If a tanker were to spill oil off Canada’s Pacific coast today, the Canadian government would not have the resources to handle a large-scale disaster, warns the leader of the province of British Columbia.
“We are woefully under-resourced,” said Premier Christy Clark in an interview with the public broadcaster, CBC.
Pipelines will cross the western-most province if the federal government has its way. They would carry bitumen extracted from oilsands in the neighbouring province of Alberta to ports on the west coast. However the pipelines could not be built without permits from the B.C. government.
Premier sticks to safety demands
Clark said 15 months ago that “world-leading marine oil spill response, prevention and recovery systems for British Columbia” were among the conditions the federal government and the province of Alberta would have to meet in exchange for her support of any pipelines running through her province.
The federal government announced in March a number of steps to develop a world-class tanker safety system, including the creation of a panel to review Canada’s current system and propose measures to strengthen it.
The federal minister of natural resources has said the system in place now can handle a fairly large oils spill off the B.C. coast. Clark appears to disagree.
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