PAGE 1 OF 5 — THE ISSUE
The Tanker Ban Protects Your Livelihood
Since 2019, a federal law called the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act has kept crude oil supertankers off BC's North Coast. It was put in place to protect the fishing grounds, clean water, and coastal communities that people here depend on.
Now there's pressure from Alberta and federal politicians to weaken or get rid of that law. They say it's about growing the economy. But it's worth asking: whose economy?
Source: Oil Tanker Moratorium Act (Bill C-48), S.C. 2019, c. 14 — https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/O-7.3/
What the Ban Protects
Commercial Fisheries
Salmon, halibut, herring, crab — the fish that put food on the table and pay the bills for thousands of BC families.
Coastal Communities
From Prince Rupert to Campbell River, whole towns depend on the water. Fishing crews, processors, boat yards, fuel docks — it all connects.
Indigenous Rights & Title
First Nations have fished and cared for these waters since long before Confederation. They have legal rights to do so. An oil spill would wipe out food fisheries and cultural practices that can't be replaced.
Source: Haida Nation v. British Columbia (Minister of Forests), 2004 SCC 73
Who Actually Benefits?
Alberta oil companies want to ship crude through BC waters to reach buyers in Asia. They'd make more money. BC takes the risk.
Companies like Suncor and Cenovus are pushing for this. They're not BC companies. Their head offices aren't here. Their shareholders aren't here.
A lot of Alberta's oil industry is actually owned by foreign investors — in the United States, China, and elsewhere. They'd collect the profits. We'd live with the consequences.
Source: Environmental Defence report
If Something Goes Wrong, We Pay
The law limits how much oil companies have to pay after a spill. The rest of the bill falls on taxpayers and the communities that lost their fishing season.
Deckhands in Prince Rupert. Skippers working the inlets. Clam diggers on the Island. Their whole season depends on clean water. One bad spill and that season is gone — and there's no guarantee they'll ever be made whole.
Under Canada's Marine Liability Act, a shipowner's legal liability is capped at around $162 million. A major spill on our coast could cost $2.4 to $9.4 billion to clean up. Marine Liability Act
PAGE 2 OF 5 — WHO PROFITS
The Coast Already Pays Its Way
The oil industry says opening up BC's North Coast to tankers would be good for Canada's economy. But look at where the money actually goes. Most of Alberta's oil sands are owned by foreign companies and investors. The profits leave the country. The risk stays here.
What's Already Working on BC's Coast
Fishing. Tourism. Marine transport. These industries are worth billions every year — and they're already here, already employing people, already paying into local economies. They don't need a pipeline. They need clean water.
Who Bears the Risk of a Spill?
If a tanker goes down, it's not a boardroom problem. It's a problem for the gillnetter who can't fish that season. The clam digger whose beds are closed. The charter guide who has to cancel bookings. The processor who has no fish to process. These are real people with real bills — and no oil company is going to cover their losses.
What the Coast Is Worth
The tanker ban preserves the economic foundation that BC coastal communities have built over generations.
PAGE 2 OF 5 — WHO PROFITS (CONTINUED)
Most of Alberta's Oil Industry Isn't Even Canadian
Source documents referenced on this page. Click to expand.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith calls removing the tanker ban the "Team Canada" thing to do. But here's the thing: most of Alberta's oil industry isn't controlled by Canadians at all. The companies that would profit most from tanker access are largely owned by foreign corporations and investors. The money flows out of the country. The risk of a spill stays on our coast.
Who Actually Owns Alberta's Oil?
Over 70% of the major shareholders in Canada's largest oil companies are foreign. Here's what that looks like in practice:
ExxonMobil: Holds 70% ownership in Imperial Oil.
Significant US institutional holdings in the Alberta oil economy e.g. BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street.
Extraction
Alberta oil sands production
Pipeline
Transport through BC
Port & Tankers
Loading in BC ports and transport through BC waters
Foreign Refineries
Processing in Asia
Offshore Profit
Returns go to foreign investors
BC Won't Benefit From Alberta's Oil Moves
Source: Danielle Smith on X
Alberta Is Already Investing in Foreign Refineries
In August 2025, Alberta announced it was investing in Japanese refinery infrastructure — specifically to process Canadian crude oil overseas. The value-added work, and the jobs that come with it, go to Japan. Not BC. Not Canada.
What About Jobs?
Supporters of the tanker ban repeal often say it will create jobs. The numbers tell a different story.
Canada's own Parliamentary Budget Officer found that Trans Mountain — one of the biggest pipeline projects in Canadian history — would create only about ~90 permanent jobs nationwide once it was up and running. That's not a jobs program. That's a profit program for investors.
Almost all crude carriers are owned by foreign shipping companies registered in Norway, Singapore, and China.
Even the Port of Vancouver does not list crude tanker activity as a local job driver. Their published job impact figures focus on:
- container shipping
- grain
- coal
- cruise tourism
With automation on the rise, experts project that port employment will continue to go down, but capital investment requirements will go up.
