The City of Bernabé has been at the epicenter of efforts to protect BC coastal water since 2013 when Kinder Morgan applied to the National Energy Board for plans to double their pipeline to bring diluted bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to their terminal in Burrard, in the state. If completed tanker traffic through Georgia straight would go from some 40 tankers to more than 400 a year. First nations, the people of Bernabé and Metro Vancouver, environmental organizations and the municipalities including Victoria, Vancouver and Bernabé have firmly opposed Kinder Morgan's plans, but none has been more outspoken in his opposition than the Mayor of Bernabé, Derek Corrigan. Thank you, Mayor Corrigan for this time. Why are you and the City of Bernabé opposed to Kinder Morgan? Well, tell you, Bernabé is a city that has a very successful economic climate. We've produced a lot of great businesses that come out of our community over the course of many years. When we hear that Kinder Morgan is expanding or wants to expand their pipeline, we treated them with the same respect we give to all of our businesses. We sat down and talked to them for over a year and examined their proposal. We didn't come from an ideological approach. We didn't say no, it's fossil fuels. We're not going to put up with that because we already have the chevron refinery in our community. So we've sent our staff out to follow the route that Kinder Morgan is proposing and we've been appalled. It goes through streams, through park areas, over some of the rivers we protected. It goes through our conservation area. Surprisingly, though, that's the cheapest route for Kinder Morgan to be able to take. It's the one that's going to be least expensive for them. The National Energy Board did not express much interest in the actual impact on the community as a result of the decision that was made. It was always about amelioration of the consequences. It's always about what can they do to deal with the consequences. How many trees can they plant to replace the trees that they've taken down, not whether or not they could find a route that didn't need to take out trees? We kept looking at the project and saying, well, what benefits could it bring to Burnaby? Are there any economic benefits in our community? And we found that at best they could tell us there might be six more jobs, but mainly they focused on, you're going to get more taxes. It was clear that there was very little to be gained here in British Columbia. All of the advantages were being occasioned in either Alberta or in Houston. This is a company of Richard Kinder. This is the company that was born out of Enron. And I don't want anybody to forget about that. They are not a local Canadian company as they like to portray themselves. And they are not the friendly company that they put out in all their advertising. Their reputation as a company is horrendous. The thousands of incidents that have occurred in Kinder Morgan pipelines all over North America are legendary. And their attitude towards the reparations for those kinds of incidents is nothing short of they believe they can operate with impunity. Where is your challenge, the City of Burnaby's challenge to Kinder Morgan pipeline? Where is that at right now? And how strong a case do you think Burnaby has? We continue to litigate against Kinder Morgan. We've litigated against them in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, up to the British Columbia Court of Appeal. We lost all of those cases. We were told consistently that municipalities don't count. The National Energy Board is clothed in the powers of the federal government. And even if it's populated with oil lobbyists, which it is. And so this small group of elite oil magnets are the people that are making decisions on where these pipelines will go. And the 250,000 people in my city have no say in it. And their opinion really is irrelevant in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. We had one option available to us though. And that was to continue through the federal process. And we've done that. We've gone to the federal court of appeal. We're joined there by other municipalities. But most importantly, we're joined there by First Nations. And First Nations have constitutional status. We can only hope that the court will listen. The court will listen to the fact that the Prime Minister himself says you can't trust the process we went through. If you were speaking directly right now to Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Clark, what would you say to them about Kinder Morgan? Well, first of all, in regard to Prime Minister Trudeau, I'd say you lied to the young people in Canada. You told them that you would change the process. And you told them specifically that the Kinder Morgan process would go back to the starting line because you recognized that it was unfair. And that's because these oil lobbyists have incredible power in Ottawa. Not only do they have immense amounts of money, but they have a great deal of control over the bureaucrats and over the politicians. They were at their door immediately and saying, we can't what you said is that we need this pipeline. We want this pipeline. And you're not going to receive the support from business if you don't give us this pipeline. And so Trudeau immediately backtracked from what he told people all across Canada. Well, Christie, you've completely given up any responsibility for your own province. The reality is you should have been in there with a provincial environmental assessment from the very beginning looking at the real impact on your province and your communities. Instead, you just simply seated all of the provincial government powers to the Federal National Energy Board. You know, she made little noises for a while there that she was going to stand up and be counted. And you watched her fold like a cheap suitcase as the pressure came on. Suddenly, Christie, after making all of her bold statements that she was going to stand up for BC, dropped her conditions like they were hot irons. What advice do you have for the residents of the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island who are concerned about the impact of increased tanker traffic through the waters of Georgia straight? So I want to give them credit for being people who care a lot more than the impact on themselves. That being said, all of us realize that if this bitchman oil is traveling by super tankers, by these Afro-Max tankers, it's only a matter of time before there's going to be a serious accident. The promises have been made about world-class preservation of any of these areas and that they're going to have world-class emergency reactions to any of these are ridiculous. When have you ever seen these world-class reactions save anything? Ask people in the Gulf of Mexico whether their world-class reaction was any kind of solace for the people who suffered as a result of the major incident there. So we listen to all of this and we recognize that they know that an accident can happen. They know because they're prepared to put these resources in to sav their conscience. But the reality is that they are never going to be able to repair the damage that's caused if there is that kind of incident that happens. And I sincerely believe it's only a matter of time. Will we be seeing Derek Corgan in front of the bulldozers? They hope to be doing it by this fall. They are very ambitious. They're pressing ahead. They believe that even though there is pending litigation in the federal court of appeal that with the approvals in place, they can be in actually putting their shovels into the ground. I have done everything I can do to go to the government and ask for help. I've gone to my citizens and I've asked for their help. I have asked companies to stand up including the businesses in our own community. I have nearly exhausted every potential thing I can do to stop something that I know is wrong from happening. And if eventually the only thing I've got left is putting my body in front of a bulldozer, I'll do that too. Because this is too important. This is too important to battle to lose. And it's one in which I spent 30 years as a lawyer and I've spent 30 years as a politician now. And I look at all of that history of being a law abiding citizen, representing the law, being an officer of the court, being a counselor in a mayor that worked very hard to have people respect me and trust me. And then to put that all in the line by disobeying the law and standing in front of a bulldozer doesn't come easily to me. But if it's the only alternative I have, then that's what I'll do. The only thing that gives me some comfort is that I know when that happens. There will be thousands of citizens who will be standing beside me. Thank you.