Unrefined fossil fuels won’t be shipped out of a small Washington State export facility at Cherry Point any time soon, due to a temporary moratorium imposed by the Whatcom County Council.

The moratorium positions Cherry Point as a major roadblock for both U.S. and Canadian companies scrounging for export facilities to ship unprocessed oil, gas and coal to overseas markets.

“We are determined to use whatever legal tools we have to address climate change and to protect good refining jobs,” Barry Buchanan, council chair in Whatcom County, told DeSmog Canada.

Amid dwindling community-level support for fossil fuel infrastructure and after the U.S. lifted a 40-year old oil export ban, Cherry Point has been flooded with export permit applications for LNG, propane, coal and bitumen.

The idea of becoming a new outpost for fossil fuel exports has also taken on new significance in light of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, a global climate treaty.

“Who knows what kind of things are going to be coming at us with all the relaxed environmental regulations,” Buchanan said.

“But we are determined to be the last line of defence. We are going to give it everything we have got.”

Fight Against Fossil Fuel Exports Could Set Legal Precedent

Whatcom County’s fight is poised to become a critical test case for communities fighting fossil fuel export projects at the local level.

The County is conducting a study of existing laws with the aim of developing recommendations “for legal ways the county may choose to limit the negative impacts on public safety, transportation, the economy and environment from crude oil, coal, liquefied petroleum gases and natural gas exports from (Cherry Point) above levels in existence as of March 1 2017,” according to the amendments.

The aim is to enact permanent legislation, Buchanan said.

New exports would be accompanied by increased industrialization at Cherry Point as well as increased emissions — associated impacts unpopular with some local residents.

Proposed fossil fuel export projects for Cherry Point would more than double the carbon emissions of the entire state of Washington, Alex Ramel, a director with StandEarth, an organization campaigning for restrictions on unrefined fossil fuel exports.

Ramel said before the moratorium was put in place, the county council was overwhelmed with export proposals.

“Looking at the horizon, there was so much more coming,” he said.

“Different proposals kept popping up, like in Whack-A-Mole, so Whatcom County put a piece of plywood over the whole board instead of waiting for bad projects to come along.”

This Small U.S. County Just Became a Major Roadblock for Unrefined Fossil Fuel Exports in North America https://t.co/OhNO5FIuZq @dogwoodbc pic.twitter.com/Y9eWUFBG8K

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 6, 2017

Canadian Companies Eye Cherry Point as West Coast Export Alternative

Whatcom County has been keeping a close eye on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which would bring 400 tankers through the Salish Sea annually.

County councillor Carl Weimer told DeSmog Canada the Council reacted with incredulity to the suggestion Kinder Morgan consider Cherry Point as an alternate destination, rather than routing the pipeline through Burnaby where opposition has been very vocal.

B.C.’s new NDP-Green alliance which plans to scrap the Trans Mountain pipeline project appears to be good news, Buchanan said.

But other Canadian proposals include Steelhead LNG’s plan for a Saanich Inlet terminal with a pipeline under the Salish Sea from Sumas to Cherry Point.

The project does not have approval, Weimar said, but other Canadian LNG projects are also on the radar.

Steelhead did not have anyone available to comment on whether the Whatcom County moratorium and plan amendments would change their proposal.

Another Canadian company under Whatcom County scrutiny is Calgary-based Petrogas Energy, which has acquired liquid fuel storage tanks and a wharf at Cherry Point, suitable for export of propane.

Petrogas did not return calls from DeSmog Canada.

Whatcom County Fights for Local Right to Limit Fossil Fuel Exports

But Whatcom County might not have the final say, Weimer said, because local government cannot outlaw the export of unrefined fossil fuels, which falls squarely under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Weimer said public health issues, safety, insurance, bonding, land use and the transportation of fuel are issues that warrant local control. As to whether or not those local concerns can amount to restrictions placed on fossil fuel exports, “we just don’t know yet,” Weimer said.

The seven-member council has voted to spend $150,000 to hire lawyers to look at how much control is in local hands.

The moratorium, first introduced last year, has been extended for six months by the council which amended the plan to limit the number of industrial piers in the area.

The new plans also focus on protection of the Salish Sea and the rights of the Lummi Nation rather than expanding industry.

The plan acknowledges the industrial base of Cherry Point, home to an aluminum smelter and two major oil refineries, but says: “The expansion of these industries needs to be done in ways that do not significantly impact the ecology of the Salish Sea or encourage expanded transhipment of unrefined fossil fuels.”

When the moratorium was introduced, it immediately attracted the attention of industry, especially as the U.S. recently lifted a ban on the export of crude oil, increasing pressure on deep-water ports such as Cherry Point.

The reaction underlined the need for reasoned reflection, according to Weimer.

“We needed to make sure none of the projects were grandfathered while we looked at new policies to address fossil fuel exports,” he said.

However, in an area where well-paying refinery and smelter jobs are prized, it has, at times, been an acrimonious debate with council members being branded as job killers by some of the 200,000 residents.

“I am guessing it split about 50-50 and, unfortunately, it became a jobs versus the environment argument and it’s really not that black and white,” Weimer said.

The reality is that jobs would disappear if Cherry Point becomes a transit terminal for exporting raw materials, Buchanan said.

Last year the county reached the end of a six-year debate over a proposal for the largest coal port ever proposed in North America when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that reviews permits for such projects, ruled that the coal port would infringe on the Lummi Nation’s treaty-protected fishing rights.

The $700-million Gateway Pacific proposal by SSA Marine of Seattle would have seen a trestle and wharf stretching over 122 acres and the Lummi Tribe argued that it would kill the crab fishery and prevent the rebuilding of herring runs.

The terminal would have brought massive ships to the port 487 times a year as coal and other commodities were loaded for Asian ports.

The company withdrew its application this year, but there are now fears that with Premier Christy Clark threatening to ban the export of thermal coal from Vancouver there could be an effort to revive the proposal.

While Whatcom County works on bringing in permanent legislation, Ramel hopes other jurisdictions are watching the ground-breaking work being done in a community with refineries and an industrial base

“This is a big win for the climate,” he said. “And one of the most important things we can do is fight climate change.”

Image: Cherry Point. Photo: NOAA

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This article originally appeared on The Tyee.

There are places one can sit and consider the past and future with equal clarity. On this October day, Harold Steves, 79, an outspoken environmentalist and Richmond city councillor, looks from the riverbank at the end of Richmond’s Rice Mill Road.

Directly in front of him is the Fraser River, and directly below his feet lies Highway 99’s George Massey Tunnel. Given a $22-million seismic upgrade a decade ago, it was said by then-B.C. transportation minister Kevin Falcon that the tunnel was safe and a future twinning would eliminate the twice-daily commuter bottleneck.

But if today’s B.C. government has its way, work will start late this year on a massive $3.5-billion bridge, financed through a Public-Private Partnership (P3), to be completed by 2022.

Which means a stiff toll to pay off private creditors in the years ahead. Which will also mean that the perfectly safe, perfectly good tunnel will be removed.

Which could then allow that section of the riverbed to be dredged three to six metres deeper. Which will jeopardize migrating Fraser River salmon. But which will also provide sufficient draft for 300-metre ships to load coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG) at expanded riverside facilities in Delta, Surrey and Richmond. Which will encroach on adjacent Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) farmland.

