Tanker size is a flick of a pen, there is already a exemption mechanism built into existing laws. Just takes a ministerial order. The industrial carbon tax is a non issue, its been estimated it adds 9 cents to a barrel of oil. Thats peanuts on the dollar to companies.
Wait and see what happens on May 26th
Ottawa should scrap unnecessary offshore tanker ban for sake of Canada’s economy
On May 26, a private member’s bill (
C-264) is up for debate in the House of Commons. The bill is short and sweet, with a single proposed action: “The Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, chapter 26 of the Statutes of Canada, 2019, is repealed.” That’s it, the whole shebang.
Of course, compared to any kind of transport—tankers, pipelines, railways, highways—private member bills tend to go nowhere fast. But this bill—to repeal the federal government’s tanker ban—is worthy of greater consideration given its importance to Canada’s economy.
The biggest reason to repeal the ban is that there was never a legitimate reason for it in the first place. Oil, fuel and large vessels with large fuel tanks have been transiting the waters of northern British Columbia, moving to and from Alaska to the U.S. mainland and points farther south for many decades, with great safety.
As we noted
in a study published by the Fraser Institute in 2017 (just a couple of years before the Trudeau government enacted the tanker ban), there has not been a single major spill from oil tankers or other vessels in Canadian waters, east coast or west, since the mid-1990s (and that was a fuel leak, not an oil spill). There have been a few smaller fuel and oil spills, but nothing large or damaging by international standards.
And according to a
study by the federal government, a major spill of more than 10,000 tonnes is likely to occur once
every 242 years. Likewise, a spill of 100 to 1,000 tonnes is expected to occur once
every 69.2 years. And the
history of oil transport off of Canada’s coasts is one of incredible safety, whether the transport is of Canadian or foreign origin.
That’s why the tanker ban (officially known as Bill C-48) was actually never about environmental protection. It was about stopping pipelines. Back then, the target was the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline project—now, it’s a potential million-barrel-per-day pipeline from Alberta to B.C. Indeed, under the
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed last November by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, the new pipeline would allow Canadian oil to be exported to Asia and points west, breaking the buyer’s monopoly currently enjoyed (but increasingly unneeded) by the United States. This is, in theory at least, in line with the prime minister’s stated preference for the diversification of Canadian trade.
Large vessels have been transiting the waters of northern B.C. for many decades with great safety.
www.fraserinstitute.org
www.ctvnews.ca
