He's saying some of the right things. It's a start.
Prime minister Trudeau has announced a 5-year, 1.5 billion dollar programme to upgrade responses to tanker and oil spills on all three of our coasts.
Trudeau said the funding over five years will include creating a marine safety system, restoring marine ecosystems and research into oil spill cleanup methods.
He called it "the most significant investment ever made to protect our oceans and coastlines."
The announcement, made with Transport Minister Marc Garneau, comes after the minister spent Sunday touring a site on B.C.'s Central Coast where a tugboat ran aground and sank more than three weeks ago, releasing thousands of litres of diesel and lubricants into the water.
"The ongoing incident at Bella Bella is unacceptable," said Trudeau, referring to the spill. "It's time for a change."
Of course the devil is in the details. Let's get the oil spill cleanup problem tackled first and then talk supertankers. I'm pretty sure there'll be a lot of research and little result years after Trudeau has an armada of dilbit supertankers plying the B.C. coast. This is one of those hot button items that seems tailor made for weasel words and wiggle room.
Unless Trudeau produces some pretty impressive, concrete actions leading to real solutions, the announcement is probably little more than dinner and a movie before the screwing. We had enough of that from Harper's gang.
6 comments:
.. sounds ominous to me..
A bad analogy would be - a special response group to assaults on woem & children - wonderful after the assault happens.. but how about a special response group to look hard at previous offenders or those 'known to authorities' for previous complaints or reports of intimidation.
The idea of anchoring environmental protection with after the catastrophe flailing upon the waters or land, I feel is ludicrous.. its like a close the door response group for horses that have left the barn .. another bad analogy, but what the hey.. Justin will train First Nations to respond and clean up the catastrophic damages to marine ecosystems.. and save the boreal caribou that are on the road to extinction. Forget the wild salmon, Harper saw to that - and had his bumboy 'Ministers' on tap to cheerfully tell Canadians how wonderful our energy superpower status was for all of us. Kind of like the Christy Clark LNG for Asia unicorn fairy tale..
Its all smokescreen.. at 250 million per hear for 5 years.. drop in the bucket bandaid bullshit.. as if species or ecosystems have a pricetag, or tourism, or sportfishing, wild fisheries lr cultures such as First Nations that have been successful stewards for as long as 13,000 years.. until greasy political sellout faux evangel thugs came along to trash it all in decades.. or less
Sal, I really want to believe him, at least give Trudeau the benefit of the doubt that this time he's sincere. Just the timing of the announcement, when he most needs a smokescreen before his Kinder Morgan decision, makes that difficult.
Promising a programme of "research into oil spills" sounds like he's planning on putting the supertanker cart before the oil spill horse. I still remember Peter Kent saying that EnviroCan was busy conducting research into oil spills and how to clean up a massive dilbit spill into coastal waters. Promising to look into something and promising to come up with actual solutions are two entirely different things. Trudeau is really promising what Peter Kent promised to no good end.
.. I believe this program is a minimal response to current ludicrous & negligent shortfalls on Canada's coasts. This program should be enhanced, fast tracked & have zero bearing on whether pipeline - supertanker expansion is acceptable.. much less wise. Trudeau has gotten behind Site C & that alone tells me everything I need to know. Tell me Trudeau supports that RAFT concept & I may change my views
Make a lot of noise about spending $1.5B (of our tax $) to make it 'safe' to export dilbit.
The bread is buttered as the ole 'sandwich' strategy unrolls.
Can't wait for the KM meat.
There's probably small print somewhere that says something along the lines of "once the national debt/deficit is slain" or "once the pipeline is approved" or "before my kids graduate their post-doc programs".
I'm not cynical, really. Just world weary.
It's the same old gimmick only this time it's being played by Justin instead of Steve.
I would like a reporter to sit down with Trudeau and ask just a few direct questions:
1. Does dilbit, released into water, sink to the bottom?
2. Can dilbit, once spilled, be recovered before it sinks?
3. If dilbit, once the diluent separates out, sinks to the bottom hundreds of feet below the surface, is there any technology capable of cleaning the seabed?
4. Why has the Trudeau government's environment minister approved the use of Corexit on oil spills when it's a proven hazardous product that, instead of dispersing oil, merely causes it to sink to the bottom?
Peter Kent, dutiful shill that he was, was at least honest enough to admit that the government had no means of cleaning up a dilbit spill at sea. There was no magic wand. What he said was that government scientists were working on the problem. Years later and Trudeau is promising that government scientists will be working on the problem.
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