And which — given the incredibly explosive potential of LNG — will put tens of thousands of riverside residents at risk of becoming “human kebobs,” says Eoin Finn, a well-known LNG opponent who has been researching the industry for three years.

Steves peers up past a riverside cottonwood, imagining a humungous bridge directly overhead, and says to me: “There are so many thing wrong with it, it boggles the mind. It’s not just a threat to the Metro Vancouver Regional Plan. Or to the salmon. Or to ALR farmland. Or to local people.”

“Despite what Christy Clark says, the reason for the bridge has little to do with removing congestion,” Steves says. “A twinned tunnel would solve that. But Port Metro Vancouver doesn’t want a twinned tunnel. It doesn’t want any tunnels. It’s not about congestion. It’s about ships. The bridge has got everything to do with Port Metro Vancouver’s plans to industrialize the Fraser.”

“The bridge has got everything to do with @PortMetroVan’s plans to industrialize the Fraser.” https://t.co/N2AvLRMavx #bcpoli #bcelxn17 #YVR pic.twitter.com/leThGDYk3u

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 24, 2017

A Sudden Change in the Plan

I’m holding an emailed 11-point “Rationale” from the transportation ministry communications office dated Nov. 8, 2016, setting out the reasons for a new bridge over the Fraser River. (Despite repeated requests, neither Transportation Minister Todd Stone nor Port Metro Vancouver would be interviewed about the bridge plan.)

The statement is full of platitudes and exaggerations about the urgent need to eliminate the Massey Tunnel’s traffic snarls and purported seismic deficiencies. And it is clearly meant to gain support from frustrated commuters for an expensive highway bridge. There is not one word about tolls. Not one word about Port Metro Vancouver’s desire for Massey Tunnel removal and subsequent dredging so bigger ships can pass upriver. Not one word about the environmental consequences of this.

The bulleted 2016 list contains, in fact, this Orwellian rationalization for rejecting the widely supported and relatively inexpensive 2006 plan to twin the tunnel: “Twinning the tunnel was not an endorsement of a new tunnel, but rather an acknowledgement of the need to increase the capacity of this vital crossing.”

So “twinning the tunnel” has come to mean, in BC Liberal newspeak, building a 10-lane, three-kilometre-long, $3.5-billion toll bridge — almost seven times more than the 2006 estimate for twinning the tunnel and improving Hwy 99, according to a Vancouver Sun report at the time.

The machinations that led to this shift of provincial policy would not have been known if a coalition of environmental activists, calling themselves Fraser Voices, hadn’t begun seeking information about secret B.C. government communications, beginning in 2012, between Port Metro Vancouver, the Surrey Fraser Docks and their powerful shipping allies intent on opening up the river to huge Panamax vessels and the Fraser shoreline to industrial expansion.

But when the environmental group first asked for Freedom of Information access to government emails about how the twinned tunnels abruptly became the big toll bridge, researchers were told there weren’t any. They didn’t exist.

Among the Fraser Voice’s activists is Doug Massey, who at 83 can still get mad. “When I first heard the tunnel was going to be removed,” he says, “it got my Irish up.” After all, it was his father, George Massey, who spent years as a Delta MLA pushing for the crossing that now bears his name.

And Doug Massey knew that after the seismic upgrades were completed in 2006 the tunnel was in excellent shape. In fact, the 57-year-old tunnel is identical in construction to one built under Holland’s Maas River 74 years ago, and said to be good for 50 more years.

So, he wondered, what was really behind the push to replace his father’s tunnel? With help from investigative researcher Susan Jones and Kevin Washbrook of Voters Taking Action Against Climate Change, he began digging, and found that B.C. government emails did exist in the records of recipients like Transport Canada.

Sitting in his crammed home office in Tsawwassen, Massey starts handing me dozens of pages of emails.

The critical one is dated Feb. 2, 2012. The email schedules a meeting in the office of an assistant deputy minister in the province’s transportation ministry. On the invitation list were a senior ministry engineer, the CEO and a manager from Surrey Fraser Dock, and a “bridge engineer” from the company that did the earlier seismic studies on the tunnel. Port Metro Vancouver’s “Container Capacity Improvement Program” was also included.

The subject of the meeting, according to the ADM, was “options and considerations around the George Massey Tunnel and a sustainable navigational channel.”

That was more than seven months before Clark announced the government wanted to replace the tunnel and began public consultations and more than 19 months before she announced the bridge plan.

Shippers certainly supported the bridge option. And by September 2012 Transport Canada was being advised that industry and government stakeholders favoured removal of the tunnel. “This is what members have been telling me,” wrote Ruth Sol of WESTAC, an association of transportation companies, unions and governments, to Transport Canada. “George Massey tunnel needs to be replaced — to increase its capacity and the draft above the tunnel so larger ships can access the facilities on the Fraser River.”

Massey says the emails and reports he and his associates uncovered show Port Metro Vancouver and Surrey Fraser Docks were gathering information on the bridge height and channel depth required to allow LNG tankers and Panamax cargo ships to reach expanded port facilities on the Fraser River long before the provincial government announced the bridge plan.

On Dec. 4, 2012, still more than nine months before Clark announced the plan to replace the tunnel with a bridge, Port Metro Vancouver managers were setting out their goals in an email. Any new crossing should allow 15.5 metres of depth based on expected shipping needs in the next 50 years, and 18.5 metres based on a 100-year life expectancy, the port’s dredging expert noted. The current tunnel is 12 metres deep. PMV also wanted a bridge to be 65 metres above the Fraser, to allow ships to reach expanded port facilities on the Fraser.

Massey notes that the email exchanges reflect the port’s expansion plans. “We need to consider future terminals such as VAFFC, Lehigh, and possible terminal at our Richmond properties,” writes one PMV manager in an email about port plans along the Fraser River. (VAFFC is the planned Vancouver Airport Fuel Facilities Corporation jet fuel terminal and Lehigh refers to Lehigh Hanson’s plans for a bulk terminal.)

And an email from March 2013 makes Port Metro Vancouver’s desire clear: “Option No. 2: Replacing the tunnel with a new bridge in the same location. Not publicly confirmed yet, but this is (Port Metro’s) preference.”

Seven months later, Clark announced a new bridge.

Massey sees the decision as a betrayal of the public interest.

“I’m very upset that they they’re using the excuse the tunnel’s in disrepair. Or seismically dangerous,” he says. “No, it’s full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes! Build the bridge! It won’t be named after my father. I know that. He’d have hated the idea of removing a good tunnel for the bridge. It’s all about industrializing the lower Fraser. With taxpayers and commuters footing the bill.”

‘It’s a Boondoggle’

“I don’t think we’re getting the full picture,” says Claire Trevena, the NDP’s transportation critic. “It’s a boondoggle — with a starting price of $3.5 billion. What’s the rush for doing it? There’s been no cost-benefit study. No environmental study. No explanation about how it’s going to be funded. No consideration that if you build a toll bridge, you don’t want people riding transit. You want them in cars, paying $3.50 tolls.”

