What is all the huff about? The Canada east pipeline project at least for the time being. That has caused a problem for Alberta, because at the moment for all practical reasons Alberta is landlocked to get its bitumen out to the European Market.
While the Canada East pipeline project was a lost, the focus is on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion Project, which when completed would allow bitumen to reach the European Markets.
In anticipation of protests against the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, Kinder Morgan has successfully attained an injunction to prevent protestors to protest with a certain distance of its gates and operation. Alberta in a Trumpian style has threatened BC that if they also prevent the pipeline from crossing their border, Alberta will place trade sanctions against British Columbia (BC). That’s real Canadian like eh! Province pitted against province.
On Friday, March 23, 2018, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart along with a hundred others arrested and placed into custody for breaching a court-imposed protest-free zone.
At this time it is not known if at this time if the charges of civil contempt have been withdrawn against May and Stewart.
André Faust: I’m here with Mark D’Arcy of the Council of Canadians. In your press release, you made reference to secrecy in relationship to the pipeline. In what context do you mean that?
Mark D’Arcy: Energy will be the largest pipeline project ever constructed here in North America. There is a two-year review process, it been held up because a controversy and the original National Energy Board Panel actually was forced to resign and so this whole project has been delayed. One obstacle after another being put off by the government’s unwillingness to be public with the law of risks associated with the tar sands and the bitumen pipeline.
So here in New Brunswick, we had no public meetings only one by the city of Edmunston because of their watershed, drinking water watershed being traversed by the proposed pipeline route that is it!
No other public meetings in the province whatsoever over the last three years four years this project review, and why is that. The waterways you see in behind men the St. John River, the Nashwaak River, multiple crossings by this long pipeline route over the tributaries leading into these rivers system.
Tar sand bitumen is very different from conventional oil it will actually form tar balls and then those sink to the bottom and aggressively stick to the sentiment. Very, very difficult to get the lion’s share 20 to 30 percent of the bitumen will stick to these waterways after a major spill as seen by the North Saskatchewan River as seen last year as well as the Kalamazoo River in Michigan back in 2010.
A lot of these risks of the tar sand bitumen pipeline the government and its proponents, TransCanada and Irving do not want the public to know about them.
The watershed there is catastrophic long-term damage to the waterways and acutely the communities along the pipeline route there is a severe acute health risk to be exposed to a tar sand bitumen pipeline spill.
There would have to be early warning air raid sirens installed in the communities along the waterways where a potential spill would enter. People would have to be evacuated immediately because of the very neural toxic chemicals that are used to dilute the tar sands bitumen.
This is not something you fool around with and unfortunately there are has been no real math provided, no community notification along the pipeline route here in New Brunswick, and you when you look at the accumulative effect of all of that, people have been left in the dark. So there is complete secrecy by TransCanada, by Irving, by the lobbyist which includes the government of New Brunswick and the Government of Canada, and they don’t want the community to know one; the route and two; the extreme risk that tar sands bitumen pipe line will put their watershed at.
The Left Eye 