Elizabeth May
Mr. Speaker, I am reminded of something I was asked to say by one of my constituents, the Honourable Pat Carney. She used to be the federal minister of energy. She asked me to please mention that there is no oceans protection plan, that there seems to be an oceans protection wish list. She would like to see a plan.
I hope my hon. colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo will not mind if I correct something that came up in an earlier part of the debate, which is the idea that bitumen moving by train represents a threat. Solid bitumen moving by rail can neither spill nor catch fire. It does not represent a threat.
I respect the work of my friend from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. However, I wanted to put on the record as well that there is a very strongly worded letter that was sent to the Prime Minister and Premier Horgan from Tsartlip First Nation, which is within the boundaries of my riding. I respect Tsartlip First Nation enormously on a nation-to-nation basis. They have a specific set of treaties members may have heard of from southern Vancouver Island called the Douglas treaties. They have not been consulted at all, and the shipping lanes for the tankers loaded with dilbit go right through their treaty-protected territory.
I wonder if my hon. colleague has any comments.
Cathy McLeod – Member for Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo
Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that if there is transport by train, if they are concerned about bitumen in the ocean they need to also be concerned about bitumen in the rivers, which is much more likely when there is transport by train than transport by pipeline. We actually want to prevent these. However, here we are fighting the NDP and the Green, both in the province of British Columbia and throughout Canada. They fight against the pipeline when it is going to go to refineries, but they do not worry about all those tankers going down the St. Lawrence. We have not heard a peep about those. Now there is not a peep about the pipeline; it is all about the ocean.
I do not think it really matters what it is, they are simply going to argue against it because they do not want oil extracted from the oil sands for the benefit of all Canadians.