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Federal NDP: Regardless of pipeline’s fate, B.C. coast needs protection

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh: Regardless of the fate of $7.4-billion Trans Mountain Expansion project, the Liberal government must implement its national Ocean Protection Plan.

 NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh: Regardless of the fate of $7.4-billion Trans Mountain Expansion project, the Liberal government must implement its national Ocean Protection Plan.   Photograph By Patrick Doyle, The Canadian PressNDP Leader Jagmeet Singh: Regardless of the fate of $7.4-billion Trans Mountain Expansion project, the Liberal government must implement its national Ocean Protection Plan. Photograph By Patrick Doyle, The Canadian Press

No matter what happens with the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, the federal government should implement improved marine protections, said NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, in Cowichan Bay, on Wednesday.

The NDP leader, on his last day on Vancouver Island as part of a cross-country tour, said regardless of the fate of $7.4-billion Trans Mountain Expansion project, the Liberal government must implement its national Ocean Protection Plan.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau launched that $1.5-billion plan in November 2016, to: improve marine safety and responsible shipping; protect Canada's marine environment; and offer new possibilities for Indigenous and coastal communities.

However, while on Vancouver Island last month, Trudeau said that climate change and spill protection programs in the plan won’t go ahead unless the pipeline expansion is built.

Trudeau said the pipeline is a key component of the federal government’s approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which means Ottawa had to get a national agreement on carbon pricing that will allow Canada to meet its international commitments on climate change.

“But in order to do that, part of moving forward is approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which will be able to get our resources responsibly and safely to new markets across the Pacific,” said Trudeau, adding the government's ocean protection plan will better protect the coastline from oil spills at the same time.

“It is in the national interest to move forward with the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and we will be moving forward with the Kinder Morgan pipeline,” Trudeau has said.

Trudeau made clear the pipeline expansion and the its two key environmental programs pursued by B.C. are a package deal.

Singh criticized the federal Liberals Wednesday for failing to provide those protections regardless, citing the decline of the southern resident killer whale population and the decline of salmon stocks.

“When our salmon stocks are threatened the entire eco-system is put at risk, as well as the jobs that depend on these stocks,” Singh said, in Duncan.

“Now the Liberals are holding these whales hostage, and threatening our entire coastal environment, unless they get what they want,” said Singh, in a news release. “That is unacceptable.”

Singh has been outspoken against the federal approval of the pipeline expansion project and the process by which it was OK’d.

Late last week, environmentalists criticized the Liberal government’s lack of protective action on the southern resident killer whale population which has dropped to a critical number of 76 with no new births recorded since 2015.

Conservationists and environmental groups including the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, have been petitioning the federal government to better protect the southern resident killer whales.

Amongst other things, they want salmon habitat protected commercial shipping traffic slowed in critical feeding areas to limit acoustic interference and to restrict fishing on specific Chinook salmon populations that feed the southern resident killer whales.

Singh will wrap up his Island visit with at “Jagmeet & Greet” at the Ramada Hotel,140 Trans-Canada Hwy, at 4:30 today.

ceharnett@timescolonist.com

- with files from Canadian Press

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