Her suspicions are propelled, she explains, by the fact that Kevin Falcon declared in 2006 that with the seismic repair work completed “The tunnel’s good for 50 years.” And he assured commuters that with the planned twinning of the Massey Tunnel and a new fast bus lane, Highway 99’s rush-hour congestion would be a thing of the past.

“The bridge is a big political bauble for Christy Clark. She announced it before the last provincial election. And construction was supposed to start before the 2017 provincial election,” says Trevena. “It makes no sense. Twinning it would cost a fraction of a mammoth new bridge. What are they going to call it? The ‘Christy Clark Bridge’?”

Story update:

The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority — formerly Port Metro Vancouver — issued a statement after this article was published.

It says the province consulted the port on proposed designs because it’s responsible for navigation on the Fraser River and “is required to ensure any overhead or underwater structures do not impede current or future shipping.”

“We provided information and data on vessels that currently or may use the river in the future, including considering whether or not the tunnel is removed in favour of a bridge,” the statement said.

“We prefer the bridge option because it will address a significant bottleneck for the movement of goods and people in the region and may provide more flexibility for trade,” the statement said. “However, it is ultimately the decision of the province as to which option to pursue.”

Ships are increasing in size to cut costs and environmental impact, the port said, “but removing the tunnel in favour of a bridge will not significantly change the size of ships that are able to use the channel for a number of reasons.”

The port authority said dredging to allow larger ships “would be prohibitively expensive” and “the width of the river does not allow very large vessels to turn.” Underwater pipeline crossings are also a barrier to ships with deeper draughts, the port said.

The new bridge will not have “a significant impact on the size of ships” using the Fraser River, the statement said.

Image: Artist's rendering of the Massey Bridge. Photo: B.C. Government

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The federal government is considering privatizing Canada’s port authorities, a move that could further hinder public oversight and control over the export of commodities such as coal and crude oil.

On Nov. 14, the federal government announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley Canada to "provide financial advice to the Government related to the recommendations [contained in the Canada Transportation Act Review] concerning ports, including receiving proposals from institutional investors or private equity investors."

(Until 2015, an investment unit of Morgan Stanley was the owner of the largest terminal at the Port of Montreal.)

The recommendations contained in the review included "examining the feasibility and viability of adopting a share-capital structure for Canada Port Authorities.”

The review also stated that Canada “must make some hard choices and inject private sector discipline into the process” in order to “go to the next level and position itself for the lon­ger term.”

It’s no coincidence the entity responsible for hiring Morgan Stanley was the Canada Development Investment Corporation, which specializes in the “divestiture of assets of the Government of Canada.”

This possibility is concerning on both the climate change front — with terminal owners already able to export fossil fuels effectively unchallenged to other jurisdictions — and for public health reasons, given the potential for increased diesel particulate matter, spills, coal dust and noise exposure.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking,” says Peter Hall, director and professor of urban studies at Simon Fraser University and expert on port institutions. “Privatizing them would go against everything that we know about the way ports operate in such a huge country.”

Privatization of Ports Would Further Hinder Transparent Decisionmaking

Since the introduction of the 1998 Canada Marine Act, the country’s 18 Canada Port Authorities (CPAs) been have run as “non-share capital corporations,” with board appointments finalized by the federal transport minister.

There are already many criticisms of the entities, mostly related to mixed mandates — they serve as both promoters and regulators of trade — and a board nomination process that grants considerable power to port users (for instance, only one of 11 board members represent the 16 municipalities within the Port of Vancouver’s jurisdiction while port users have seven seats).

Kevin Washbrook, director of Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, says it’s currently a challenge to ensure the public interest is met by port authorities. But he says it currently remains somewhat possible due to being able to acquire port documents with access to information requests; there are also changes underway, he says, to require lobbyists to log communications with senior employees of port authorities in the federal lobbying registry.

Those would no longer be options if port authorities are privatized. All decision-making about the permitting of terminals like Port of Vancouver’s Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project, a proposed container terminal feared to have potential species-level impacts of migratory bird populations, would be even further in the shadows.

“Ports are the vehicle for delivering the federal trade agenda,” he says. “We are already struggling with that trade agenda here on the West Coast, whether it’s fossil fuel terminals or massive expansion of container ports. It’s hard enough as it is to have public input into those decisions. How is that possibly going to happen if ports are privatized?”

Current System of Port Authorities Ensures Competition Between Major Terminals

Hall says there’s been an ongoing move towards the “corporatization” of ports since the 1970s, echoing port reform that has represented a “definitive shift to the economic right” in other countries like Australia, New Zealand and Britain.  

Canada’s port authorities retain considerable independence as the government can’t “direct or influence” their day-to-day actions. However, the government can amend the Canada Marine Act. The 2014 budget implementation omnibus bill, for instance, amended the legislation to permit the destruction of documents by ports and exempted federal land bought by port authorities from species protections and federal environmental assessments.

Hall says while imperfect, the current port authority system assures that competition between major terminals is “mostly fair,” ensuring the otherwise competing supply chain actors have a place where they have to collaborate.

“Why would we want to give up on that?” he asks. “And if all they mean by privatization is that they’re going to take these long-term leases and let Morgan Stanley turn them into tradable financial instruments in order to make the books look good in the short-term, well then shame on them. This has been tried around the world and it hasn’t been very helpful.”

Privatizing Canada’s Ports An ‘Invitation for More Conflict’ on #FossilFuel Exports https://t.co/75NoOyxW5J #bcpoli #coal #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 2, 2016

Privatizing Would Mostly Benefit Major Terminals and National Railways, Not Public

Liquidating ownership would indeed generate short-term cash flow for the government.

But Hall says this move would mostly end up benefitting large terminal operators and the two national rail companies, CN and CP, which service the terminals: “They will look at that and say: ‘How fantastic is that? I’ve now got an opportunity to be if not the monopolist, one of the very small number of service providers without this very powerful authority agency looking over my shoulder.’”

Port authorities already have strained relationships with local hosting communities. Major conflicts have emerged over permitting authority in recent years; the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is currently being sued by two organizations and two municipalities for allegedly approving a thermal coal export terminal without proper consultation.

The Canada Transportation Act Review noted that a move towards privatization would be "accompanied by legislation to protect the public and national interests." But according to Transport Canada, CPAs already “operate in the public interest.”

It’s a notion that people like Washbrook disagrees with given that he doesn’t see the export of polluting commodities as automatically more in the “public interest” than species protection or clean air.

“The notion that ‘well, we’re a trading country so it’s all good’ is wrong,” he says. “Canada’s interests are much broader. For this government to say ‘we’ve chosen trade over protecting the environment’ can’t be justified.”

Liberals Pursuing Privatization Agenda in Other Sectors

Washbrook suggests the federal government shouldn’t proceed with a very narrowly focused review by Morgan Stanley. Instead, it should opt for a broad-based consultation process that attempts to find out public opinion on the roles and governance of port authorities, and how local and regional interests should be balanced with national interests.

Hall echoes this sentiment, suggesting the government must ensure the inclusion of a wider range of actors, including local authorities and governments.

But it doesn’t look like the Liberals are interested in such discussions.

