Vancouver City Council may soon go to court asking for a judicial review of the B.C. government’s decision to support the controversial Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion.
The motion by Councillor Adriane Carr was scheduled for a vote February 8, then deferred to a council committee meeting February 22. If it passes, the city will ask a judge to assess whether the five conditions the province attached to its pipeline approval have been met.
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“If the City of Vancouver moves forward with a judicial review and if we win in court—which is my hope that we do—[the project] will require a new environmental assessment,” Carr explained.
She said the province had failed to conduct proper public consultations or fully study the impacts of a bitumen spill in Vancouver’s harbour, or along the B.C. coast. If those conditions had been met, she contended, the province would not have approved the pipeline.
“If there is real and genuine consultation with First Nations, and real and genuine consultation with the public, and real and thorough technical reports that model what bitumen does” during an ocean spill, she said, “I believe the outcome will be a no.”