Oil and gas does not even benefit Albertans as much as it says it does. The industry is optimized to maximize profits for foreign investors at a cost to working people.
Graph by: u/dataeter on Reddit
If oil profits aren't even going to everyday Albertans — why would they go to BC fishing families?
PAGE 3 OF 5 — THE OIL LOBBY
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The Oil Industry Has a Lot of Friends in Ottawa
Decisions about BC's coast aren't being made by the people who live here. They're being shaped by oil industry lobbyists who meet with federal politicians more than four times every single workday. Here's what that looks like.
Our ports and fishing jobs become tied to decisions made in boardrooms in Calgary, Houston, Beijing, and Tokyo - places we’ll never vote in.
Source: Council of Canadians, Big Foreign Oil report (2021) — https://canadians.org/resource/bigforeignoil/
Danielle Smith with Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel
Who Runs Canada's Main Oil Lobby?
Canada's main oil lobby group is called the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP). A 2021 report by the Council of Canadians found:
Of the 48 corporations on the board of Canada's main oil lobby group (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers - CAPP), 30 were confirmed to be fully or majority foreign-owned, while seven more are very likely majority foreign-owned. Combined, that makes up 77% of CAPP’s board.
CAPP’s 36 full-time lobbyists are in perpetual contact with politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats in the federal and Alberta governments.
CAPP spent considerable budget and effort on swaying Canadian voters, organizing campaigns for both provincial and federal elections.
How Much Lobbying Are We Talking About?
It's not just occasional meetings. The oil and gas industry is in constant contact with the politicians who make decisions about our coast:
Fossil fuel companies and their trade associations met with federal officials over 1,100 times in 2024, averaging more than four meetings per workday.
Conservatives, Liberals, and key ministers in multiple portfolios all received regular meetings from fossil fuel lobbyists.
Pushes include export expansion, regulatory changes, tax incentives, and federal support for pipelines and more tanker routes.
Lobbying is paired with political donations, industry-funded policy events, and paid influence campaigns aimed at shaping public debate, not just internal policy discussions.
The people pushing to open BC's coast to tankers don't live here. They work for oil companies backed by foreign investors, and they have the ear of politicians in Ottawa and Edmonton.
BC communities bear the environmental and economic risk of tanker traffic. The financial benefits flow elsewhere.
That's not a trade-off that works for fishing families on the Island or in Prince Rupert.
PAGE 4 OF 5 — THE REAL COST
When a Spill Happens, We Pay — Not Them
A major oil spill on BC's North Coast would cost billions to clean up. The law limits how much oil companies have to pay. The rest falls on taxpayers — and on the communities that lost their fishing season.
Under Canadian law, a ship's owner is only legally required to pay around $162 million after a spill. A major spill here could cost $2.4 to $9.4 billion. Someone has to cover the gap — and it won't be the oil company's CEO.
But what about "polluter pays"?
“Polluter pays” sounds simple, but in real life it does not protect coastal communities from the true cost of an oil spill, and it does very little to stop the companies responsible.
1
Who Covers the Shortfall?
Canadian maritime law caps shipowner liability at approximately $162 million per incident under the Marine Liability Act.
Additional compensation can also come from the Ship-source Oil Pollution Fund, which is financed collectively by the oil shipping industry. The fund currently has about $427 million CAD.
There are also international funds, which brings the total available funds up to over $1 billion.
But, Canada will likely not be able to access that entire pot if there is a spill, and getting access to that money involves a complicated legal process that takes years.
If total damages and cleanup costs exceed both the shipowner’s cap and the available fund, the remaining costs do not disappear. Someone has to pay for the cleanup.
Credible estimates for cleaning up a major crude oil spill in BC's northern coastal waters range from $2.4 billion to $9.4 billion.
Therefore, the provincial and federal governments could end up funding parts of the response using taxpayer money.
2
There is No Fund That Replaces a Wiped-Out Fishing Year
If a spill shuts down:
- Haida Gwaii roe-on-kelp
- Prince Rupert charter fishing
- Port Hardy salmon trolling
- Tourism in the North Coast fjords
- Ferry routes between islands
— there is no mechanism that steps in to replace those incomes.
Families absorb the damage. Communities absorb the costs. Local economies absorb the losses.
Assuming Canada can access the total amount of available cleanup funds, we may have up to $1.37 billion on hand to pay for an oil spill.
BC has around 3.6 million working‑age people. If an oil spill resulted in $5 billion in cleanup costs, every working person in BC would have to fork out $1,008 to cover the remaining costs.
And it's not just cleanup costs. What about the cost to local economies?
This isn't hypothetical. It already happened — on a much smaller scale — in 2016.
In 2024, the Nathan E. Stewart ran aground in Heiltsuk waters. Diesel fuel spread through key harvesting areas, forcing closures that cut off both food sources and commercial income.
One of the closures was a clam fishery, described as a former "breadbasket" for the community.
The Heiltsuk Nation has been in litigation for years seeking compensation for these losses, while also bearing the cost of conducting its own environmental assessment to understand the damage.
