Federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt says the oil-spill liability system she announced in New Brunswick Tuesday is the most robust and comprehensive in the world, but it offers little in the way of comfort and reassurance to those who stand to lose the most in a West Coast oil spill.
The proposed Northern Gateway project would transport 525,000 barrels of oilsands bitumen each day from Alberta to Kitimat, for loading and transport to Asia. Kinder Morgan鈥檚 proposed expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline would triple the flow of crude oil through Port Metro Vancouver to 900,000 barrels a day. These projects would add 600 oil tankers a year to sa国际传媒 coastal traffic, increasing the risk of accidents.
While the odds of a catastrophic spill are statistically small, the effects of such a spill would be so huge that the risk cannot be taken lightly.
The government announced new measures to strengthen its oil-spill response, including removing a $161-million cap on payouts from a national oil-spill compensation fund and making the entire $400-million fund available to cover the costs of a marine spill. With contributions from shipowners鈥� insurance and the international Ship-source Oil Pollution Fund, the total available would be up to $1.6 billion for a spill, Raitt said.
Pardon us British Columbians if we鈥檙e not impressed. We still remember when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska鈥檚 Prince William Sound in 1989, spilling up to 750,000 barrels of crude oil that eventually covered 2,100 kilometres of coastline and 28,000 square kilometres of ocean. Exxon has spent $3.8 billion on cleanup, compensation and fines. It has been 25 years, and remnants of the spill continue to affect Alaska鈥檚 coastal environment.
Raitt says if the cost of coping with a spill exceeds $1.6 billion, Ottawa will pay the cost and then recover the money from industry. But the industry should be on the hook for the whole amount, right from the start. The companies selling and shipping the oil are making the profits; the risk should be theirs entirely.
No amount of money can truly erase the consequences of an oil spill, and calculating only the monetary effects is short-sighted and cynical. That can result in the conclusion that an oil spill can have economic benefits, because of all the workers and spending it would bring to a region.
That might sound like a stretch, but a Northern Gateway witness made that point during testimony before the joint review panel in Prince George in February.
鈥淧art of the evidence in the spill recovery document is, in fact, a lot of those companies in the Alaska communities made more money catering to the cleanup of the spill than they would have under normal circumstances,鈥� the witness said. 鈥淭he net result of these whole compensation schemes is the idea that at the end of the day, nobody is any worse off than they were beforehand.鈥�
That lines up with Oscar Wilde鈥檚 observation about people who 鈥渒now the price of everything and the value of nothing.鈥�
Better than promises of funds to mitigate oil spills would be the promise that they won鈥檛 happen. Of course, the federal government cannot make that assurance, but it can at least place the responsibility for costs squarely and firmly on the shoulders of those making the profits.
