Following the big US money behind Canadian pipeline protests

Last week I watched news coverage of Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart getting arrested at Burnaby Mountain, the site of a protest against Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project. Despite the pipeline being federally approved, there was May, Kennedy and hundreds of other protesters in civil contempt for blocking a road giving access to construction workers. The project would twin an existing pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby, a Vancouver suburb, allowing a tripling of crude oil from 300,000 barrels to 890,000 barrels a day, while also triggering a seven-fold increase in the number of oil tankers coming and going from Vancouver Harbour. Justin Trudeau's Liberals approved the project in 2016, along with Enbridge's Line 3 from Alberta to Wisconsin, justifying the decision with a quid pro quo to implement a national carbon tax to cut greenhouse gas emissions. His government at the same time killed the Northern Gateway Pipeline Project -- a plan by Enbridge to ship oil sands crude across northern BC and Alberta ending in Kitimat -- citing too much First Nations opposition and risk of a tanker spill in the storm-prone Douglas Channel.

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