The battle between energy giant Enbridge and opponents of its planned Northern Gateway pipeline has reached a new level with protesters disrupting an oil and gas export summit and the company launching a multimillion-dollar ad campaign.
The Occupy Vancouver Environmental Justice Group rallied environmentalists and concerned citizens Wednesday outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver, where Enbridge was meeting with several other oil companies.
Equipped with signs and banners, the movement loudly voiced its opposition towards new tar sands pipeline and tanker projects, such as the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline running from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat, B.C.
"When they're in a building like this, they're hiding," Stephen Collis, speaker for the protest movement, told CTV News. "They can try to keep it out of sight, out of mind, until they bring out their glitzy show in the newspaper or a TV commercial."
The protests coincided with the launching of a $5-million advertising campaign by Enbridge to promote its pipeline project, which the company says is meant to get British Columbians onside.
"We recognize that, although people are aware of the project in B.C., there isn't a lot of depth of knowledge in terms of the benefits, the risks," Paul Stanway, spokesman for the Northern Gateway project, said. "This is an attempt to try to direct them towards some factual information on the project."
Other opposition group are also rolling out initiatives to fight the pipeline, including the Dogwood Initiative, which is trying to stop the project with a petition.
"Eventually we're gonna send it [the petition] to provincial and federal governments to try to get a legislated ban on crude oil tankers," said the group's outreach coordinator Arran Walshe. "We have 200 businesses involved who have said they don't want crude oil tankers on the coast."
One of these businesses is cosmetics company Lush, which is now opening petition stations in its more than 150 stores across North America and giving parts of its profits to the initiative.
"If you want British Columbia to stay beautiful, then stand up against this thing," Nicola Watson, manager of Lush on Robson Street, said. "It's not like, if a leak is gonna happen or if there's gonna be an oil spill, it's when. So we need to stop this now before it actually happens."
With files from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger
