Media Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – February 2, 2016

Burnaby – First Nations and environmental groups today welcomed the federal government’s announcement of a new “transition process” for projects under environmental review, including Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and oil tanker expansion proposal. However, more detail is needed to determine whether the new review will meet legal obligations to First Nations and succeed in restoring public trust.

Burnaby, BC-First Nations and environmental groups are calling on Prime Minister Trudeau to stop the Kinder Morgan process and honour his promise to restore credibility to the environmental assessment process. The groups believe the process is so catastrophically flawed, there is no way that a final recommendation from the NEB can be considered credible.

VANCOUVER—A new study prepared by Simon Fraser University observes that costs to build the Trans Mountain Expansion Pipeline (TMEP) have risen by $1.3 billion and concludes that, rather than making money for Canada, the pipeline would now actually cost Canadians an estimated $7.4 billion. Oil producers would find lower costs shipping undiluted bitumen by rail; and Canada as a whole would come out ahead if the pipeline were not built.

OTTAWA—Canadian environmental and consumer groups are expressing grave concerns over the U.S. government’s approval of the world’s first genetically modified (GM) food animal, a GM Atlantic salmon that will originate as GM fish eggs produced in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada.

OTTAWA—Environmental groups are in court today to challenge the federal government's approval of an application to manufacture genetically-modified salmon eggs in P.E.I. The eggs would then be shipped to Panama for grow out before being sold as food in North America.

VANCOUVER—Environmental groups are in court today making the case for why the federal government’s approval of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline should be revoked. “There’s too much at stake to let the Panel’s flawed report be the final word on Northern Gateway,” said Ecojustice lawyer Karen Campbell. “The federal government should never have given this project the go-ahead, and our clients will be asking the Court to overturn the approval of this risky project.”

VANCOUVER— Living Oceans Society and some 20 volunteers gathered up an estimated five metric tonnes of marine debris from the remotest shores of northern Vancouver Island over the past two weeks, bagging it all in helicopter lift bags for removal. Nearly all of the debris bore manufacturer’s marks or labels from Japan, meaning it was likely washed to sea by the 2011 Tohoku tsunami. Living Oceans put out an urgent call for funding today, saying that poor weather prevented them from bringing all of the debris in to the landfill over the September long weekend as planned.

VANCOUVER—Environmental organizations, fishermen and David Suzuki joined today in calling on the Province of British Columbia to impose an unequivocal moratorium on the granting of new licences to open netpen fish farms, in the wake of news that new tenures were just issued. On the eve of the B.C. Day long weekend, B.C. Minister of Agriculture Norm Letnick quietly granted the Norwegian salmon farming industry access to four more areas of the B.C. coast. News of the controversial move was posted on a government website, but no announcement was made.