The Tyee: Feds Undercut BC's Oil Spill Prevention Panel

[tuvor]

Tories rewriting safety regs with no input from their own expert panel, says member.

Many British Columbians watching the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are wondering what safeguards are in place to ensure such a disaster does not happen here. What they don't know is that the federal government recently made sweeping changes to the primary advisory panel put in place to ensure that a major oil spill does not occur on the B.C. coast.

Those changes have weakened the panel's power to prevent a disaster, according to one current member, as well as other sources interviewed by The Tyee.

The Pacific Regional Advisory Council on Oil Spill Response (Pacific RAC) is one of six such bodies nation-wide that was brought in after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. These are independent panels are composed of local experts and mandated under the Canada Shipping Act to advise the federal minister of transport on:

"-- an adequate level of oil spill preparedness and response in each region; and

"-- to promote public awareness and understanding of issues and measures with respect to preparedness."

The need for such oversight would seem a given, as the B.C. government led by Premier Gordon Campbell has supported opening the coast to offshore oil drilling as well as new pipelines connecting the tar sands in Alberta with B.C ports, any of which would result in more tankers traveling up and down this province's coastline.

Yet...

http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/05/31/OilSpillPrevention/