Jason Kenney's government has launched an inquiry into who funds groups that criticize Alberta’s oil industry.
We'll save you some time, Premier. It's us.
Let Alberta Premier Kenney know who we are and why we donate and take action to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline and fight the climate breakdown. If we get enough, we'll send them to his office.
Showing 391 reactions
I oppose the continued breakneck expansion of the tar sands.
I want Canada to be on the path to a clean energy economy of the future, not the past.
I oppose the corporate profit-seeking who sacrifice the wellbeing of all at the altar of their short term profits.
I am not an enemy of the state. I am not the enemy of Alberta. Your actions are an affront to democracy and a danger to Canada.
I donate money to environmental causes. I support First Nations lawsuits challenging fossil fuel infrastructure through their territory without their consent. I help fund lawsuits to protect the Southern Resident Killer Whales.
You don’t need to throw away millions of dollars of Alberta taxpayer money to find out who opposes Trans Mountain. I do.
I, an old woman who has known war and deprivation. I want to make sure my children, their children, and their grandchildren will enjoy a full life in a healthy environment. You probably want the same for your progeny, and if so I ask you to change your course.
I have lived on the coast of BC for the past 67 years spending many hours on the water. I joined Greenpeace at 17 when you were in diapers. I have voted for the Green Party the last 20 years and more recently ran as a candidate. Rather than create a slush fund your cronies can draw fictitious wages from I will tell you who is funding the anti pipeline campaign. It’s the BC Green Party members and thousands of folks just like me. Additionally at least 50 percent of the NDP faithful are also opposed and voicing there concerns. So at a minimum 40 to 50% of British Columbians are not for raw Bitumen exports or your holly grail of a pipeline. Now please use your 2 million and cleanup one small tailings pond.
While your government investigates non-profit environmental organizations for the source of their funding, I hope that there is also a good look at foreign funding sources for lobby groups such as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP). If this is not done, your study will be rightfully discredited.
We don’t want to ship coal particularly either.
However, on the other hand, coal when spilled, it won’t hardtop the seafloor, nor is it difficult to clean up should it spill near one of the many aquifers that are near the Fraser River in small (and mostly Indigenous) communities.
Ruining our economy, and our ecology, our marine habitats, and our water sources is the primary concern – else whether we liked it or not we would not have the depth of objections that we do.
We really couldn’t care less whether the material is coming from Alberta, Mars, USA or the moon – it is the issues if a spill; and really it is not “if” a spill, it is “when” a spill.
Grey whales are baleen eaters – in other words they are seafloor vaccuum cleaners – they would not survive sucking up asphalt. It would simply kill them.
Our glass sea corals would perish and they are a critical part of our marine food chain. Wipe that out and we would be seeing entire species of fishes dying out all the way up the food chain.
Extra tanker traffic would be catastrophic for our orcas.
Additionally we get more than our fair share of poor countries, with even poorer safety standards, ratty ships, that would just bail should there be a spill.
(Yes that has happened before, too often). It is only the little creaky teapot refinery third world businesses that would even want dilbit/synbit.
Like Alberta we have been a one or two horse resource economy driven (province) town. (Albeit – historically).
Our oil and minerals as well as forestry tanked in the 1980s. (We used to have 7 refineries – now we only have 2 “light” ones).
Since then we have been prudent enough to strongly diversify our economy as it never did recover from that.
We have a multi-billions dollar industry in tourism now.
Ruin our pristine BC and we wipe out our tourism, our economy, our jobs. That is not in “Canada’s interests”
We have about 1/3 of the 600 indigenous bands in Canada – most all of them are Coastal peoples or dependent on large rivers running to the ocean. A spill in the wrong place wipes our their heritage, their way of life. Not to say the least we live in BC because we love it – why would we risk destroying something that is working without having to destroy our wildlife, economy & ecology all in one swoop? We worked too hard to rebuild our economy. Our economy meshes fine with our ecology.
What makes no sense is some of the accusations we hear that it is personal because it is coming from Alberta.
Where it is from does not matter – what it is providing huge risks to our province’s economy and ecology does matter.
Destroying water sources does matter, ruining small communities matters.
Re the Tank Farm: In 1935 Burnaby was only a district, a large area with only 26,000 residents.
It was bankrupt in 1930s so the provincial government agreed to have the Burnaby tank farm constructed (13 tanks) in a undeveloped part of this district
Cycle forward about 80 years – Burnaby has about 240,000 residents and is a city.
The tank farm is at the side of SFU university which has 35,000 students – 9,000 more students than the population of Burnaby when the tank farms were built.
