Confused Councillors Retract Tanker Ban Votes

Canada’s West Vancouver council is preparing to revisit the unanimously approved recommendation to ban LNG tanker traffic in Howe Sound after several councillors said they did not understand the content of the motion they voted on.

Craig Cameron, one of the councillors confused by the matter, said he didn’t realize he had voted to send a recommendation to Ottawa Government to ban LNG tanker traffic in Howe Sound until he read it in the newspaper, The Vancouver Sun reports.

Cameron, a West Vancouver councillor, had been part of a unanimous vote on July 21, which took place after a presentation on the environmental risks stemming from tanker traffic from the proposed Woodfibre liquefied natural gas plant in Squamish.

Cameron said that the mistake left him feeling “irritated”, stating that politicians cannot allow themselves to make such decisions without having all the relevant information, and also hearing what the other side has to say.

“It wasn’t a very sober, objective consideration… you can’t let politics trump good decision making,” Cameron said.

Mayor Michael Smith also said he did not actually understand what he was voting for either — taking full responsibility for the procedural error.

“All blame lies at the feet of the chairman of the meeting,” Smith said. “My legendary impatience sometimes gets the better of me after over an hour of going around in circles on a debate. You get desperate to call a question, any question.”  

The Woodfibre LNG project is a proposed small-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing and export facility, located approximately seven kilometres southwest of Squamish, British Columbia.

The project would be located on an existing industrial site, the former Woodfibre pulp mill, which is well suited for conversion to a LNG facility.

Natural gas would be delivered to the Woodfibre site through the existing and expanded FortisBC pipeline, where it would be liquefied and loaded into carriers for shipment.

It is currently anticipated that the project could export approximately two million tonnes of LNG per year, which is about one-tenth of the anticipated volume of some of the large LNG projects proposed for northern B.C.

The cost of the project is approximately USD 1.46 billion.