By the Canadian Press

KITIMAT, B.C. – Residents of Kitimat will cast votes in a local plebiscite Saturday for or against the multibillion-dollar Northern Gateway pipeline.

The District of Kitimat has remained neutral on the $6-billion project, but the vote will decide council’s position.

“We’ll see what the people of Kitimat want,” said Mayor Joanne Monaghan.

The city on the North Coast would be the end of the pipeline and home of the marine terminal for loading oil onto tankers. Kitimat council’s neutral stance went so far as to keep the city from participating in a federal review panel on the project.

That panel recommended in December that the pipeline be approved, subject to 209 conditions.

The question at hand

Kitimat residents are being asked:

[quote]Do you support the final report recommendations of the Joint Review Panel (JRP) of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and National Energy Board, that the Enbridge Northern Gateway project be approved, subject to 209 conditions set out in Volume 2 of the JRP’s final report?[/quote]

It’s a question about “as hard to nail to the wall as a bit of Jell-O,” said Murray Minchin, a volunteer with the grassroots Douglas Channel Watch.

He describes a campaign that has been outspent, outmanned and outmanoeuvred from the outset. Enbridge’s campaign started months — if not years — ago, Minchin said.

Enbridge spent big bucks wooing Kitimat vote

They faced no spending limits, as provincial election laws didn’t apply to the municipal vote. Northern Gateway had paid canvassers, full-page ads, glossy brochures, a new website and billboards, Minchin said.

Northern Gateway also runs an annual campaign for youth that saw 50 iPads distributed to essay contest winners along the pipeline route in northern B.C. and Alberta, he said.

But Ivan Giesbrecht, spokesman for Enbridge, said the contest has nothing to do with the plebiscite and that only two of the computer tablets went to students in Kitimat.

And yet, Minchin is hopeful the vote will go his way.

Grassroots anti-Gateway campaign grows support

“Four weeks ago we had $200 in the bank. Then we started making lawn signs and started putting those around town and people started coming up to us in the street and handing us money,” he said.

[quote]Somebody even anonymously dropped off a $2,000 money order into one of our mailboxes. Then we got a website that had a donate button.[/quote]

More than $14,000 and 2,000 doorsteps later, Douglas Channel Watch members believe opponents of the pipeline outnumber supporters 3:1.

“Our goal will be to try to get all of those people who said they were going to vote No to actually get out and vote Saturday,” Minchin said.

Results to be revealed at Monday council meeting

Ballots will be counted this weekend and Kitimat council is scheduled to meet Monday night to discuss the results.

Giesbrecht said the vote has been an opportunity to talk to residents.

He declined to say how much the company has spent on the campaign but said there was a temporary website, newspaper and radio ads, and door-to-door canvassers.

The pipeline is worth $5 million in property taxes and 180 jobs for Kitimat, he said.

“It’s a significant proposal for Kitimat, so it’s important that we provide the information that people need to make informed decisions,” Giesbrecht said.

“Regardless of the outcome, our commitment to Kitimat remains unchanged.”

Campaign highlights election law loopholes

Northern Gateway has been a divisive issue across the province and the imbalance in spending power has its critics.

During a provincial election or initiative vote, provincial law limits third-party advertising spending to $3,000 in a single electoral district, and $150,000 overall.

Dermod Travis, of Integrity BC, said those rules don’t apply here but they should.

“It’s really turned into a free-for-all in terms of having any type of democratic order to the vote,” said Travis, whose group was funded by a private businessman to push for democratic reform.

[quote]Having that type of an exercise in a democracy is healthy but it’s not healthy when the scale is so heavily tipped in one direction.[/quote]

But Monaghan said both sides have been out knocking on doors and she expects a true read of what Kitimat residents want.

“Neither of them have gone over that line,” she said of the campaigning.

The federal government is expected to announce a final decision on the pipeline in June.