News

The Coal Hard Facts: Coal Shipment Impacts on the Sunshine Coast on Nov. 23rd held at the Sechelt Indian Band Hall in Sechelt was a resounding success.  Over 150 people packed the SIB Hall, including Chief Garry Feschuk, District 46 School Trustee, Lori Dixon and SCRD Councilor Donna Shugar, for an informative and lively two and one-half hour meeting.

The agenda with speakers and panelists is noted below as is a list of very useful internet resources for your information.  

The meeting was videotaped by Eoghan Moriarty, one of our speakers, and will be up for viewing, likely later this week.  Eoghan has a number of video pieces on You Tube on the issue of coal shipments that are well worth watching including clips of Dr. Frank James, our keynote speaker, videotaped at other meetings over coal shipments.  Go to www.youtube.com/user/mindagape.

 

Port Metro Vancouver released it’s sham 'environmental assessment' of the proposed coal loading facilities at Surrey Fraser docks on Monday, November 19th.  The study has been roundly criticized as being wholly inadequate.   It uses out of date information and incorrect statistics.  It fails to address human health impacts. It doesn’t look beyond the mouth of the Fraser River or consider any impacts en route to Texada Island.  Port Metro Vancouver has limited the window for public comments to just 30 days, ending on December 19th.  They are not obligated to consider or even publish the comments received!

Both the federal and provincial governments are ducking any responsibility to ensure that full and open human health and environmental impacts studies are conducted on the issue of shipping US thermal coal via Canadian ports.  Port Metro Vancouver, which profits from the movement of the very product it is supposedly studying, is in a dramatic conflict of interest.  Were it another commodity being shipped we’d call Port Metro Vancouver’s efforts a whitewash in the making, but it seems the more appropriate term is ‘blackwash’.

 

Fortunately, Eoghan Moriarty has set up the Real Port Hearings website as a place where you can send your comments to Port Metro Vancouver and they will automatically be directed to other appropriate authorities.  More importantly your comments will be made public on the Real Port Hearing website to ensure that there is a full public record of those comments that Port Metro Vancouver and the provincial and federal governments simply cannot deny.  We urge you to write to Port Metro Vancouver to express your views via the Real Port Hearings website www.realporthearings.org before December 19th and to encourage your family and friends to do likewise.

 

We also urge you to go on line and sign The Dogwood Initiative’s Beyond Coal petition and encourage your family and friends to do likewise.  Go to www.dogwoodinitiative.org/beyondcoal.

 

Jef Keighley, for

Alliance 4 Democracy – Sunshine Coast

Sunshine Coast Conservation Association

Sunshine Coast Senior Citizens – COSCO-BC

 

 

      

SIB Chief Garry Feschuck                                                                  MLA Nicholas Simons, Dr. Kathryn Harrison, Andre Sobolewski

 

 

                    

Jeremy Valeriote, SCCA; Dianne Sanford, Friends of Forage Fish; Carol Ann Leishman, Pebble in the Pond Environmental Society;

Laura Benson, Dogwood Initiative