WATCH: Pro-pipeline rally in Victoria gets heated as environmentalists try to share their views. But as Tess van Straaten reports, a new poll says the majority of British Columbians are in favour of the Trans Mountain expansion.
A rally at the B.C. Legislature on Monday afternoon wasn’t your typical Kinder Morgan protest.
“I’m here today because I’m totally disgusted at what our current government is doing!” says Jock McKenzie, who organized the rally in support of the controversial Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
Resource workers from Vancouver Island and beyond gathered to show their support for the project ? and express their frustration at all the political game-playing.
“This government is pitting citizens against citizens and provinces against provinces,” McKenzie says. “I just got so fed up, I thought I have to do something.”
Dick Clancy says he’s so frustrated he came all the way from Courtenay to attend the Victoria rally.
“I want to be here to support progress in this country, support Canada not losing $40 million a day by having to sell our land-locked oil to the US at $19/barrel below market price,” Clancy says.
But anti-pipeline protesters also showed up to try and share their views, which led to some heated debate.
“You’re trying to block progress,” Clancy says to an environmentalist. “You have a very rose-coloured ideology that the world is suddenly going to start working on fairy dust and electric cars ? it isn’t!”
Anti-pipeline protesters say they just want to have a conversation and didn’t expect things to get heated.
“It’s an important conversation so it shouldn’t get heated,” says Michael Berg of the Wilderness Committee. “The future is up to us and what direction we go and what direction we invest in.”
But a new Nanos poll says the majority of Canadians, 67 per cent , and 59 per cent of British Columbians support the pipeline, echoing the findings of four other recent polls.
“It’s damn time the silent majority is standing up,” says Liberal MLA and oil and gas critic Michael Bernier, speaking to the crowd. “It’s not the time to be scaring investment away from British Columbia that will hurt family-supporting jobs. It’s time our voices are heard.”
Tess van Straaten
