Urgent Action - You Just Bought a Pipeline

We just bought our children a dirty pipeline.

Flawed.

Failing.

A financial wreck.

An ecological disaster.

You just bought a pipeline.

Paddling to the Kinder Morgan facility in Burrard Inlet You’re writing the cheque, and you’ll be paying for it for the rest of your life. And so will our children.

I’m sure you are as outraged as I am at the Trudeau government’s decision to bail out Kinder Morgan and buy their pipeline. But it isn’t the government who has to pay for it – it’s us.

It’s not just $4.5 billion (or more!) in payment in dollars. We will be paying for this pipeline forever by becoming wholesale contributors to more greenhouse gas emissions, hastening more irreversible climate damage, permitting the blind and outright dismissal of indigenous rights and communities, and by weakening our international reputation and shunning our obligations, under such agreements as The Paris Climate Accord.

We look like utter fools.

Please send your letter to Prime Minister Trudeau today.

Thank you for taking action,

Gretchen Fitzgerald - National Program Director

To: The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada *

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Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,
 
I am writing to appeal to you as a parent.
 
I am shocked and deeply saddened by your decision to buy into the Kinder Morgan TransMountain pipeline project. Shocked because we’ve committed to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. Saddened because I know a better choice is possible.
 
We can’t buy into pipelines at a time when climate change threatens the future for all our children. At a time when global leaders have agreed we need to switch away from fossil fuels. At a time when Canada itself has no credible plan to meet its current weak climate targets, not to mention ambitious targets that would keep carbon pollution at safe levels.
 
The Kinder Morgan pipeline is contested by five indigenous communities, in our courts: Tsleil-Waututh Nation, Squamish Nation, Coldwater Indian Band, Upper Nicola Band, Stk’emlupsemc Te Secwepemc and Sto:lo, and other organizations. If a privately owned pipeline could not be built and respect indigenous rights and the rule of law, it is not a project we should promote, never mind own.

You don’t need to be reminded of the fact that the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby have rejected the pipeline, in addition to millions of people across Canada who put you into power and gave you a mandate to fulfill.

Your decision to purchase this pipeline commits us to further tar sands expansion, directly impacting local communities through air and water pollution, contaminating critical watersheds, and destroying land.
 
As a taxpayer and citizen, I want no part of this project. 
 
There was a better way. True leadership means making tough, principled decisions, and, yes tempering personal political ambitions for the sake of broader goals.

This is the type of leadership that Canadians supported in the 2015 election. In a single stroke, and by pandering to fossil fuel investors rather than citizens, you have reversed Canada’s potential to be a climate leader, and tarnished our fragile commitment to respect the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
 
This move to buy into the Kinder Morgan pipeline will entrench opponents, and lead to deepening conflicts along the pipeline route. I fear for the safety of those - including mothers, grandmothers, and young people - who are committed to peacefully opposing the pipeline and those who will be called to defend the government’s indefensible decision. 
 
In a time of climate crisis, your kids deserve better. Every child does. 
 
Yours Truly,

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