people helped convince the federal NDP, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois to work together one exciting December morning to pass a motion seeking to block oil tankers off our north coast. 

And as this sentence is being written, thousands of petition signatories in B.C. are contacting their own local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) to push for the B.C. government to flex some muscle over oil tanker plans for our coast.

A lot has happened since I stood on those legislature steps and pretended to sing along. We’ve had successes and failures, moments of joy and moments of dread, but overall I can tell you that this big, diverse, collective network of people is slowly becoming unstoppable.

Victory is creeping up on us. You can help it find us that much quicker by sharing the petition with everyone you know.

May 9th 2012

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May 2nd 2012

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April 25th 2012

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April 24th 2012

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Louis, a listener from Chilliwack who works in the pipeline industry said he was firmly opposed to Kinder Morgan’s expansion.

We also hosted a telephone townhall in Cilliwack-Hope last Tuesday. I was reminded how diverse the opposition to the Enbridge and Kinder Morgan proposals is everywhere in B.C. by the kinds of questions and comments we received from speakers during the hour-long discussion.

4752 people opted into the townhall with guest panelists Rafe Mair, former ICBC CEO Robyn Allan, and Fraser Valley advocate John Vissers.

Louis, a listener from Chilliwack who works in the pipeline industry said he was firmly opposed to Kinder Morgan’s expansion. So did Steve from Hope, who works in the oil fields and Ed, who is three houses down from Kinder Morgan’s existing pipeline and a fly fisherman.

That opposition to oil tankers extends beyond greenies is not news to most people who live in B.C.

We’ve been doing polling for several years to quantify this political and cultural reality. Most recently, a poll by Justason Market Intelligence found that overall opposition to crude oil supertankers outstrips support 3:1 in B.C. New Democrats oppose the proposal in the highest numbers, but even among B.C. Liberal and B.C. Conservative voters, opposition to tankers exceeds support.

Opposition to oil tankers crosses the political spectrum. But is it a provincial voting issue?

We asked our telephone town hall listeners what they thought. Was oil pipelines and tankers a voting issue for them?
68% of responders said yes.

Who were they going to vote for?
Conservatives 16%
NDP 41%
Liberal 20%
Undecided 22%

Near the end of the telephone townhall we asked listeners if the discussion they’d participated in had changed who they were going to vote for?
35% said yes.

Mike’s formerly preferred BC Liberal candidate, taking the lead from Premier Christy Clark, held the party line during the by-election campaign by pointing to the federal environmental review process instead of confronting the issue of oil pipelines and tankers head-on.

I wonder how long the BC Liberal dodge is going to hold up, particularly with repeated announcements and fiery rhetoric from the federal government that undermine any crumb of credibility these processes have left.

Chilliwack-Hope’s BC Conservative candidate John Martin is probably right in regards to the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion through the Fraser Valley: “I think we have a hell of a fight on our hands. Decidedly this is going to be an issue that dominates this riding for years and years to come. This is serious.”