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OTTAWA — A Senate committee says the Trudeau government’s bill to ban oil tanker traffic off British Columbia’s northern coast should be scrapped because it will divide the country, inflame separatist sentiment in Alberta and stoke resentment of Indigenous Peoples.
That conclusion is contained in a Conservative-written report of the Senate’s transportation and communications committee on Bill C-48. But the sharp partisan tone of the report appears to have backfired, angering even some independent senators opposed to the bill but who are now urging their colleagues to reject the report.
If senators vote to accept the report, that would immediately kill the bill. If they reject the report, the bill would proceed to third reading debate, where all senators would have a chance to propose amendments and decide whether the bill should live or die.
The committee last month passed a motion to not proceed with the bill, which is aimed at formalizing the moratorium on oil tanker traffic in the ecologically sensitive waters off northern B.C. The motion was passed on a tie vote of 6-6, supported by Conservative committee members and Independent Sen. Paula Simons, who represents Alberta.
The report, written by Conservative chair David Tkachuk, is meant to explain why the committee recommended killing the bill. It includes an assertion that the bill is “not as advertised” — the same tag line Conservatives use in a series of ads attacking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Combined with other Trudeau government measures like rejecting the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal and proposing more stringent environmental assessment rules for energy projects, the report argues the Liberals are deliberately “land-locking Prairie oil” and telling Alberta and Saskatchewan “that they have a lesser place in Confederation.”
“This is not just a matter of dampening the economic interests of specific provinces. It is a nationally corrosive and divisive policy which pits one region against another, inflaming separatist sentiment and stoking a misplaced resentment of Indigenous Canadians,” the report says.
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