BC Liberal Environment Minister Terry Lake (photo: youtube screen capture)

Rafe Responds to BC Environment Minister’s Enbridge Op-ed

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You should read Environment Minister Terry Lake’s op-ed piece in Friday’s Vancouver Sun. If ever you needed proof of the utter incompetence of the Campbell/Clark government this will do it.

He gives the government position re the proposed Enbridge pipeline.

Lake calls for the Joint Review Panel to “successfully complete the environment review process”.

What does that mean, Mr. Lake, when the federal government says that Enbridge will go anyway? Don’t you see that the fix is in!

Have you ever been to such a meeting, minister?

You will find an essential piece missing – namely, can the people of BC give their opinions as to whether or not they want the project in the first place?

Then you call for “World leading marine oil spill reaction, prevention and oil recovery systems for BC’s coastline and ocean to manage and mitigate the risks and cost of heavy oil pipelines and shipments”.

Who writes this crap? The ever-active PR department of Enbridge?

Don’t you understand that spills are inevitable and likely in areas too remote for any machinery to get in? And that there’s very little they can do about it anyway, as demonstrated by Enbridge’s 2010 spill into the Kalamazoo River?

Haven’t you looked at Enbridge’s spill record of more than one per week?

But there is a deeper question minister – don’t you understand that the consequences of spillage of bitumen, whether on land or in the ocean, are many, many times more lethal than the crude oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez?

Don’t you understand that unlike crude oil spills, the bitumen sinks like a rock? With crude oil, the technique of “rafting” corrals the spill and allows much of it to be siphoned off, but that you can’t do that with bitumen?

Don’t you get it? That we’re not talking about risks, but, by Enbridge’s own admission, certainties? Certainties with catastrophic consequences?

I hate to urge people to read the Vancouver Sun, but your article is such appalling drivel that it gives the public a unique opportunity to see the sloppy crap that is your government’s mindless and highly political response to certain destruction of our heritage – all to supply China with bitumen to refine. 

At least you have, by this column, made clear what environmentalists have been saying all along – the Clark government is unfit to govern.

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About Rafe Mair

Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, was Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. In 1981 he left politics for Talk Radio becoming recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists. An avid fly fisherman, he took a special interest in Atlantic salmon farms and private power projects as environmental calamities and became a powerful voice in opposition to them. Rafe is the co-founder of The Common Sense Canadian and writes a regular blog at rafeonline.com.

10 thoughts on “Rafe Responds to BC Environment Minister’s Enbridge Op-ed

  1. Canada is rotten to the core with corruption. Never in our history, have we even seen Canada brought down so low. We live in a dictatorship, a country that has no more honor, only shame and disgrace.

    Harper’s stacked panel for Enbridge is such as, Colin Hansen’s stacked panel, for the HST. Both panels are laughable.

    BC province and the people, have no say over Alberta and their citizens. Alberta certainly doesn’t mind dictating to BC. Premier Redford seems to think, it is her God given right, to force her dirty Bitumen onto BC.

    Harper nor Redford could care less, Enbridge hasn’t cleaned up their last 804 spills. Neither Harper nor Redford will lose anything, when one of those massive tankers spill into our sea. Nor do they care when the Enbridge pipes burst on, land, rivers or streams.

    While other country’s are escorting China off their territories, Harper brings that country, right onto our Canadian soil.

    The people of BC know better than to trust Lake, or any BC Liberal. We know the BC Liberals work for Harper.

    Harper is giving Canada to Red China. Harper is giving China, all the tar sands jobs too.

  2. This project brings with it the ability to totally destroy a nation. If not now it surely will in a few short future years. It has already proceeded far too long and much damage, undoable damege has occured. If we proceed with it we do it at our own peril!
    Tonight on CTV we learned that enbridge wants the NEB to look into their allegations that opposition envitonmentalists are being funded by U.S. interests. Is this the jurisdiction or mandate of the NEB??. I think not!
    Now as taxpayers we are expected to pay for their delusions?

  3. Lake is ‘dead man walking’, as is Clark, Enbridge and eventually Harper, Oliver and Kent.

    None of these fools took the will of or the strength of common purpose the residents of BC present when we are shit upon by pompous, profligate bullies .

    It’s them or us, and ‘us’ ain’t giving our province or its contents away anymore.

    Not without a fight, and my experience with bullies is that they never let their legs see their nose bleed.

  4. Chavez wins the election based on socializing the countries petroleum resources. This wins him support and praise from the citizens. In contrary, Canada’s government want to sell off all petroleum assets to any country or corporation that can come up with money now. This is not exactly what Canada’s population wants, or needs for the future.
    This could be why most Canadians are ashamed of their so called ‘Leader’

  5. Exxon, I’m sure, had “world-leading” oil spill contingencies … as did BP in the Gulf of Mexico. And in spite of that these places will never recover, never be the same – just ask the fishers who used to make a living from those waters.

    Having said that, neither of these places is the coast of BC. A spill here would have spread a hundred miles before Enbridge even begins to mobilize any equipment. I suspect Minister Lake doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, because he has never actually been out on the water on the North Coast.

  6. Lake is a complete ass; well one has to be in the clark government. Lies, deciet, and incompetance is the hallmark of the BC Liberals.

    As for the Vancouver Sun; “If you tell an Enbridge lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe the Enbridge lie. The Enbridge lie lie can be maintained only for such time as the BC Liberals can shield the people from the political, economic and/or media consequences of the Enbridge lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the BC Liberals to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of theEnbridge lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the Vancouver Sun.”

  7. You hit the nail on the head … “appalling drivel”. This government and the one in Ottawa have their own agenda and to hell what the people of this province want. After all we are all “eco-terrorists”!!! How dare we oppose the pipeline and resultant oil supertankers! How dare we put a world class ecological treasure ahead of the economy! Oil sales to China are far to important. Anyway, Enbridge knows best, certainly not any scientist or engineer.

  8. Terry Lake is an idiot, can you believe he was a doctor before becoming a gutless bootlicker.,,

    Can you believe these clowns, now they are advocating lifting the BC offshore oil n gas drilling moratorium, maybe they missed this..

    http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2012/10/breaking-news-b-p-deepwater-horizon.html

    And what I don`t understand, how come the Enbridge NEB hearings haven`t been canceled?

    http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2012/10/enbridge-hearings-to-neb-panel-must-be.html

    Enbridge and this proposal is dead, period..

    Good Day

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