By Frances Russell | May 23, 2013 It's a testament to how barking mad the frenetic pursuit of oil has become that anyone would even contemplate putting pipelines and oil tankers through not just one of the last most beautiful places on the planet, but one of the last most beautiful places fraught with the double dangers of earthquakes and tsunamis. "It's not just a minor earthquake zone," says Emma Gilchrist of British Columbia's Dogwood Initiative, one of the province's leading environmental organizations with 150,000 signed-up supporters of the "No Tankers" movement. "We are going to have the Big One here in the next 100 years -- that's what all the science says," she continues. "And for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline route, the level of the kind of weather calamities that could happen are absolutely ridiculous. They have tsunamis, some of the most dangerous waters in the world, they have 26-metre-high waves, they have gales, they have six feet of snow..." The August, 2011 issue of National Geographic Magazine featured B.C.'s magnificent Great Bear Rainforest. The article, Pipeline Through Paradise, by Bruce Barcott, opens with the sinking of the B.C. Ferries' Queen of the North on March 22, 2006 as it tried to exit the narrow, 45-mile Grenville Channel between Prince Rupert on the mainland and Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. "The ferry's bow met the island's rock at a speed of 17.5 knots, ripping a hole in the hull. It came to rest one hour and 20 minutes later under 1,400 feet of water. Of the 101 people aboard, 99 survived thanks to the citizens of nearby Hartly Bay who put their fishing boats to sea on a windy, rainy night...Every day, a little more fuel leaks out of her tanks, which still hold tens of thousands of gallons of diesel... "It opened our eyes to what happens in a disaster," Helen Clifton, a matriarch of the Gitga'at, one of the First Nations coastal communities, told Barcott. "Now, when the Gitga'at people of Hartley Bay discuss Northern Gateway, an oil pipeline that would turn these same waters into a supertanker expressway, they always mention the Queen," he continues. "The accident taught them two lessons, they say. No matter how safe the ship, the most mundane human error can sink it. And when disaster strikes, they alone will be left to clean up the mess." The ferry's fate leaves a majority of British Columbians very worried about pipelines and the 220 giant tankers they will attract a year. The government has already approved a fleet of liquefied natural gas tankers to call at nearby Kitimat in 2015. The oil tankers would be even bigger. "I teach math at the school here," Cameron Hill, a member of the Hartley Bay Band Council, told Barcott. "If I were to express the Queen of the North as an exponent, I'd say it was an squared disaster. The potential damage from those oil tankers is to the 100th power." Contrary to the claims by federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver that natural resource development "supports" 100,000 jobs, Dogwood's Gilchrist says, it will "put at risk tens of thousands of jobs, put at risk our coastal economy, our tourism industry, our fishing industry and in the end, it brings a handful, just in the dozens, of permanent jobs." The Enbridge Northern Gateway heavy oil and Kinder Morgan liquid natural gas pipelines were a huge issue in B.C.'s May 15 provincial election, won by Premier Christy Clark's Liberals. Polls conducted by Justason Market Intelligence in February found 67 per cent of British Columbians were opposed(51 per cent strongly) to Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline and supertankers in B.C.'s coastal waters and 57 per cent were opposed (28 per cent strongly) to Kinder Morgan's Trans-Mountain pipeline and the expansion of coastal tanker traffic between Vancouver Island and the mainland. Adrian Dix's New Democrats were flatly opposed to both pipelines but Clark's Liberals left the door open a crack. The Liberals won a majority in large part due to Clark's now-famous five conditions for the twinned Northern Gateway and the twinned Kinder-Morgan pipelines: - a recommendation by the National Energy Board that the pipelines proceed; - world-leading marine oil spill response, prevention and recovery systems for B.C.'s coastline and ocean; - world-leading practices for land oil spill prevention response and recovery systems to manage and mitigate the risks and costs of heavy oil pipelines; - legal requirements that Aboriginal and treaty rights are addressed and First Nations are provided opportunities, information and resources necessary to participate and benefit from a heavy-oil project; - and B.C.'s receiving a fair share of the fiscal and economic benefits reflecting the level, degrees and nature of the risk borne by the province, the environment and taxpayers. B.C.'s Liberals are a coalition of free market Conservatives and Liberals, descendants of a similar right-of-centre coalition that ruled the province for decades under Social Credit Premier W.A.C. (Wacky) Bennett and his son, Bill. "They are a centre-right party," says Gilchrist. "They're not affiliated with the federal Liberals; they're not Liberals. So essentially we have a centre-right party that is not in favour of pipelines." In an interview with CBC Radio's The House May 18, Clark was adamant about her five conditions. "These five conditions are not going to change, period," she told host Evan Solomon. "I have, as the premier, a responsibility to protect my province and moving heavy oil is a difficult...commodity to move. It's unlike anything else. So it's my duty to stand up for B.C. I am not changing those five conditions, so we'll see where they end up." She noted that her environment minister had been at the cross-examination of Enbridge before the National Energy Board "and it hasn't been encouraging. We haven't been hearing what we need to know that they're going to be able to do it safely across the province... I can tell you it hasn't been encouraging for the Enbridge pipeline so far." As for aboriginal interests, Clark said "the Crown has an obligation which has been settled by the Supreme Court to include First Nations in economic development...Anybody who's building a pipeline in the north or across the province knows that they need to engage First Nations so it's not going to go ahead without that. It's our obligation to do it...I think, I really do think, that the biggest obstacle heavy oil faces is peoples' fear here that our pristine coast could be compromised." Eric Swanson, Dogwood's anti-tanker campaign director, notes that Clark has said Enbridge hasn't met her five conditions and as there are no further hearings, "we expect her government to submit a final argument saying Enbridge hasn't passed the test," he continues. "The evidence is in. It's time for Ms. Clark to put Enbridge's idea to bed and move on. It has been clear for years that Enbridge does not have and will not get sufficient social license to proceed. I don't know what the premier gains by stringing things out with more wait and see. "If the premier gave a clear, definitive answer at the end of May then all parties would have certainty, including Enbridge's investors and backers. That's a good thing. We could move on to assessing other projects."   Frances Russell was born in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science. A journalist since 1962, she has covered and commented on politics in Manitoba, Ontario, B.C. and Ottawa, working for The Winnipeg Tribune, United Press International, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun and The Winnipeg Free Press as well as freelanced for The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, CBC Radio and TV and Time Magazine. She is the author of two award-winning books on Manitoba history: Mistehay Sakahegan - The Great Lake: The Beauty and the Treachery of Lake Winnipeg and The Canadian Crucible - Manitoba's Role in Canada's Great Divide. Both won the Manitoba Historical Society Award for popular history. She is married with one son and two grandsons and lives in Winnipeg.