Enbridge pipeline hearings enter final stage

TERRACE (NEWS1130) – It’s the last chance for people who support or oppose the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to have their say.

Beginning Monday,  the panel reviewing the project will begin hearing two weeks of final submissions in Terrace.

First on the list will be Enbridge, the company behind the proposal, followed by Art Sterritt, executive director of Coastal First Nations.

Sterritt says panel members have to reject the proposal, because too many questions have been left unanswered.

“Enbridge has not provided all the answers. The panel doesn’t have the information to make a final recommendation based on the environment or based on national interest. Those are the two main questions the panel is reviewing,” notes Sterritt, who adds that the First Nations began making their own independent environmental assessments of the project eight years ago.

“We went out and studied what the impacts of an oil spill would be and whether or not the technology was out there to clean up a spill.  We determined that there is no technology that can do that.”

And while their research evolved, so did public opinion.

“When we began, opposition to the pipeline was evenly split. But now about 60 per cent are opposed to Northern Gateway,” he stresses, pointing out to a recent Angus Reid poll conducted for the Asia Pacific Foundation.

Coastal First Nations have all along stressed the risks involved in tankers plying BC waters and the devastation a spill would represent for their communities.

But Sterritt says even on a purely economic level the project brings relatively few jobs.

In April, the panel revealed a long list of conditions for the project, should it be approved.

Earlier this month, the provincial government said it could not support the project.

The panel will hand its recommendation over to the federal government at the end of the year.