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Letters: Kinder Morgan in town

Weekly editors to the editor from within the Sooke community.

I’m writing to remind your readers that a delegation from Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project will be addressing the District of Sooke’s Committee of the Whole on Tuesday, April 7 beginning at 7 p.m.

There are approximately 75 seats in council chambers, and I anticipate a full house given the thousands of locals deeply concerned about the potential impacts of increased tanker traffic in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Get there early if you want a ringside seat!

While the meeting’s format doesn’t allow the public to directly question Kinder Morgan’s representatives, we’re counting on our elected officials to ask some tough questions if and when they get the chance that night. We’d like to know if it’s true that the company’s legal responsibilities to the people of B.C. end the moment an oil tanker leaves the dock.

Why should the people of Sooke trust Kinder Morgan when it has refused to answer hundreds of legitimate questions from interveners during the National Energy Board review?

And does this Texas-based multi-national corporation recognize that it lacks “social license” to pursue the project when our First Nations and hundreds of thousands of residents have publicly challenged the constitutionality of the Trans Mountain review?

Mayor Tait has acknowledged that she doesn’t know if the Kinder Morgan team will stick around on April 7 to hear public comments. Let’s hope they do. More than 70 percent of Sooke voters who cast a ballot on Nov. 15 indicated they were opposed to more offshore tanker traffic.

Now let’s reiterate our views in respectful fashion by packing council chambers next week, listening carefully, then speaking up in defence of our precious and priceless maritime environment.

Gail Armitage

Sooke