Say No to the Pipeline Bailout

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is a proposal to build a new 1,150 km pipeline between Alberta and the BC coast, alongside an existing 60-year-old pipeline. The new pipeline would almost triple the amount of tar sands oil carried through the existing pipeline, and increase oil tanker traffic on the BC coast sevenfold. This pipeline would enable a huge expansion of tar sands extraction. It is opposed by dozens of Indigenous groups, who are worried about the risks of oil spills, threats to their economy, and the loss of traditional culture. Exporting the oil carried by this new pipeline would require 400 tankers a year to travel through BC’s coastal waters. A spill of this heavy, highly toxic tar sands oil in those waters would permanently damage coastal communities and wildlife, including resident orca and salmon populations. Ninety-eight thousand jobs in Vancouver and three hundred and twenty thousand jobs in BC depend on a healthy coast. Forty-three per cent of these would be jeopardized by a major spill.