Rachel Notley makes the Great Canadian Pro-Pipeline Road Trip

‘Can’t spend the next 10 years bickering over this,’ but not everyone buys her national-interest pitch

By Tracy Johnson, CBC News

After speeches in Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa, Canada Premier Rachel Notley’s pro-pipeline trip arrived in Vancouver at a particularly fraught moment.

Trans Mountain pipeline construction is on pause while Kinder Morgan Canada and the City of Burnaby are locked in dispute over when the city will issue the required permits. Kinder Morgan says Burnaby is stalling, Burnaby said it’s acting in good faith.

The federal government intervened in the fight Wednesday, suggesting the National Energy Board strike a panel that will deal with provincial and municipal disputes around the pipeline expansion, which in turn annoyed B.C.’s NDP government

That was the atmosphere that Notley, federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr and Kinder Morgan Canada’s chief executive Ian Anderson faced Thursday morning as they spoke at an energy conference put on by the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, with the very clear intent of changing some minds on the project.

Pitching the national interest

It was a friendly crowd of around 350, with Canada well represented. There were LNG proponents and other energy players, along with a sizable contingent from B.C.’s trade unions.

It was mostly an audience with a stake in the pipeline or in the resource industry in general, with the exception of the two protestors who bought a ticket and suited up to make their opposition known before being escorted from the room.

The crowd may have been largely in favour of the pipeline expansion, but they still got an earful.

Notley noted the close ties between the two provinces before pointing out that the direct flight from Kamloops to Fort McMurray was not for vacation travel, but for fly-in workers from B.C. Notley cited the 44,000 B.C. residents who pay tax in the province on income that they earn in Canada.

full story at http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/notley-carr-trans-mountain-1.4426531

Categorised in: Canadian News