Re: First Nations lobbying for lift on tanker ban off B.C.
Posted: May 31st, 2019, 2:57 pm
Senator Paula Simons responds to voting against C-48 at Senate Transport Committee.
C-48 - My Very Tough Call
https://www.facebook.com/notes/paula-si ... 138539465/
But C-48 isn’t a good bill. It’s lazy. It’s divisive. And it won’t give the northern B.C. coast the environmental protection is needs right now.
<snip>
The government could have used a provision under the United Nations Convention on the International Law of the Sea and the International Maritime Organization to have these unique waters declared “particularly sensitive sea area” - a special protection enjoyed by places such as the Galapagos Islands, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Canary Islands, which protects a designated area from pollution and from certain kinds of maritime traffic. But the government didn’t go that route.
Instead, it tried a work around: C-48 doesn’t stop tankers from entering those waters. It simply stops them from picking up crude oil, bitumen, and other persistent oils, as a cargo.
<snip>
In 2014, for example, the Simushir, a Russian cargo ship carrying hundreds of tonnes of bunker oil and diesel fuel, lost power in heavy seas; adrift, it nearly crashed on Haida Gwaii; it took far too long for rescuers to arrive. Though a disaster was averted, the incident has not served as a wake-up call. There is still no local, rapid-response capacity, despite all the cruise ships, cargo ships, fuel ships etc. that are routinely in the water - most of which are far more vulnerable to a hull breach than a modern double-hulled supertanker.
<snip>
C-48 does nothing to protect this dramatic, remarkable coastline from the threats it faces right now. That’s what I mean when I call it lazy, and symbolic. It protected the area from the hypothetical threat of a future pipeline, while doing nothing to safeguard the region from very real dangers in the here and now.
<snip>
It is not grounded in science or evidence. It does not protect our country’s extraordinary northwest coast from very real and present dangers. And it doesn’t actually ban oil tankers from the area.
C-48 - My Very Tough Call
https://www.facebook.com/notes/paula-si ... 138539465/
But C-48 isn’t a good bill. It’s lazy. It’s divisive. And it won’t give the northern B.C. coast the environmental protection is needs right now.
<snip>
The government could have used a provision under the United Nations Convention on the International Law of the Sea and the International Maritime Organization to have these unique waters declared “particularly sensitive sea area” - a special protection enjoyed by places such as the Galapagos Islands, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Canary Islands, which protects a designated area from pollution and from certain kinds of maritime traffic. But the government didn’t go that route.
Instead, it tried a work around: C-48 doesn’t stop tankers from entering those waters. It simply stops them from picking up crude oil, bitumen, and other persistent oils, as a cargo.
<snip>
In 2014, for example, the Simushir, a Russian cargo ship carrying hundreds of tonnes of bunker oil and diesel fuel, lost power in heavy seas; adrift, it nearly crashed on Haida Gwaii; it took far too long for rescuers to arrive. Though a disaster was averted, the incident has not served as a wake-up call. There is still no local, rapid-response capacity, despite all the cruise ships, cargo ships, fuel ships etc. that are routinely in the water - most of which are far more vulnerable to a hull breach than a modern double-hulled supertanker.
<snip>
C-48 does nothing to protect this dramatic, remarkable coastline from the threats it faces right now. That’s what I mean when I call it lazy, and symbolic. It protected the area from the hypothetical threat of a future pipeline, while doing nothing to safeguard the region from very real dangers in the here and now.
<snip>
It is not grounded in science or evidence. It does not protect our country’s extraordinary northwest coast from very real and present dangers. And it doesn’t actually ban oil tankers from the area.