Media Releases

VANCOUVER, B.C. ─ Diluted bitumen won’t exactly sink most of the time but it won’t exactly float all of the time, either, according to new evidence filed with the Joint Review Panel hearing the Enbridge Northern Gateway application in Prince Rupert. In cross-examination by Ecojustice counsel Karen Campbell today, Enbridge consultants admitted that tank test evidence filed this week found dilbit did submerge beneath the surface of the water, although none was found to have sunk to the bottom of the tank.

VANCOUVER—A report released today by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development supports Living Oceans Society’s contention that the federal government is failing to live up to its international commitments on effective marine protected areas (MPAs) and has left taxpayers exposed to enormous liabilities for oil spills in Canada’s oceans. The report responds to a petition filed by Living Oceans.

SOINTULA, B.C.— Another small Japanese vessel has been located intact among masses of debris accumulating on Vancouver Island’s western shores. Living Oceans Society’s Will Soltau made the discovery while on helicopter surveillance over the west coast of northern Vancouver Island on January 16. The small boat was approximately six meters in length, similar to a skiff found on Spring Island outside the village of Kyuquot, B.C. in August 2012.

VANCOUVER, B.C. ─ A report released today by four environmental groups warns that Kinder Morgan’s new Trans Mountain Pipeline proposal represents an exponential increase in the risk of a major marine-based oil spill affecting the Salish Sea’s most populous region, including the Cities of Vancouver and Victoria and the Southern Gulf Islands. The report analyses the insurance available to pay for spill response costs and damages caused by such a spill and concludes that Canadian taxpayers could be on the hook for as much as 90 percent of the cost.

Vancouver, B.C.— Living Oceans Society is pleased to hear a number of the Conservation Coalition recommendations were adopted by the Cohen Commission, reinforcing the concerns of DFO’s mismanagement and the serious threat of net-pen salmon farms on the British Columbia coast. The Cohen report is further proof that a transition away from an open-net pen salmon farming to closed containment is needed immediately.

VANCOUVER – Living Oceans Society today released documentation showing that the controversial ocean dumping of iron sulphate, conducted by Old Masset Village and Russ George this summer, was presented to the Credit Union financing the project as a scheme to sell carbon credits, rather than a serious science project.

Vancouver, B.C.— The Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform (CAAR) is appalled to learn that on October 10, DFO quietly issued a new aquaculture licence to Mainstream Canada for another open net-pen salmon farm in Clayoquot Sound. The new site is located in Fortune Channel near Plover Point on Meares Island.

Tofino, B.C. – Environmental groups have written an angry letter to Premier Christy Clark for allowing the approval of a new salmon farm site in Clayoquot Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island while never addressing serious concerns about diseases from farms impacting wild salmon. On October 3rd the Province offered Mainstream Canada a 55-hectare salmon farm tenure on the shores of Meares Island, near Plover Point, in the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

VANCOUVER, B.C. ─ In a poll released today by Living Oceans Society, B.C. residents living along the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline route ranked pipeline and tanker issues virtually neck-and-neck with the economy as the most important issue facing the province today and more important than health care, which took the number three spot.