B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver is urging the province to undertake its own made-in-B.C. environmental assessment of the Trans Mountain pipeline.
“It is clear that B.C. cannot rely on the federal government to protect our environment from the risks of this project,” said Weaver in a news release.
“The Federal Court of Appeal has ruled that there were ‘successive, unacceptable deficiencies’ in the NEB (National Energy Board) report. As a result, they found that the NEB’s report and recommendations could not be relied upon to make a decision in the public interest. Yet the federal government insists that they will get this pipeline built. This rhetoric shows that they have already determined the outcome, and that they are in a rush to build this pipeline.”
Weaver said that the previous BC Liberal provincial government signed an equivalency agreement with the NEB in 2010, which meant that B.C. relied upon the NEB report in issuing its environmental certificate for the Trans Mountain expansion.
“B.C. needs to be in control of our own environmental review process, to make sure it is objective and evidence-based,” said Weaver. “The provincial government should terminate the equivalency agreement signed by the previous administration. Now is the time to use the tools at our disposal to ensure our environment is protected from the risks of an oil spill.”
