As the Ford government spent Thursday afternoon debating the battle over the fate of the Line 5 pipeline, opposition parties questioned whether it was a good use of time amid COVID-19.
“It's really interesting that the government put on the agenda the debate about Line 5 when they got back to the legislature last week with not a single new initiative to help people get through COVID-19,” Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said, pointing out that Ontario doesn’t have jurisdiction over the pipeline.
“I just think if we were going to debate something this afternoon, we should be debating vaccines,” said Ontario Liberal house leader John Fraser, whose party didn’t participate in the discussion Thursday afternoon.
Even Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner agreed: “If we’re going to have a (debate) today, I think it should be on vaccines. That’s the number 1 issue that Ontarians are concerned about.”
Line 5 carries up to 540,000 barrels per day of fossil fuel across Wisconsin and Michigan, passing through the environmentally sensitive Straits of Mackinac between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron on its way to refineries in Sarnia, Ont.
Though Line 5 has existed since 1953, its future is now uncertain after Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer revoked its authorization in November. Enbridge, the pipeline's owner, will now have to shut Line 5 down by May, a move the company is now fighting in U.S. federal court.
Enbridge says the pipeline has served the region “safely and reliably” for six decades, and is attempting to make it safer by rerouting it through a new tunnel under the bedrock beneath the straits. But Whitmer said the environmental risks of allowing the aging pipeline to keep running were too high: “Enbridge has imposed on the people of Michigan an unacceptable risk of a catastrophic oil spill in the Great Lakes that could devastate our economy and way of life,” she said in November.
Thousands of jobs at refineries in Sarnia are at stake if Line 5 does shut down. Earlier this month, Premier Doug Ford said Whitmer’s decision would cause “destruction” in Ontario, and that he was awaiting a call back from the Michigan governor to talk it over.
The discussion at the legislature Thursday was a take-notes debate, meaning it doesn’t involve legislation or action by the provincial government. And the pipeline is technically in the federal government's jurisdiction (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for his part, has urged American officials to reconsider their decision on Line 5).
The Progressive Conservatives accused the opposition parties of refusing to step up to save jobs in Sarnia, where the petrochemical industry is a vital economic driver. Though they acknowledged the environmental concerns over the pipeline, the Tories also argued that Ontario needs fossil fuels delivered by Line 5, and alternative transportation methods like trains come with added hurdles and different environmental risks.
“For the foreseeable future, we’re going to be dependent on the energy (from Line 5),” Natural Resources Minister John Yakabuski said.
“(Michigan’s decision) will drive up the cost of living for millions of people … they will not make it safer.”
None of the opposition parties said Thursday that they were in favour of shutting the pipeline down right away. But the NDP, Liberals and Greens all warned the government that a global shift to cleaner sources of energy is underway.
Schreiner said the dispute over the pipeline’s future should be a “wakeup call.”
“(The Ontario government needs) to show Michigan that we have a commitment in Ontario to protecting the quality of the Great Lakes,” he said.
“And we owe it to the workers in Sarnia to have a just transition plan.”
Fraser argued that if the government wants to preserve jobs, the best thing it can do is ensure the vaccine rollout goes as quickly as possible so more Ontarians can go back to work.
“It’s vaccines,” he said. “It’s the most important thing we can do for the economy right now.”
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