Trudeau undoes father's legacy, former minister says
David Anderson was a driving force behind the existing moratorium on tanker traffic on British Columbia's West Coast.
But the former minister of environment and minister of fisheries in previous Liberal governments is not celebrating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's announcement this week that the tanker ban on the North Coast will be enshrined in law.
Anderson, now retired, was a backbencher in the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's father. In 1971, he helped persuade the prime minister to bring in the moratorium.
"We managed to get him to put a ban on tanker traffic on the coast, north and south," Anderson said in an interview with On the Island host Gregor Craigie. "Except for a grandfathered limit to the exports from the Trans Mountain dock to the same level as 1971."
This week's promise to turn the policy banning tankers in the north into legislation, he said, is not "considerable."
"Legislation can be changed, just as policy can be changed," he said.
"At the same time, Pierre Elliott Trudeau's son has removed his father's moratorium on the South Coast, with the grandfathering of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain dock delivery," Anderson said.
A definite step back
"So, I think there's been a definite step back in terms of coastal protection."
Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, approved Tuesday in Ottawa, will increase the number of tankers moving through the Port of Vancouver and the South Coast from the current level of five to 34 per month.
Some observers predict the bitumen-carrying pipeline will never be built as years of legal challenges lie ahead.
Challenged Alaska pipeline, tankers
Anderson is familiar with legal challenges over pipelines. In 1971, before the first Trudeau government brought in its tanker moratorium, he made headlines in the United States when he took his campaign against pipelines and tankers there.
On Feb. 17, 1971, the New York Times reported Anderson's role in a group that petitioned the United States District Court here to be allowed to intervene in a suit aimed at halting construction of the trans‐Alaska oil pipeline.
The pipeline was ultimately built, but opponents succeeded in preventing oil from Alaska from travelling down the B.C. coast.
To hear the full interview with David Anderson go to Trudeau undoes father's legacy, former minister says