What was once heralded in the Liberal Party’s platform as an “largest new infrastructure investment in Canadian history” has turned out to be an attempt to attract billions in private investment from international firms, which Martin Luckas of the The Guardian dubbed a “giant corporate giveaway” and Tom Parkin of the Toronto Sun called a “bait-and-switch on infrastructure.”

In September, the government also hired the services of Credit Suisse Canada to examine the potential privatization of the country’s eight largest airports, which the CEO of the Vancouver Airport Authority predicted would lead to cutbacks in maintenance and cleaning, as well as increased crowding in airports. There are ongoing calls for the Liberals to consider privatizing Canada Post.

Yet Hall suggests that privatizing ports will only make that relationship more tense: “Think of the conflicts we’re about to have here over the pipelines,” he says. “You remove public oversight, you further push this in a private direction: it’s an invitation for more conflict.”

Washbrook agree: “People are frustrated. And I don’t think they’re going to be less frustrated if the government privatizes their ports.”

Image: Robert Banks Terminal via Port Vancouver

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

With news of the Port of Vancouver ruffling the feathers of the federal government by issuing a permit for a jet fuel pipeline without so much as a heads up, the port authority’s integrity has been thrust into the spotlight yet again.

While the port has apologized to Transport Minister Marc Garneau, the thorny issue of the port conducting environmental reviews of projects, while profiting from the same projects, remains.

Complicating matters, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority (which regulates the Port of Vancouver) is a member of the Coal Association of Canada — a lobby group that glosses over the impacts of burning coal on climate change and that has gained notoriety in recent weeks for spreading misinformation about the phase-out of coal-fired electricity in Alberta.

The port authority has also been outed in the past for a covert and intimate relationship with the Vancouver-based Coal Alliance, an aggressive lobby group with a membership that includes rail companies, export terminals and other lobby groups.

Meantime, the port authority was responsible for reviewing the $50-million Fraser Surrey Docks coal-transfer terminal that would export more than four million tonnes of thermal coal to Asian markets — which it approved in December 2015.

“If you’re going to be a member of some other organization or alliance and you approve the projects that are related to that membership, it puts into question the fairness of the decision-making process and leads one to question whether or not they’re biased — whether or not things are predetermined,” says Paula Williams, who co-founded Communities and Coal, a Vancouver-based organization that opposes the export of thermal coal from the port.

Port Authority Part of Coal Lobby, Also Responsible for Regulating

The transportation of coal has been critical to the port’s recent financial successes. In 2015, the port sent out 35 million tonnes of the stuff, compared to 25 million tonnes of grain, speciality crops and feed and 23 million tonnes of forest products — and that was a slow year on the coal front.

If the port authority was just serving as landlord, it would make sense for it to collaborate with coal lobby groups to push for increased exports and generate as much profit as possible for its owners.

But the port authority’s mandate also requires it to fulfill duties such as the “safety and security of all land and waters” and the “permitting of all projects proposed for the use of federal port land.” In a single word: regulating.

“They shouldn’t be doing both,” says Voters Taking Action Against Climate Change (VTACC) director Kevin Washbrook, who notes the port authority has approved every coal export project that’s come before it in recent years.

VTACC is one of four plaintiffs that have taken the port authority to court on allegations of bias and failing to consider climate change impacts when approving the permit for the Fraser Surrey Docks coal terminal.

A federal court is currently evaluating a request by Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and Fraser Surrey Docks to toss out the lawsuit filed against them.

“That’s really why we’re taking them to court: we think the public interest isn’t being met by this dual mandate,” Washbrook told DeSmog Canada.

Port Authority Covertly Sponsored Coal Conference in 2013

A series of disturbing revelations about the port authority’s intimate relationship with the coal industry came out in late 2013, courtesy of digging by Voters Taking Action Against Climate Change.

First came the news the port authority had been swapping e-mails with National Public Relations (a firm connected with the Coal Alliance that has lobbied the federal government on behalf of Fraser Surrey Docks). The Vancouver Sun described the exchange as seeming “as if they were allies, rather than as a public regulator and private proponent.”

In one instance, the two entities traded information on a VTACC protest, with the port authority directing media inquiries to Alan Fryer, a senior consultant for National Public Relations and lobbyist for the Coal Alliance.

A month later, it was revealed the port authority covered up its sponsorship of the 2013 Coal Association of Canada conference, including a $5,000 contribution and golf swag, because it was concerned about “press and public backlash.” The Vancouver Sun noted the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority had publicly sponsored the conference in 2012.

“They get it in the sense that it doesn’t look good,” Washbrook says. “Whether they think that it’s actually a bad thing: I’m not sure.”

Washbrook notes the port authority’s response to pressure for more regional involvement and transparency has been to launch a Twitter feed, YouTube channel and run some TV commercials. None of those PR products mention coal at all, he says.

Tangled Web of Business Relationships 

Williams of Communities and Coal suggests it may also be worth paying attention to some other business relationships that encircle Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and Fraser Surrey Docks.

In 2011, SNC-Lavalin, the embattled Montreal-based engineering services firm, bought a 23 per cent share in AltaLink (an electricity transmission company) from Macquarie Essential Assets Partnership .

The partnership is owned by a subsidiary of the Macquarie Group, a member of which owns Fraser Surrey Docks.

In 2013, Fraser Surrey Docks contracted SNC-Lavalin to prepare the environmental impact assessment, which was described by Vancity credit union as “entirely inadequate” and criticized by activists as being limited in scope.

Then, in 2014, SNC-Lavalin sold AltaLink to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which owns BNSF Railway, the company transporting the coal to the Port of Vancouver. Both BNSF Railway and Fraser Surrey Docks are members of the Coal Alliance.

Williams emphasizes that a trail of prior business isn’t necessarily a problem. But given the port authority’s habit of getting a bit too cozy with private industry, it’s a trend that might be worth paying attention to in the future.

“[Vancouver Fraser Port Authority] should not have a say in the decision of whether or not to approve a project at the port,” she reiterates. “This should not happen. They should be removed from that. They can have an opinion and give their input, but they shouldn’t be part of the decision-making process.”

Citizens Push for More Input

Opposition to the way the port is doing business continues to build.

Washbrook notes that people in North Vancouver are fighting the proposed G3 grain terminal, while folks in Delta are concerned about the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project. Meanwhile, people in Richmond worry about Agricultural Land Reserve property being bought up and the small leaseholders the port is “shaking down” for exorbitant increases in water lot lease rates.

All have common interests, he says: more regional inputs, more representation, a more transparent and open processes.

If the VTACC lawsuit doesn’t get derailed by the port authority and Fraser Surrey Docks, the verdict could help shape the future conversation. But ultimately, solving the issue seems to come back to the federal government and its power to amend the Canada Marine Act to redefine the mandate of port authorities.

“I think there are discussions happening in Ottawa right now about how to reform the ports,” Washbrook says. “The question will be about how much of that is an inside discussion that tweaks things, and how much of it brings about meaningful reform.”

Image: Jason Mrachina/Flickr.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada’s major ports handle more than 300 million tonnes of cargo every year. They’re how we import products like cars and TVs and how we export commodities like grain and oil. Yet many of us have likely never thought of how the country’s 18 Canada Port Authorities (CPAs) are run — until now.

