A Senate committee calls the federal government’s North Coast oil tanker ban bill divisive, discriminatory, and says it will ramp up resentment of Indigenous Peoples.
The transportation committee’s report on Bill C-48, which would formalize the moratorium on heavy oil tanker traffic in sensitive waters off northern B.C., recommends that the government should not proceed with the bill.
The report says the tanker ban, combined with other government initiatives, would have a quote “ruinous effect on Canada’s resource industry and economy,” specifically Alberta.
Alberta Senator Paula Simons noted that Nisga’a Nation President Eva Clayton spoke out against the moratorium in areas covered by the Nisga’a Treaty.
Committee Chair and report author, Conservative Senator David Tkachuk, concludes that C-48 is “harmful, unscientific, discriminatory,” and motivated by partisan political considerations.
If Senators vote to pass the committee report, the bill would defeated; an extremely rare move by the red chamber.
