British Columbia's (BC) newly elected government is questioning the oil tanker ban along its northern coast but says debate over the federal law belongs in Ottawa.
The federal Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, which went into effect in June 2019, prohibits tankers carrying more than 12,500 metric tonnes of oil from loading, unloading or stopping at ports from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border. The ban has effectively made crude exports from BC's northern coast impossible, to the ire of oil-rich Alberta, and was supported by the outgoing New Democratic Party (NDP) provincial government.
But a 24 October majority win by the Conservative Party of BC may suggest an appetite to revisit the law that premier-elect Lorne Doerkson says "applies to Canadians and nobody else".
"American tankers move oil down this same coast from Alaska every day, and the law says nothing to them. Those are real concerns and British Columbians should know I share them," Doerkson said in a statement to Argus on 27 October.
Issues regarding Canada's west coast waters and the tanker moratorium fall under federal jurisdiction, so cannot be undone by BC. Prime minister Mark Carney agreed with outgoing BC premier David Eby in July to leave the tanker ban intact in exchange for BC to not resist the proposed 1mn b/d Pacific Link pipeline from Bruderheim, Alberta, to Delta, BC.
Doerkson said his focus is on Pacific Link, which was initially spearheaded by the Alberta government but is now a joint venture between Alberta, Canada and Pembina Pipeline. Conservative-led Alberta seeks to capitalize on a change in government in its western neighbour, calling on Carney this week to end the tanker ban and take advantage of the port of Prince Rupert, the deepest port in North America and Canada's closest to Asia.
A proposal to repeal the ban, brought forward by the federal Conservatives, is to be read for the second time in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Bill C-264 would require Carney to reverse his position on the ban only months after his pact with Eby.
Carney's Liberals hold a majority in the House of Commons.
