Dear Vancouver Sun editor;

While US pressure to clean up the tarsands may bolster big oil’s desire for a back door to China, the widespread opposition of British Columbians should not be so readily discounted.  

While Stephen Harper’s friends in Calgary may be salivating over a new pipeline to, and super tanker port in, Kitimat, British Columbians aren’t.

Barbara Yaffe fails to recognize that it is British Columbians, not the oil industry, that will decide whether Enbridge’s pipeline super tanker proposal BC goes ahead or not.

We have watched with horror as feeble rules, timid petro dollar obsessed governments and lax enforcement combined to devastate the lives and livelihoods of thousands in Michigan and the Gulf Coast. The only way British Columbians can guarantee that the same doesn’t happen here is to ensure that risky oil projects like Enbridge’s never get built.

Vaughn Palmer observed that federal and provincial candidate in coastal BC running on a pro-oil platform had lost. While the Conservatives may be pro supertanker, Michael Ignatief and Jack Layton have committed to a legislated ban on oil tankers through BC’s north coast. I doubt the Enbridge and BP spills will bolster support for pro-oil candidates in the next election.

To read Barbara Yaffe's Vancouver Sun column: Knocking oilsands bolsters Northern Gateway