GUEST COMMENTARY
BY STEWART MUIR

Activists in Vancouver are arguing that increased oil shipments will inevitably destroy the B.C. tourism industry. They are choosing to do this now because they hope that recent anti-oil protests on Burnaby Mountain have created enough public fear about pipeline expansion that politicians will cave in and halt a $5.4-billion investment.
It’s called leverage and it worked in Clayoquot Sound and the Great Bear Rainforest where smart, persistent campaigners directed B.C. public opinion to their profound advantage.
Eventually, these protesters were able to report to their bosses in places like Amsterdam and San Francisco that they had brought Canada’s political leaders to their knees and shut down local industries. It was not a middle-ground approach.
From total B.C. forestry employment of 36,000 in 1996, the campaigners proudly helped achieve a net loss of 22,000 jobs by 2011.
Fully $25 billion worth of job-creating resource projects are now tied up in court.
On the front lines in Burnaby, the Clayoquot-era warriors still have jobs, except now they are opposing another Canadian resource and they are ready to play public sentiment like a finely tuned instrument.
The strategy is to appropriate the warm, fuzzy image of tourism to terrify city folk so they sign petitions pressuring politicians to give up tens of thousands more resource jobs.
Manipulative gimmicks are being used to lead to exactly what many in this debate say they are most concerned about — a lack of evidence-based decision making.
In my view, 2015 will be a year of major challenges for the Canadian resource sector. We have campaigns like those seen in the Lower Mainland. Mining companies are downcast about the prices their products will fetch. The question is still to be answered of why there was a tailings pond failure at Mt Polley. The lack of certainty in this matter hangs over investment decisions.
This week we saw high-tech entrepreneur Ryan Holmes claim that if the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion is not stopped, we can kiss goodbye to our $14-billion tourism industry when there is the inevitable oil spill.
In fact, there is no evidence to say that a spill is inevitable or that shipping oil by sea will be bad for tourism.
Rather than building bridges for a strong B.C., Holmes chose to oppose resources and the revenues that come with them.
What an irony that his company, HootSuite, depends wholly on users of resource-intensive iPhones and other devices. For some, there is just no connecting the dots.
Reckless, incorrect claims about the risk of tanker shipments would be a fail for a Grade 9 math student, but campaigners figure they can get away with it.
In Norway, a new undersea oil pipeline came online in 2010 that should, by the Vancouver alarmist campaign, have destroyed that country’s tourism industry. Nothing of the sort happened: between 2010 and 2013, hotel stays by foreigners grew by five percentage points.
In Alaska, more than 21,000 oil tankers have been loaded and sent south in recent decades. Supposedly that should have been catastrophic for tourism. In the last decade, Alaska’s visitor numbers grew by 14 per cent.
Tourism and resources have always have been compatible in B.C. Resource workers fill hotel rooms and restaurants, activity counted as tourism.
Spending by the B.C. petroleum sector alone exceeds the total GDP of tourism.
For every dollar spent on new hotels and restaurants last year, B.C.’s resource industries laid down $20 on new capital investment.
One resource job creates up to five times the supporting jobs in either the tourism or high-tech sectors.
High-tech jobs can easily be uprooted to the other side of the globe, wherever wages are lowest. Canada’s resources are ours alone. In fact, some of the most deeply rooted and exciting high-tech work done in this city supports resource industries, but we don’t hear much about that.
It certainly feels good to be less poor after filling our gas tanks because of this fall's surprising plunge in oil prices. This trend will also benefit eastern Canadian exporters, and heaven knows they need a break. But let’s not forget how much the BC economy benefits from Canadian oil production that does best when the price of oil is higher.
An estimated 25-30,000 British Columbians leave their homes here to work in Alberta and many of those jobs are related to the energy sector. Lower oil prices from Canadian exports means less money moving around the economy and that shrinkage will be felt soon enough.
One the upside, one of the big benefits of a resource economy like ours is its diversity. Forestry in BC has gotten larger every year for the past four years, in large part because of solid marketing efforts to sell more product to Asia. This growth seems on course to continue, and jobs from this will be created in every corner of the economy – from education to finance and health care – not just cutting down trees.
Our aquaculture sector is poised for growth because the world needs healthy sources of food protein.
Take these things together, and the picture is of a diversified modern economy, and that is the foundation of our prosperity. It is also why we should be skeptical of those who argue that being “modern” means ceasing to develop the very resources needed to make the products that to many are the essence of modern life.
No major political party supports the extreme views advocated by Burnaby Mountain protesters. When the majority remains silent, those views can win the upper hand. A phone call, letter or email to them is something the average person can do to make their views known.
In my view, 2015 has special potential to be the year in which we as a society achieve better ways of setting aside our differences over resource projects. This means having a place at the table for every perspective where we can discover the values, interests and priorities of our fellow citizens. At present, there is no such conversation. One of the central aims of Resource Works is to achieve this.
We’ll be extending our community listening series, inviting citizens to contribute their time and ideas for moving forward.
Here is one simple New Year’s resolution that you can follow to be part of this. Visit www.resourceworks.com and take a few moments to sign up for our Resource Works newsletters so you can have a voice in BC’s future.
Stewart Muir of the Resource Works Society is a co-author of The Sea Among Us: The Amazing Strait of Georgia.