Now Trans Mountain wants to expand the tank farm from 13 tanks to 26 tanks – in the Middle of a City in an area that should a fire break out would block off 35,000 students, as well as the highly populated residental area around the tanks. (Even a skytrain is nearby).
Put it this way, La Megantic, in comparison, had a population of 5,000 people.
Re Tankers:
The second pipeline would have instead of 60 oil tankers a year would have over 400 per year, competing with our already extremely busy port. We already are maxed with shipments. Yet it is okay to simply add another 400 annually to that? Madness and stupidity pure and simple.
Of course I doubt you care because your focus is only on Alberta.
However there are so many different things you could be doing for Alberta that would help them forward instead of staying back in dinosaur fuels. Diversification should be the priority one.
The world is evolving. Even gas and oil vehicles have become more efficient.
Think of – we used to use 100 watt bulbs and now are using 7 Watt LEDs. Similarly vehicles with 10 miles to the gallon are now like 30 miles to the litre. That is before you get to other alternate fuels.
It is better to be on the forefront than making changes late in the game.
You should want to be a leader with vision for Alberta’s economy – following heavily subisided corpration pressures since the ppb oil barrels will continue to tank – too much global supply as too many countries put the infrastructure in, refineries in, etc. They are all in a mad rush to extract their stuff as quickly as possible, trying to make a profit, because they know technology is changing too.
Your biggest customer, the USA, as far as Washington State (Cherry Point, WA) is concerned, governor Jay Inslee, does not want their coastline risked either.
Wish there was a little more common sense realizing this is the sunset of oil and gas demand, and a lot less rhetoric and politicking involved. The original pipeline is getting pretty eroded too by this time. Perhaps the second one should be replacing the first.
On behalf of the other species that inhabit Canadian waterways as well are future wage earners (construction jobs for building a pipeline do not constitute permanent employment). At the very least, please build a plant that converts bitumen into “pucks” so that the damage to the environment might be reduced.
Ashamed to be a Canadian.
My name is Adrian Rain, I’m an jewelry maker and a cashier. I was born in Williams Lake, BC, and now I live in Abbotsford. I donate to, and take action against projects like the TMX not because I gain politically or because I want to sabotage my fellow Canadians. I do everything I can to resist these multi billion dollar schemes that pollute my country and destroy what I believe is Canada’s proudest feature. Our environment is precious, and pristine. Especially in BC, where one of our biggest industries is tourism. In 2014 near where I was raised, the Mount Polley mine tailings pond dam burst, spilling arsenic and other toxic waste into Polley Lake, over spilling into Quesnel Lake and into Cariboo river which I spent many childhood summers swimming in. These are also important places for BC’s Salmon run. The lead alone this disaster released into the drinking water of several communities was unprecedented. The impacts from that disaster will be felt for decades. The cause of this disaster was thought be caused by Imperial Mineral’s over filling of the mine’s tailings pond for 3 years that led to the stress that caused the dam failure.
In January 2012, Kinder Morgan’s pump station near my home on Sumas Mountain, the original TMX pipe leaked 110,000 litres of oil from a holding tank. Eight months later the NEB posted that: “the leak was detected later than it should have been,” the company’s management of procedures was “inadequate” and that the operator “failed to recognize the leak situation” on two occasions.
In the Abbotsford spill, the NEB report said that at 2:39 a.m. on Jan. 24, a “creep” alarm was received at Trans Mountain’s Edmonton control centre but it was determined to be a false alarm due to high winds.
A second alarm at 3:11 a.m. was also dismissed as false.
It took two more alarms and a shift change before a terminal operator was sent out at 5:50 a.m. to attend the Sumas site and investigate the cause of the alarm.
At 6:50 a.m.-four hours after the first alarm-the operator arrived on site, discovered the leak, closed the valve and isolated the source.
110, 000 litres of oil in 4 hours of lazy employees refusing to care about the damage they were causing to my home. My city. 70% of Kinder Morgan’s spills happen at these pump stations, like the one on Burnaby mountain which has an elementary school within a kilometre of it, only one road to evacuate by, and no nearby fire station. In the TMX’s history there have been 78 claimed spills.
And that’s what these companies do. They don’t care about the impact that failure to maintain safety regulations has. They ignore alarms, they ignore recommendations by the NEB and push everything until it breaks. For poisoning our water Polley Mine got some gold and silver. For poisoning our soil Kinder Morgan sold some oil. But I get nothing from either. All I get is forest fires, and lead poisoned fish, and a future that gets worse and worse the more pollution these big companies spew into my home.
So that’s why I help fund initiatives that fight these greedy, malignant corporations. It’s my country and my future and this is the only way I can have a say in protecting it.
Sincerely, Diana Domai
Signed BC resident.