The way that decisions are made at Canada’s ports are coming under increasing scrutiny from environmentalists, who take issue with ports operating as both a promoter and regulator of trade.

The boards of directors of Canada’s port authorities determine what terminals receive approval for construction, and thus what types of commodities end up leaving the harbour.

Take Port Metro Vancouver (officially known as the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority), for example. It’s the largest port authority by tonnage in the country: in 2015 it facilitated the exchange of 138 million tonnes of cargo.

In September 2012, Fraser Surrey Docks — one of 28 marine terminals located at Port Metro Vancouver — announced plans to export eight million tonnes of thermal coal mined in Montana and Wyoming to Asian markets every year.

Paula Williams co-founded the advocacy group Communities and Coal in May 2013 in response to potential health effects and climate impacts stemming from such exports.

While Port Metro Vancouver’s CEO has readily admitted the port authority has never encountered such considerable opposition to a proposal before, the terminal’s proposal is still slated to go ahead (there are multiple lawsuits filed against it over alleged lack of consultation).

“At times, I’ve felt powerless, even though I remained hopeful,” Williams says. “You really start to see the machine that you’re up against.”  

Port Users Nominate Board of Directors

That’s because seven of the 11 people who serve on the board of directors for Port Metro Vancouver are nominated by port users. In other words, the businesses that reap financial benefits from port-related transactions have a majority of the say in who gets recommended as a board member to the federal minister of transportation, who makes the final selection.

The other four spots are filled with selections by: 1) the 16 municipalities within Port Metro Vancouver’s jurisdiction; 2) the province of British Columbia; 3) the three prairie provinces; and 4) the federal transport minister (without recommendation from the port user group).

The selection process is spelled out by 1998’s Canada Marine Act, which established port authorities as federal not-for-profit corporations mandated with the three-pronged task of facilitating trade, consulting with communities and protecting the environment. Today, Canada Port Authorities serve as landlord, regulator and property developer.  

Fox Watching the Hen House

Kathryn Harrison, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, expresses concern over the board nomination process, as there’s no requirement for the ports to seek representation from First Nations, environmental or public health groups.

“The nomination process really exemplifies for me the degree to which this port authority has been envisioned as an agency that pursues the interests of industry,” she says. “It has a coordinating role, so you’ve got to have all the industries represented. But think about it: now you have a board primarily made up of those industries overseeing regulation of themselves.”

Peter Hall, director and professor of urban studies at Simon Fraser University and expert on port institutions, says that while ports can introduce widespread consultation, it makes little difference if they don’t have “the right people” at the final decision-making point.

That said, Hall states that he doesn’t believe a locally appointed board should decide on what a port trades, as that should remain the responsibility of provincial and federal governments. But who’s represented at the table has to change, he says, as does the mandate that “all cargo is by definition good.”

“There is this presumption the [Canadian Port Authority] in your city or region should say yes to everything because it’s presumed to be in the interests of Canada,” he says. “In that sense, it’s more difficult for local interests of any type to say ‘no, we’d rather not have that.’”

Hall adds the port industry is made up of a series of oligopolies and the current board composition is “not at all good” at dealing with tough environmental and social questions. Rejigging the composition to allow for more regional municipal representation would help.

“In the long run, we shouldn’t worry so much about these very big, financially successful port authorities just being able to get as much business as they can,” he says.

“We should be worrying about their long-term social and environmental commitments because there is capacity to do that. I don’t think we’re in any danger of destroying the golden goose. I think we’re actually much more in danger of a crisis of political legitimacy.”  

Promoter or Regulator of Trade? Both.

Other port authorities have suffered from poor optics over the years: in 2011, the RCMP started investigations into an allegedly corrupt nomination process at Montreal’s port authority that involved the Prime Minister’s Office. Former Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt came under fire in in 2009 for an expense scandal during her time as CEO of the Toronto Port Authority. Halifax’s port authority has faced criticism from a former port chairperson due to its loss of a major container customer. The list goes on.

While UBC’s Harrison agrees there’s an urgent need to reform the nomination process for the board of governors — which would require an Act of Parliament to amend the Canada Marine Act and the issuing of new letters patent to Canadian Port Authorities — she says port authorities also suffer from mixed mandates, in which they serve as both a promoter and regulator of trade. The goal of regulating business, she says, can come into conflict with the port’s reliance on income from projects to fund its operations.

Such a narrow focus on economic benefit, without fully considering environmental and social impacts, also concerns Andrew Gage, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law.

“If you view coal as a normal and legal commodity, then you can’t understand how someone would limit its export,” he says via e-mail. “If you view coal as a product that, due to its central role in fossil fuel pollution and climate change, plays a crucial role in killing people and destroying property, then your answer may be different.”  

Bill C-43 Allowed Ports to Destroy Documents

Those tensions were exacerbated in 2014 with Bill C-43, the 475-page budget implementation omnibus bill that, among many other things, authorized the sale of federal land to port authorities. Such lands, now leasable to private industry, are no longer covered by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and Species at Risk Act. In the same section of the bill, port authorities were empowered to establish rules that would allow them to physically destroy documents.

Such an amendment carries extra weight given that the year prior, the Vancouver-based organization Voters Taking Action on Climate Change uncovered documents via an Access to Information request that showed an uncomfortably close relationship between Port Metro Vancouver and National Public Relations, the firm that also represents the Coal Alliance (which Fraser Surrey Docks is a member of).

Throw in the fact Port Metro Vancouver has been facing serious problems with organized crime — a Vancouver Sun investigation published in May 2015 revealed that over two dozen longshoremen are affiliated with the Hells Angels and associates — and Harrison suggests a serious overhaul is needed.

“If there are concerns being raised about organized crime operating in ports as a way to smuggle drugs, that’s not the time to be passing legislation authorizing the destruction of documents and reducing transparency,” she says.  

Lobbying Activity Flies Under the Radar

Topping it all off is that employees of Canada Port Authorities aren’t subject to the federal Lobbying Act, which means the public can’t find out which individuals or businesses are meeting with Port Metro Vancouver board directors. While Harrison doesn’t perceive any nefarious intent behind the omission, it’s yet another sign for her that the governance model hasn’t kept up with the changing times and expectations of transparency.

In 2010, the federal commissioner of lobbying issued an advisory opinion confirming that communication between shared governance organizations — a category that port authorities belong to — and “federal public office holders concerning its mandate, operation, funding and other related matters is not a registrable activity.”

Robyn Crisanti, director of public affairs at Port Metro Vancouver, notes the port authority has met with a number of federal ministers since the beginning of the year and there’s a lot of interest in the port’s activities.

“We’re very aware of what our marching orders are and we follow them,” she says.  

Grappling With the Long-Term Questions

One of the key tasks of the Canada Port Authorities, Crisanti says, is to do long-term planning: “It’s this thing of looking quite far into the future and trying to assess where Canada’s going to go in terms of trade and trade deals and things of that nature.”

For projects such as the G3 Terminal Vancouver — which if approved will annually transport eight million tonnes of grain — this can be a fairly straightforward task. While the economics may vary, there’s no doubt the world will require grain for the foreseeable future.

But it’s a different story when it comes to exports like coal and petroleum products. Canada has signed international agreements, notably the G7 commitment to phase out all fossil fuels by 2100 and the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, both of which could seriously impact future investments in terminals that export energy products.

