Dear Editor:
Re: Ottawa Overhauls Environment Act, NEB, Feb. 9 news story.
The Liberals have admitted that the Kinder Morgan decision was based on a flawed National Energy Board process. They passed the KM pipeline despite environmental hazards and public safety concerns, and other factors that weren’t considered but will be in the future. (In a Feb. 8 news conference to announce the new bill, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna accused her Liberal government’s Conservative predecessors of having “gutted” the environmental assessment process, saying “Approvals were based on politics, rather than robust science.”)
The decision boiled down to pressure from Alberta, which refuses to diversify its economy and to enter into the green alternative energy; and, perhaps the pressure from oil lobbyists. To say that it was that “we need jobs” conflicts with the argument that the green technology would provide as many jobs and combat the carbon issue also.
B.C. is expected to accept an admittedly flawed process and not to attempt to protect its environment. And why wasn’t Energy East considered in the “national interest?” Because it wasn’t – it was in the interest of big oil and banks.
Byron Bona
Deep Cove
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