British Columbia’s new government vowed to use “every tool” to thwart Kinder Morgan Inc.’s US$5.8 billion oil pipeline expansion, saying it plans to join legal opposition to Canadian federal approval of the project.
“The expanded Kinder Morgan pipeline is not in B.C.’s best interests,” George Heyman, environment minister of the New Democratic Party-led government which took power last month, said in Vancouver Thursday. “A seven-fold increase in heavy oil tankers in B.C.’s coastal waters is simply too great a risk to our environment, our economy and to thousands of existing jobs.”
The province has hired Thomas Berger, a former Supreme Court judge, to advise it as it seeks to become an intervenor in a judicial review of the November decision by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to back the project. Berger, a renowned Canadian legal figure, was instrumental in the inclusion of aboriginal rights in the country’s 1982 constitution.
Natalie Obiko Pearson – Vancouver Sun – Aug 8, 2017.