A relatively small-scale spill like the Nathan E. Stewart cost the Heiltsuk $200,000 a year - just in the one Gale Creek clam fishery that was closed.
The fishery has not opened until today, which means the closure cost the Heiltsuk at least $2,000,000.
This amount was never compensated by the ship owner.
Nathan E. Stewart spilled 90 to 100 tonnes, or 110,000 litres, of diesel. A supertanker like Exxon Valdez spilled 41 million litres of crude oil, or 35,000 to 37,000 tonnes.
Supertankers like Exxon Valdez, also known as Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) are the type of vessel currently banned from BC's North Coast waters, and also the type of vessel Alberta Premier Danielle Smith wants back in.
The Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 cost over $7 billion CAD in cleanup, fines, and settlements. The herring fishery it destroyed has never come back. Our North Coast faces the same risk.
Click to reveal the costs of the Exxon Valdez spill
- Over $7 billion CAD in cleanup, fines, and settlements
- At least $300 million CAD lost to commercial fisheries
- Tourism dropped by up to ~40% in the first year
- 2,000 km of coastline contaminated
- Herring fishery collapsed and has never recovered
- 250,000–300,000 seabirds killed
- ~2,800 sea otters lost
- 22 orcas died, one group became functionally extinct
Imagine: the shipowner's insurer cuts a cheque and moves on; you're still here ten years later with a destroyed fishery and a boat loan.
PAGE 4 OF 5 — THE REAL COST: HISTORY
BC Fought Hard for This Protection. Here's the Story.
The tanker ban didn't just happen. Fishing crews, First Nations, plant workers, and coastal residents spent years fighting for it. They showed up at hearings, signed petitions, and made their voices heard — and it worked. Here's how it happened.
Here's a brief timeline:
1
2006
Enbridge proposes the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, bringing supertankers onto the North Coast for the first time.
Coastal First Nations, fishing communities, and local governments begin organizing to stop it.
2
2010
Enbridge Northern Gateway hearings begin: Fishing crews, First Nations, and coastal residents spent years speaking out against tanker routes.
That pressure slowed the project.
3
2016
The Nathan E. Stewart runs aground in Heiltsuk territory.
The Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal is rejected a month later.
The Federal government commits to formalizing a North Coast oil tanker ban.
4
2019
Oil Tanker Moratorium Act (Bill C-48) became law.
It kept heavy crude tankers off the North Coast and protected the waters that support fishing, tourism, and coastal transport.
5
2025
Alberta pushes new export schemes with same multinational partners.
The question is whether the coast can hold the line again.
This was ordinary people protecting their livelihoods. Fishers, plant workers, harbour crews, and coastal families who knew what was at stake — and refused to back down.
Our coastal communities depend on a healthy environment, and an oil spill in the north coast could devastate coastal economies and communities that depend on the ocean's resources.— Shoreworkers local 31 president Arnold Nagy, in a 2010 declaration by the United Fisherman and Allied Workers Union backing the tanker ban.S"The union said the fishing industry contributes more than $135 million to the central and north coast regions, the single largest private employer in the area, which includes many remote First Nation communities."
PAGE 5 OF 5 — TAKE ACTION
Your Voice Can Make a Difference
Politicians in Ottawa are under pressure to weaken the tanker ban. The best thing you can do right now is let your MP know where you stand. It takes five minutes and it matters.
Why This Matters to You
The tanker ban isn't about politics. It's about keeping the coast working for the people who live here.
Prevention Over Cleanup
It's far better — and far cheaper — to prevent a spill than to try to clean one up. The ban does exactly that.
Sustainable Foundations
BC's coastal economy doesn't run on oil. It runs on healthy water. Fishing, tourism, and marine work are here for the long term — as long as the water stays clean.
The 2016 Nathan E. Stewart spill was small compared to a supertanker. It still closed a clam fishery that hasn't reopened. The Heiltsuk Nation is still in court trying to get compensated.
What the Coast Is Already Worth
Before anyone talks about what oil tankers might bring in, here's what BC's coast already produces every year:
Fisheries
$3 billion or more every year — salmon, halibut, herring, shellfish, and more.
Tourism
$4 billion or more every year — whale watching, sport fishing, kayaking, coastal lodges. People come here because the coast is still alive.
Marine Support Industries
Boat yards, mechanics, fuel docks, gear suppliers, processors — thousands of jobs that don't show up in oil company press releases.
Indigenous Economic Development
Guardian programs, sustainable tourism, and food fisheries — growing because the water is clean.
What We'd Be Gambling With
The North Coast still works. People fish in these waters, guide in them, and build a living from them. That's not something you can rebuild after a major spill — not in a year, not in a decade.
Once those livelihoods are gone, they don't come back on a timeline that works for a family with a boat loan and a mortgage.
Call or Write Your MP Today
You don't need to be a politician or an expert. You just need to tell your MP: keep the tanker ban. Protect our coast. Don't trade our fishing grounds for someone else's profit.
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