According to Gage of West Coast Environmental Law, Port Metro Vancouver “can consider whether fossil fuel specific infrastructure being built on port lands may become ‘stranded assets’ as the world moves away from a fossil fuel economy, as well as any potential liabilities that may be associated with fossil fuel infrastructure.”

This is where it all circles back to the board nomination process and underlying mandate.

Williams of Communities and Coal suggests that it’s currently not beneficial for the port authority to reject a project such as the Fraser Surrey Docks expansion given its modus operandi to facilitate trade, especially given that a majority of governors are commissioned under the “user pay-user say” principle.

However, Williams suggests the experience that Port Metro Vancouver went through with the controversial Fraser Surrey Docks proposal was a good learning opportunity, something Crisanti confirms (the Canada Port Authorities hired external consultants to review the permitting process and launched a new process last July). But there’s much more to be done, Williams says.

“If any change is going to come about, it’s got to be federally mandated,” she concludes. “It has to come from above.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Isn’t it ironic? A little too ironic?

On the very same day the UN climate summit kicked off in Paris, Vancouver’s port authority approved a cost-saving amendment allowing for the proposed Fraser Surrey Docks terminal to export massive amounts of thermal coal to Southeast Asia on ships rather than barges. The irony hasn’t been lost on environmental activists.

“It was just such a stark contradiction in the timing around this most recent approval where the port authority is improving a new thermal coal port on day one of global climate talks,” says Laura Benson, Dogwood Initiative’s Beyond Coal campaign director. “One foot’s going backwards into the 19th century and one foot’s trying to move ahead into a brighter future where we can fight climate change.”

Fraser Surrey Docks, owned by a Macquarie Group-managed investment company, currently exports lumber, steel and containers. Since 2012, the company has pushed for permission to construct a new $50-million coal-loading terminal to export up to eight million tonnes of thermal coal — which is burned to generate electricity, unlike metallurgical coal which is required to smelt steel — to Asia from mines in Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

A company update from late 2012 anticipated shipping would start in 2013. It hasn’t exactly turned out that way. The Vancouver Port Authority is now facing lawsuits from Voters Taking Action on Climate Change (VTACC) and the Musqueam Indian Band over an alleged failure to adequately consult.

“The port is both the landlord and the regulator,” says Kevin Washbrook, the director of VTACC. “They have an interest in seeing these projects go ahead. So there’s no public assurance this process isn’t biased in favour of the industry. Rather than going through the show of attending the open houses, we’ve been saying from the start the port needs to sit down with the public and talk about these concerns and engage local governments from the start.”

Coal prices have cratered in recent years, stymieing Fraser Surrey Docks' efforts to find a customer to buy into the barging scheme. The company's amended proposal allows it to also load coal directly onto ocean-going vessels, which doesn’t resolve concerns about climate change, traffic in the Fraser River or ramifications for air quality. “We can’t build these coal ports and avoid runaway climate change: it’s contrary to what we need to do," Washbrook says.

In late 2013, Port Metro Vancouver hired Edelman — a public relations firm that previously represented other pro-coal organizations — to help boost its image. Unfortunately, as Chinese coal imports declined and a global coal glut emerged, such appeals to economic arguments largely flopped. Benson notes the thermal coal market in the Pacific Rim is oversupplied and that companies are scaling back exports despite giant penalties. Potential environmental impacts such as increased air pollution, noise and greenhouse gas emissions have only added to concerns. The hiring of the hellishly controversial SNC Lavalin by the docks to conduct environmental assessments and Port Metro Vancouver’s decision to ignore calls for a full health impact assessment kind of capped it all off.

With all that said, Alan Fryer — spokesperson for the Coal Alliance, a lobbyist organization that petitions for British Columbia coal businesses, including the Fraser Surrey Docks — maintains optimism the industry will rebound given global demands for coal. He argues the Fraser Surrey Docks are a “flashpoint” triggered by an upswing in anti-coal activism in the United States’ Pacific Northwest, and that the industry provides tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in tax revenue.

“We’re a trading nation,” he says. “We are a port city. I don’t think we get to pick and choose, necessarily, the products that we export. It’s a tough time in the resource sector generally. I know a lot of people are hurting and have lost their jobs. I think anytime you have the opportunity to create even a few well-paid unionized jobs, that’s a good thing.”

Coal mining in the Powder River Basin.

In late November, Fryer sent congratulatory emails to 33 British Columbia-based MPs (including three cabinet ministers), providing background on the province’s coal industry and an invitation to get in touch if they wanted more information. The communications report in the federal lobbyist register initially appears startling given most lobbying efforts tend to include a half-dozen or so MPs at the most. Fryer notes the Coal Alliance “registered it out of an abundance of caution” even though it wasn’t sit-down House of Cards-esque lobbying. Kudos on that front. But Benson suggests the Coal Alliance has a “heavy influence” on decisions made by the port authority, so perhaps the communication wasn’t so innocuous (in September, Freyer also lobbied a dozen MPs on behalf of the Coal Alliance).

It’s as a result of such pressures that Washbrook calls for a fundamental reformation of how port authorities are governed. He suggests local communities — such as Surrey and New Westminster, which have both joined the lawsuit against the port authority as interveners — need to have a more significant voice in the consultation process and that ports should take into consideration a wider range of concerns, including climate impacts of the commodities they export. In mid-2013, University of British Columbia political science professor Kathryn Harrison noted that seven of the 11 members on the Port Metro Vancouver’s board of directors were appointed by the federal government based on suggestions from “Port User Group,” which includes coal organizations.

Fraser Surrey Docks still has to jump through a number of “permitting hoops,” in the words of Washbrook, most notably the acquisition of Metro Vancouver’s air quality permit. He suggests the project shouldn’t go ahead with construction until it receives such a permit given the impacts it could have on design, and that coal is “already dead and everyone knows it.”

Fryer acknowledges the world will eventually have to transition away from thermal coal to renewable forms of energy “but the reality is we’re not there yet and fossil fuels, including coal, are going to be a very important part of the energy mix for sometime.” The recent amendment won’t affect the court cases as it’s the original permit that’s being challenged.

While Benson suggests the port authority has clearly signalled it’s not going to address the concerns voiced by groups like Dogwood and VTACC, she expresses optimism: “We have more avenues now given the new federal government to have the voices of citizens heard. In terms of a citizens’ movement, we’re stronger than ever. So I’m very optimistic we’ll eventually find a way to either get the answers we deserve or just block this project from ever moving forward.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Coal, the fossil fuel that largely sparked the industrial revolution, may be facing the beginning of the end — at least in terms of generating electricity.

There are increasing signs of the demise of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, from a global oversupply to plummeting prices to China starting to clean up its polluted air.

Last week, the Carbon Tracker Initiative published an analysis — Carbon Supply Cost Curves: Evaluating Financial Risk to Coal Capital Expenditures — identifying major financial risks for investors in coal producers around the world.

Saying the demand for thermal coal in China, the world’s largest emitter of toxic greenhouse gases, could peak as early as 2016, the analysis also highlights $112 billion of future coal mine expansion and development that is excess to requirements under lower demand forecasts.

