KINDER MORGAN: Scheer's motion challenged

[Oscar]

Comox Valley chapter challenges Scheer's Kinder Morgan motion ahead of vote next week

[ https://canadians.org/blog/comox-valley ... -next-week ]

June 1, 2017 - 7:09 am

(PHOTO: Chapter activist Alice de Wolff)

The Council of Canadians Comox Valley chapter has countered Conservative leader Andrew Scheer's pro-Kinder Morgan pipeline motion in advance of an upcoming vote in the House of Commons.

NDP MP Kennedy Stewart explains, "Newly elected Conservative leader Andrew Sheer [has] announced he will force the House of Commons to vote on whether or not to support the Kinder Morgan pipeline. This will be the first time a formal vote has been held on this issue. The motion will be debated [on] Thursday June 1, with a vote to follow next week. NDP leader Tom Mulcair will outline why we will vote against this motion."

The text of the Conservative motion is as follows:
"May 30, 2017 - Mr. Scheer (Regina-Qu'Appelle) - That the House agree that the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project: (a) has social license to proceed; (b) is critical to the Canadian economy and the creation of thousands of jobs; (c) is safe and environmentally sound, as recognized and accepted by the National Energy Board; (d) is under federal jurisdiction with respect to approval and regulation; and (e) should be constructed with the continued support of the federal government, as demonstrated by the Prime Minister personally announcing the approval of the project."

Chapter activist Alice de Wolff has written Scheer in response to this motion.

She says, "I oppose the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Extension and your motion to support it. Your claim that the project has the social license to proceed is in direct contradiction to long-standing, strong opposition in British Columbia."

She highlights, "It is obviously contrived to undermine the likelihood that an elected government in British Columbia will also oppose the project. It completely ignores the challenges by First Nations who have not given their free and informed consent to the use of their lands. Claims of the safety of these projects fly in the face of the experience of the people on the coast and the waters that have been contaminated by spills."

And de Wolff concludes, "Your notion that our national economy can only survive with the creation of jobs that are dependent on the notoriously fickle and environmentally damaging oil and gas industry is dangerously outdated. It flies in the face of the urgent need to support the growth of a healthy economy that is NOT dependent on this industry. Your motion and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline do NOT have my consent."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his government's approval of the 890,000 barrel per day tar sands pipeline in November 2016.

The Council of Canadians has been opposing the Kinder Morgan pipeline since August 2011. Earlier this week we delivered 8,000 petitions to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board office in Toronto calling on the pension fund not to invest in the pipeline (shares in the company went on sale this past Tuesday).

We call for a 100 per cent clean energy economy by 2050. The life span of the Trans Mountain pipeline could exceed that by decades.

#StopKM

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Brent Patterson's blog
Political Director of the Council of Canadians
[ https://canadians.org/blogs/brent-patterson ]