Harper Shrugs Off 35-Year Ban On Risky Tanker Traffic

Harper apparently figures the risk to the environment and his political standing is worth it given the stakes. The stakes being the melding of Alberta and B.C. into one seamless infrastructure designed to extract, move and profit from petroleum-based energy. More about that vision in a minute, but first a brief history of the moratorium the PM says never really existed. Ever since Trudeau... Former Liberal environment minister David Anderson was there when it came into being. Actually, he was instrumental. In 1971 he and others successfully sued the U.S. government to prevent tankers laden with Alaskan oil from endangering the Canadian coastline. Congress then took it up and the two countries entered into an understanding that U.S. oil vessels would stay 70 nautical miles offshore. It's a fact reflected on nautical charts still. Anderson told The Tyee he convinced the prime minister at the time, Pierre Trudeau, to go a step further and ban offshore oil drilling along B.C.'s coast, and to apply the U.S. tanker ban to other oil carriers as well, a practice that has been maintained by every federal government, until now. The offshore drilling moratorium is still in place (for now). As is the diplomatic understanding concerning the Alaska tankers. So why is Harper turning a blind eye to other carriers? http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/04/30/OilCoast/

Note: http://thetyee.ca/Views...