“In particular it shows that high cost new mines are not economic at today’s prices and are unlikely to generate returns for investors in the future,” said an accompanying media release.

“Companies most exposed to low coal demand are those developing new projects, focused on the export market . . . With new measures to cap coal use and restrict imports of low quality coal in China, it appears the tide is turning against the coal exporters.”

The analysis added that China’s desire to reduce imports will impact prices and asset values for export mines in the U.S., Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.

“King Coal is becoming King Canute, as the industry struggles to turn back the tide of reducing demand, falling prices and lower earnings,” Anthony Hobley, CEO of Carbon Tracker Initiative, said.

A recent article in Mining Weekly also says the coal industry is indeed facing tough times.

The article noted Coal Association of Canada president Ann Marie Hann agreed that about half of the global coal output at current pricing was being produced at a loss.

“Until a global rebalance between demand and supply takes place and the global economy rebounds, the coal industry will unfortunately probably see some more bad news over the coming months,” Hann said.

The story added that the prices for thermal coal, which is used to generate electricity, had fallen in recent years from about $190 per tonne in mid-2008 to $75 per tonne this year, while metallurgical coal (used to make steel) had dropped from a high of more than $300 per tonne in late 2011 to less than $120 per tonne.

To perhaps make matters worse for the coal industry, it is being publicly attacked by the oil and gas sectors, which are trying to position themselves as cleaner fossil fuels.

According to the Responding to Climate Change website, a number of the world’s leading oil and gas companies voiced their concerns about climate change at last week’s UN Climate Summit, arguing they can offer a future coal cannot.

“One of our most important contributions is producing natural gas and replacing coal in electricity production,” Helge Lund, Statoil’s chief executive, was quoted as saying.

Kevin Washbrook, a director for Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, a Vancouver organization that has fought against a proposed new coal export facility at Fraser Surrey Docks, agrees the thermal coal sector is in decline.

“I think coal is in everyone’s sights these days because coal is climate change,” Washbrook told DeSmogBlog. “Coal has to be on the chopping block for sure.”

Washbrook added the UN, the International Energy Agency, big banks and insurance companies are acknowledging that the vast majority of coal must stay in the ground if humankind is to avoid catastrophic, runaway climate change.

“We need to see this current downturn [in the thermal coal sector] for what it really is — our last good opportunity to leave coal behind and start the transition to emission-free energy sources.”

Photo Credit: Arnold Paul, Wikimedia Commons

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada’s largest port has given the green light to a proposed controversial facility on the Fraser River that would unload U.S. coal destined for energy-hungry Asia.

Despite facing significant environmental and health concerns, Port Metro Vancouver said in its decision, released last Thursday, that the proposed coal transfer facility at Fraser Surrey Docks poses no unacceptable risks.

The $15 million project could handle at least four million metric tonnes of coal per year delivered by the Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railway Company. It will then be loaded onto barges at the Surrey facility and transferred to ocean-going carriers at Texada Island, prior to export.

Referring to environmental studies and mitigation efforts, Jim Crandles, Port Metro Vancouver’s director of planning and development, was quoted as saying “we are confident that the project does not pose a risk to the environment or human health and that the public is protected.”

Disappointed opponents, however, said there are many unanswered questions about local and regional impacts of building and operating the facility.

Those include coal dust and diesel exhaust exposure in local populations, fire risks associated with storing coal in open barges in local communities, noise impacts, emergency vehicle access constraints, and impacts associated with transporting coal in open barges on the ocean.

“If it goes ahead, this decision means more U.S. coal trains travelling through our communities,” Kevin Washbrook, director of Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, told DeSmogBlog in an email Friday. 

“It means more coal being shipped to Asia to be burned, and more emissions into our atmosphere, at a time when we absolutely, positively need to cut back on those emissions. All to run uncovered, football field-length barges of U.S. thermal coal down the world’s richest salmon river.”

Washbrook, who has compared Big Coal to Big Tobacco and its efforts to obscure the risks of smoking in order to keep making huge profits, added the decision will be challenged through the local air quality permitting process, during the coming municipal elections in November and in court.

Simon Fraser University health sciences professor Tim Takaro said the project runs contrary to public health.

“Coal is a fuel of the last century,” Takaro says. “We have to stop using it sometime and here’s a great opportunity to apply society’s ‘brakes,’ join communities in the U.S. that have refused to ship this same product, and think of the future generations who will inherit the messes we make.”

The Port Metro Vancouver decision comes shortly after the Oregon Department of State Lands rejected a proposal to export 8.8 million tons per year of coal to Asia from the Port of Morrow in Boardman.

But as DeSmogBlog noted on Thursday, the Long Beach City Council had just approved a proposal to export coal and petroleum coke, which is a tar sands by-product, to the global market, mainly Asia, to the tune of 1.7 million tons per year.

Last November, the Winnipeg Free Press reported a group of concerned citizens, environmentalists and scientists asked Port Metro Vancouver officials to delay any expansion of coal-exporting facilities, saying public input was required and climate change problems would be increased as a result of the projects.

Among those who signed a letter opposing any coal port expansion were David Suzuki, Naomi Klein and James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the first scientist to warn the U.S. government of the potential dangers of unmitigated climate change and who described coal-fired power plants as “factories of death.” 

Image credit: Coal power plant pollution via Shutterstock.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is a guest post by Will Horter, executive director of the Dogwood Initiative. It was originally published in the Toronto Star.

Earthquakes happen rarely in Canadian politics, but the fault lines are shifting again on the West Coast. As the next federal election draws closer, conditions below the surface should remind political observers of another seismic event a generation ago.

Back in the early 1990s, Stephen Harper and the insurgent Reform Party forced a tectonic shift, unleashing a powerful wave of western alienation that has realigned Canadian politics to this day. Their slogan was: “The West wants in.”

You could sum up the feeling in British Columbia lately as, “The West wants out.” Today you could get in your car in Kenora and drive clear across the Prairies to the coast without ever leaving a blue Conservative riding. But the road through the Rocky Mountains could become tricky indeed if Harper’s party doesn’t change course.

The central question for British Columbians, as it was for Albertans in the 1980s and ’90s, is this: who gets to decide what’s in our best interest — Ottawa or the people who live here?

As pundits debate the technical merits of crude oil and coal export proposals through B.C., they miss the deeper sense of alienation that’s taking hold. British Columbians and especially First Nations are growing increasingly resentful of decisions they feel have been imposed on them from the outside.

A poll this year by the Manning Centre (led by Harper’s former boss, Preston Manning) found fully 68 per cent of people in B.C. feel the country is going in the wrong direction. Asked why the number was so high, the former Reform Party leader said “pipelines.”

People in B.C. don’t want out of Canada, but they want out of the Harper government’s national energy plan, such as it is. Becoming a fossil-fuel export “superpower,” in Harper’s words, holds little appeal for communities caught between Alberta’s oilsands and the refineries in Asia.

A powerful majority of British Columbians, including plenty of Tory voters, simply aren’t willing to risk their magnificent coast, local health and existing jobs for the benefit of global energy corporations — especially China’s voracious state-owned oil giants.

What shifted the tectonic plates in Alberta over decades was the chronic feeling that the federal government was preoccupied with Quebec and Ontario, leaving the West to act as the piggy bank for central Canada.

