Margot Venton: A proposed Alberta oil pipeline, Roberts Bank marine terminal expansion and Ottawa’s proposal to side step safeguards of the Species at Risk Act could reshape the future of B.C.’s coastal ecosystem
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It’s been a tumultuous summer in Canada. Heatwaves, floods and fires have swept across Canada and around the world. Many of these extreme weather events, including the European heat waves that claimed an estimated 10,000 lives and the terrifying jökulhlaups (glacial collapse) in Nepal would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.
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Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Mark Carney remains committed to making Canada an energy superpower. While much of the world is racing toward increasingly affordable renewable energy such as wind and solar, Canada appears determined to run the other way by doubling down on fossil fuels.
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Sunrise
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In recent weeks, three announcements have made that direction unmistakable. Ottawa has proposed sweeping changes to federal environmental law that would gut federal reviews, permitting and oversight of major projects, including pipelines. Alberta has formally proposed a new southern oil pipeline that would largely follow the Trans Mountain route before ending at a new marine terminal at Roberts Bank in Delta. Meanwhile, B.C. and Canada have agreed to billions in public funding toward an expanded trade corridor at Roberts Bank.
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Plans for another pipeline to tidewater raise obvious questions. Why should taxpayers shoulder the cost? Will another pipeline meaningfully lower household bills? Why is Canada stepping away from its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
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There is another question that deserves equal attention: What will this project mean for the Salish Sea and the communities, both human and wild, that depend on it?
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A living sea under threat
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The Salish Sea ecosystem is one of Canada’s ecological treasures. It is an inland sea of rocky islands, eelgrass meadows and kelp forests. Ancient shell middens scattered along its shores remind us that Indigenous peoples thrived here for thousands of years before European settlement. Its waters are fed by rivers flowing from the Coast mountains, carrying all five species of Pacific salmon to and from the ocean. Every year, the salmon migration acts as nature’s great energy conveyor belt, carrying ocean nutrients back into coastal forests and sustaining everything from towering cedar trees to bears, eagles and people.
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The Fraser River sits at the heart of this system. Even today, it supports some of the largest salmon runs on Earth. Along its delta, vast mudflats nourish hundreds of thousands of migrating shorebirds that stop to feed on a paper-thin layer of biofilm exposed by the tides.
