The UFA WU at the National Energy Board
OH imports, tankers not needed.
By GEOFF MEGGS
When Arnie Thomlinson cleared out his makeshift office at the back of Fishermen's Hall last week, the Canadian oil industry breathed a little easier.
With his submission of a final brief to the National Energy Board (NEB) hearings on Canada's oil supply and demand, Thomlinson wrapped up an 18-month UFAWU campaign to protect the west coast environment from pollution and to challenge the oil industry's apparent right to develop energy resources purely on the basis of profit.
By pursuing the industry all the way from West Coast Oil Port Inquiry hearings at Steveston to the crucial board hearings in Ottawa, the union was able to mount one of the most sustained attacks the industry has faced for some time.
By the end of the board hearings in June, the union had proof that Canada would have no need to import oil now or in the future if the multinaticnal oil companies were forced to serve the Canadian people rather than corporate profit.
Equally important was the union's continued battle to protect the marine environment in the face of proposed oil port projects on both coasts. The board came to rely so much on UFAWU representatives for this role, recalls Thomlinson, that one even expressed his regret that the union could not send anyone to hearings in Halifax.
But Thomlinson warned that the nature of the testimony heard by the board was so unbalanced and limited that there is likely to be little resistance to industry pressure for even more massive energy developments at even higher cost to Canada.
As the union's final brief to the board puts it, "the UFAWU is even more firmly convinced than we were in our original submission to the NEB that our governments must assume ownership and control of Canadian energy industries.
"We see no other way for a guarantee of rights of Canadians that we hold inalienable."
Those rights, particularly the right of future generations to harvest the resources of the sea, seemed assured when the federal government torpedoed the Kitimat oil pipeline and tanker terminal proposal, Thomlinson said.
But when the union examined the basic assumption underlying the scheme — that Canada should build the port to import oil for the United States as well as to meet expected domestic shortages — it found that "oil supply and demand was still up in the air."
Almost as soon as the West Coast Oil Ports Inquiry ended, the board hearings into Canada's
projected oil supply and demand were to begin, a natural target for the development propagandists of the oil industry.
To challenge the industry view, the union executive decided to continue the campaign, Thomlinson explained, at board hearings in Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary.
In the weeks that followed, Thomlinson was able to piece together the industry's strategy, cross-examine its experts and finally corner and question Jack Cressey, the president of Kitimat Pipe Line Ltd.
"The companies are clearly bent on maintaining oil as our chief source of energy," he says, "even though two years ago they said they were running short of it."
As he packed away the scores of documents the industry had produced to buttress its case, Thomlinson explained how the companies presented a united front to the board in making a demand that amounted to blackmail.
As the union notes in its final brief, the new supply and demand forecasts "are so vastly different than they were less than two years ago that the motives and/or skills of the forecasters seem suspect.
"The earlier, pessimistic forecast of impending oil shortage served the oil interests well by winning for them large price increases.
"Now, apparently confident they can extract even higher prices and win concessions — including freedom to export so-called surplus gas and oil, they are emboldened to announce highly optimistic forecasts."
Suddenly, said Thomlinson, the industry announces Canada has more than enough oil — but it can only be produced at a price.
As the final brief put it, "the industry implies that oil can be produced ... in volumes limited not by the size of reserves, but by government willingness to grant concessions.
"The UFAWU regards this industry demand for concessions as tantamount to blackmail. In effect, the message is 'either the government grants these demands or we will not produce the oil Canada needs'."
Thomlinson, himself an experienced oil industry geologist, said that the industry's testimony was so perfectly orchestrated, and so careful to avoid discussion of any resource but oil, that the board will be unable to make sound recommendations.
Industry witnesses steadfastly refused to discuss coal development, he explained, something which the industry is deeply involved in and which could dramatically alter the country's energy supply.
The board also heard almost
• Evidence at recent National Energy Board hearings demonstrated that Canada should never need -massive imports of foreign oil or the tanker terminals imports would require.
nothing about the development of solar power and, other renewable resources, each of which could eliminate much of the demand for oil if pursued seriously.
Most frustrating of all, he added, was the board's failure to subpoena even the government's own experts in the field of renewable energy to describe their work, all performed at taxpayers' expense.
The result was a body of evidence that makes real forecasting impossible, he said, because "with all the inter-relatedness of all forms of energy, you can't plan meaningfully on the basis of a single source."
Thomlinson found the industry equally vague on the factors limiting the demand for coal. Conservation measures such as home insulation programs and improved car mileage received too much credit, he said.
The industry failed to examine the effect of Canada's slumping economy, the union's brief notes, with possibly disastrous results for forecasting future demand.
"The slackened pace of industrial and commercial activity and the attendant state of high employment have been underestimated," the brief argues.
