The Toronto Star’s Calgary apologist, Gillian Steward, thinks maybe Alberta premier Rachel Notley can frighten her former ally, B.C. premier John Horgan, into approving the Trans Mountain pipeline. It seems that the Alberta premier has committed $3.7 billion to lease 4,400 rail tanker cars to carry diluted bitumen to Burrard Inlet. The objective is not just to carry the tar sands output but to show the B.C. premier that rail is not as safe as pipelines.
And if there is a serious derailment of bitumen-loaded tanker cars, it will be John Horgan’s fault. While the logic of this might confuse some readers, Steward goes on to list some of the recent accidents that might or might not have involved bitumen. She takes special note of the run-a-way freight train near Lake Louise that headed west with nobody at the controls. The killing of three Canadian Pacific employees and the derailment of 99 cars and two locomotives was horrific enough but if I was on the Transportation Safety Board, I would be having loud discussions with CP management about what the hell they think they are running?
What is just the icing on the cake, among all the failings of the CPR, is the ridiculous sight recently of two CP Rail trains colliding in the rail yards in Calgary. What were they doing? Practicing?
With hundreds of thousands of barrels of diluted bitumen being shipped south, east and west from Alberta every day, people are soon going to learn the difference between bitumen and crude oil. Crude can be cleaned up. Bitumen becomes part of the environment.
It sometimes appears that John Horgan and his NDP government in B.C. are the only adults in Western Canada. They have stood with the aboriginal groups, they have approved liquified natural gas shipping that can be done safely and they have shown their concern for the remaining Orcas in the Salish Sea. They are doing their job in a responsible manner. Others should do likewise.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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