The province of B.C. might be getting ready to climb down from its comfortable, non-committal perch above the pipeline fray and take a position on the topic, Jane Fonda and Elizabeth May be damned.
Environment Minister Mary Polak discussed plans Monday to bring in a new "world-leading" regime for dealing with land-based oil spills. After two years of talking and examining options, Polak committed to legislation next spring that will create a new outfit with capability to handle spills on land of any hazardous substance, from any source, all of it funded by industry.
If it's set up as advertised, it would also accomplish something else -- removal of one of the five conditions Premier Christy Clark has been using for three years to avoid taking a stand on the inflammatory subject of piping Alberta bitumen across B.C. for shipment along the coast.
The other four are: a world-leading marine response, First Nations buy-in, a fair share of revenue to B.C. for the risks assumed and all the required government environmental approvals. There are varying degrees of progress on some of those issues.
The pipeline issue has been moving on two tracks in opposite directions. Public sentiment -- at least the loudly expressed kind -- seems to be moving against the general concept, at least in metro Vancouver.
But in much quieter fashion, a lot of scientific and technical work has been undertaken with a view to making a pipeline happen. Wednesday is the first anniversary of the federal approval of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal from Alberta to Kitimat.
It was granted with more than 200 conditions attached. Meeting those conditions has occupied the proponent since then. The new spill regime Polak has in mind would go a long way to meeting more of them.
It is based on a new provincially certified, industry-funded Preparedness and Response Organization, which would stand ready to respond to any spill, anywhere on land. B.C. would work with industry on new funding options to enhance the provincial emergency program, under new laws and regulatory requirements.
Spills in saltwater are the responsibility of the federal government, which has also been laying plans to beef up response capabilities. Polak said the new B.C. regime would complement federal marine responses.
"Should it be necessary to support a federal marine response, the new regime will help with response co-ordination and minimize potential impacts to shorelines without delay," said the B.C. Environment Ministry.
Two governments working fluidly together to minimize impacts would be an entirely novel arrangement, given the experience of the Marathassa spill in English Bay two months ago. The grain ship leaked bunker fuel, and the laggard coast-guard response prompted B.C. to take some shots at the federal government's performance. Clark said it was "totally unacceptable."
The standard polluter-pay principle would be doubly observed in Polak's plan. Not only would spillers pay for any cleanups, companies moving hazardous products would fund the organization's operations regardless of spills. And the organization could take over cleanup and containment if the spiller's response were failing. It's expected to be legislated by next spring and in place by 2017.
That would cut the number of conditions down to four. A comparable upgrade of marine-response capabilities by Ottawa would cut them to three. B.C. and Alberta clashed over the "fair share" for B.C., but that issue went dark with the political changes in Alberta. Shipping crude offshore vastly increases its value, to the point where there's enough money to be made that carving another piece of the pie for B.C. isn't an insurmountable problem.
That leaves two conditions: the required environmental approvals and recognition of aboriginal rights, combined with creation of opportunities for First Nations.
If the Northern Gateway pipeline won approval, it's not hard to picture the much-easier twinning of the Kinder Morgan line to Burnaby winning all the technical approvals.
That leaves the First Nations approval -- as with all major projects -- as the outstanding condition. That is why First Nations opportunities in the burgeoning field of spill preparation and recovery were mentioned eight times in Polak's announcement.