When the Trudeau govern-
ment's long-awaited and overdue economic recovery begins, more than a million workers will resume buying gas, regardless of the price, to get to work.
The brief rejects increased prices to dampen demand, because they fall unfairly on working class people and probably only have limited effect.
The result of the hearings was clear: Canada could become self-sufficient in oil and eliminate imports, but the private oil industry — which has been responsible for the crises of the last 10 years — can't be trusted to do the job.
The union brief recommends an immediate drive to achieve self-sufficiency while regaining Canadian control of the oil industry.
To begin, the brief says, the board should end exports, conserve all surplus oil now available, and make efforts to increase the amount of oil pumped from known fields.
Then the board should eliminate the link between Canadian prices and the world market so that Canadian oil is sold for the cost of its production.
The keystone of the union's proposal is a 10-year program to achieve complete public owner-
ship and control of the Canadian petroleum industry, to begin with the elimination of all financial assistance and incentives to oil companies.
The next step would be revision of the National Energy Board act to eliminate the board's regulatory role and emphasize its advisory function.
The union calls for a public inquiry with fully-funded public participation to formulate a national energy policy and, as a last step, expansion of Petro-Canada into the role of "manager and operator of government-owned industry."
Although Thomlinson has wound up the union's campaign, the brief makes it clear that the UFAWU is still determined to oppose west coast oil port development.
"Under firm government control and a comprehensive total energy policy," the brief concludes, "Canada's petroleum needs can be met for generations to come without recourse to increased oil imports.
"We therefore respectfully urge the board to so advise the government and to ask the government to announce that no proposals for west coast oil ports will be entertained within the forecast period (of two years)."
but Kitimat's Cressey won't quit
Richard Morgan photo
• UFAWU representative Arnie Thomlinson finally cornered Kitimat Pipe Line Ltd. president Jack Cressey at National Energy Board hearings in Ottawa.
• Like a punchdrunk boxer who doesn't know when he's licked, Kitimat Pipe Line Ltd. president Jack Cressey continues to push for a tanker terminal and pipeline across British Columbia. His appearance before the National Energy Board in Ottawa, however, marked the first time he had left himself open to cross-examination.
UFAWU representative Arnie Thomlinson grabbed the chance with both hands. After establishing that Cressey based his proposal on a forecasted shortage that even the oil industry does not now expect, Thomlinson tried to make Cressey think the unthinkable: that his pipeline is dead.
As we pick up the transcript of the June 16 encounter, Thomlinson has established that Kitimat used only two
now-outda ted ' 'scenarios,'' published by the government, that predicted shortages of oil and a need for imports:
THOMLINSON: Are there other published scenarios of this type that form the basis of your conclusions that Canada may need to increase its oil import capabilities?
CRESSEY: I suppose so.
Q: You just suppose so. You know particularly of these two, but do you know of any others?
A: Not specifically. I have read a great deal of comment regarding it, yes.
Q: So you wouldn't be able to provide a list? You see, there is no list of documents at the end of your report and I thought you might like to add something like that.
A: No, I don't think so.
Q: I trust that you have examined the statement of proceedings of the West Coast Oil Ports Inquiry submitted to Cabinet in February, 1978 by Commissioner Thompson?
A: Yes.
Q: And also Commissioner
Thompson's final report to cabinet? A: Yes.
Q: And would you agree that he generally stated in this final report that there is no need for a west coast oil port?
A: No.
Q: Sorry: that there had been no need demonstrated for a west coast oil port?
A: I would conclude that that would be correct, yes.
Q:Yes. And I guess you are aware that the minister of state for the environment, Len March-and, announced on February 23, shortly after receiving his statement of proceedings, that cabinet had decided that there was no need now nor in the foreseeable future for a west coast qil port?
A: I heard you say that to this board on several occasions, Mr. Thomlinson. I have not heard it from Mr. Marchand and we have had no communication from him whatever.
Q: Well, at some time perhaps I can play you a tape on which I recorded that from a television program on which he said it.
A: No. I am really not interested in your tape.
THE FISHE
Q: Well, then, perhaps you can check some other more reliable record to find out if, in fact, he did say that.
So Cressey still refuses to believe his game is up, and time may prove him right.
Foothills Pipe Lines Ltd. stunned and angered the board during hearings in Calgary when it produced a proposal for an Alaska tanker terminal that would deliver oil to the United States through a pipeline parallel to the Alaska Highway natural gas line.
The tankers would sail through Dixon Entrance to a terminal near Haines, Alaska. From there, a pipeline would carry the oil north through B.C. to the pipeline right of way in the Yukon.
In the uproar that followed its action, Foothills quietly dropped the idea. RMAN — JULY 12, 1978/5