Hi everybody, Shaun’s away on a much need vacation to parts unknown for the next couple weeks so I’ll be taking over the editorials until either his wanderlust or vacation days run out.
Enbridge Energy Inc. had scheduled another public information meeting to try to sell local Rupertites on the pipeline only to cancel the meetings all together. We at the paper tried to get an explanation for this without success, but really, there is not much doubt about why they canceled, is there?
Enbridge may have reached the point where they are giving up on trying to get north coast residents to buy into their plans to make money for Alberta, while having the North Coast shoulder all the environmental risk.
Now for the heresy. Despite the best efforts of First Nations, residents and our MP Nathan Cullen, the construction of the pipeline is probably inevitable and we may be doing ourselves more harm than good by fighting it altogether, rather than have Enbridge agree to strict conditions while they’re still willing to.
The political winds are at Enbridge’s back and there is little that can be done to change that.
The provincial government has the jurisdiction to stop the pipeline while it remains on land, but, new premier or not, the Liberals support the pipeline and they have a majority. This is something we have no opportunity to change until next year, assuming that Christy Clark decides to keep her promise to call an election before 2013.
The provincial Liberals have even called on the federal Conservatives to vote down a private members bill that would ban the tanker traffic. Since all three opposition parties supported Nathan Cullen’s motion against tanker traffic last year, this bill could potentially pass in the House of Commons. The same could not be said of the Conservative-controlled senate, which has made no apologies for killing bills before.
On top of that, the bill is also only one of over 600 different private members bills to be selected at random to be voted on, all of which will die and have to be reintroduced if an election is called this spring like many people expect; a n election that Stephen Harper is still likely to win if polls are to be believed.