The earthquake was triggered by then prime minister Pierre Trudeau, whose infamous National Energy Program was seen as a way to redistribute wealth generated in the Alberta oilpatch to Ottawa.

Albertans were furious. A popular sticker on many truck bumpers at the time read: “Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark.” (A reprint would probably do a brisk trade in many B.C. communities today.)

Twenty-five years on, the centre of power has shifted to Alberta. The National Energy Program is replaced in the current drama by the the National Energy Board, tasked with rubber-stamping the Enbridge and Kinder Morgan pipeline proposals. The electoral battlegrounds are different, but the conversations on the doorstep remain the same.

Harper is the grassroots activist who once wrote to Alberta premier Ralph Klein: “It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction.”

Now Harper is the federal government, responsible for pushing unwanted projects on an unwilling province. It’s startling how far he has strayed from his populist, Reform Party roots.

Here’s another way of understanding the situation: imagine Enbridge’s crude oil pipeline and oil tanker project had been proposed for Quebec and not B.C.

What would happen if Ottawa appointed a three-person panel to review a controversial infrastructure proposal and not a single Quebecer was appointed to the panel?

Suppose before the panel even held hearings, a federal cabinet minister blasted citizens signed up for the pipeline review as “foreign radicals,” working to sabotage Canada’s national interest? What would the local newspapers say when leaked documents revealed Harper had sent CSIS and the RCMP to illegally spy on peaceful opponents?

If Ottawa forced through such a project in the face of majority opposition in Quebec, the pundits wouldn’t be talking about respecting the “due process” of the hearings. They’d be using the s-word.

There is a major difference between B.C. and its provincial cousins to the east. Here, the land question was never settled. First Nations for the most part have never signed treaties with the federal government. Mix in the alienation felt by everyday voters and the political stakes are high indeed.

Underestimating the tectonic shift underway in British Columbia could lead to a political earthquake in 2015. The results could change Canadian politics for a generation.

Image Credit: Chief Ian Campbell of the Squamish First Nation. Photo by Kris Krug.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A new U.S. proposal to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants could result in more thermal coal being shipped to Asia through existing and planned port facilities in Metro Vancouver, people attending Port Metro Vancouver’s annual general meeting were told Tuesday.

“[President Barack] Obama’s administration is changing the game,” Steven Faraher-Amidon said during a question period.

Faraher-Amidon also told the meeting that five schools in Delta and Surrey are within 700 metres of the contentious Fraser Surrey Docks coal handling proposal while medical studies in the U.S. have found that living within five kilometres of coal dust and diesel particulates presents significant health risks. A former Port Metro Vancouver environmental impact assessment that looked at the Fraser Surrey Docks terminal was criticized for being limited in scope and failing to adequately address public health concerns.

The 64-year-old retired Surrey teacher added a proper health impact assessment needs to be done before the Fraser Surrey Docks coal facility — which could eventually handle eight million tonnes annually — can be approved.

Faraher-Amidon’s comments came a day after the Obama administration announced a plan that would result in a 30 per cent drop in coal-fired electricity plant emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. According to an Environmental Protection Agency media release, the reduced emissions will protect public health, move the U.S. toward a cleaner environment and fight climate change.

“Climate change, fueled by carbon pollution, supercharges risks to our health, our economy, and our way of life. EPA is delivering on a vital piece of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan by proposing a Clean Power Plan that will cut harmful carbon pollution from our largest source — power plants,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy was quoted as saying.

“By leveraging cleaner energy sources and cutting energy waste, this plan will clean the air we breathe while helping slow climate change so we can leave a safe and healthy future for our kids. We don’t have to choose between a healthy economy and a healthy environment — our action will sharpen America’s competitive edge, spur innovation, and create jobs.”

Location of Fraser Surrey Docks via Google Maps.

Responding to the EPA plan, the Metro Vancouver environmental group Voters Taking Action on Climate Change said Monday some analysts predict that the new rules will eventually lead to the closure of hundreds of coal-fired power plants in the U.S., leading to increased pressure to export American thermal coal from B.C. ports.

In a letter to B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake and the port authority, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union, Unifor, and the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation all called Monday for a full health impact assessment of the Fraser Surrey Docks coal export proposal.

Concerned about health and climate change implications from burning thermal coal, the B.C. Conference of the United Church of Canada has also asked the port authority to reject the Fraser Surrey Docks proposal.

Currently, no ports in California, Oregon and Washington export thermal coal.

Port Metro Vancouver says it treats materials for export as safely as possible. It also says it is up to the federal government to decide what materials are traded internationally.

In a later interview, Faraher-Amidon said it seems the port is ignoring the new U.S. plans and what they might mean for increased trainloads of thermal coal into B.C. for export to Asia. “We are a natural conduit for where they are going to bring the coal,” he said.

Image Credit: BNSF train by Contemplative Imaging via Flickr 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Port Metro Vancouver’s newly released environmental impact assessment of the Fraser Surrey Docks coal export proposal was criticized today for failing to adequately consider public health, the environment and community safety. 

“Unlike our chief medical officers, Port Metro Vancouver has once again refused to fulfill its duties to protect the public interest with this faulty assessment,” said Laura Benson, director of Dogwood’s Beyond Coal campaign.

Last week, the region’s chief medical health officers warned the assessment doesn’t adequately address the health impacts of the proposed coal terminal.

“Having looked at the document, it does not meet what we consider the very basic requirements of a health impacts assessment,” Dr. Patricia Daly, Vancouver Coastal Health Authority chief medical health officer, told the Vancouver Sun.

The health authorities have called for a comprehensive health assessment to address concerns over coal dust, increased diesel emissions and noise since last spring. They offered to have a direct role in the assessment, but were rebuffed in a letter from Port Metro Vancouver.

Four municipal councils, including Surrey, have also expressed environmental and health concerns about the proposal, while five municipal and regional councils have passed resolutions opposing the proposal — including Metro Vancouver and, most recently, Fraser Surrey Docks' home city of Surrey.

Location of Fraser Surrey Docks via Google Maps.

The proposed facility is intended to handle coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. The coal would arrive at Fraser Surrey Docks by train, then be loaded onto barges bound for Texada Island before being transferred onto ships destined for Asia. 

Benson says Port Metro Vancouver’s assessment focuses solely on the Fraser Surrey Docks terminal, leaving out impacts associated with increased transport of U.S. coal by rail through White Rock, Surrey and Delta and with transferring coal off barges at Texada Island.

Proposals to build similar coal terminals on the west coast of the U.S. have faced tough opposition in part due to health concerns. Three proposals have been withdrawn.

The U.S. proposals have required public hearings, whereas Port Metro Vancouver has not held public hearings on the Fraser Surrey Docks proposal. Up against a groundswell of opposition, in mid-September the port agreed to conduct the environmental impact assessment, not required under law.

There will now be a public comment period on the environmental impact assessment, but Benson says it is unclear what affect the comments will have on the port’s decision. The port will not be posting a public record of comments received, but several community groups are collaborating to catalogue public comments at RealPortHearings.org. The 30-day comment period will end on December 17.


Image credit: Jeremy Buckingham MLC via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.