A protest began early this morning blocking an access road at 4335 #1 Side Road in Burlington that leads to an Enbridge Line 9 work site at on the banks of Bronte Creek. The group says they will stay at least 12 hours to symbolize the over 12,000 anomalies Enbridge has reported on the pipeline between Sarnia and Montreal.
A media release from the occupiers says they “turned away Enbridge employees who were scheduled to do work on Line 9 in preparation for it to carry toxic diluted bitumen from the Alberta Tar Sands” and notes that Bronte Creek flows into Lake Ontario “the water source for more than ten million people”.
“Enbridge calls these developments integrity digs,” said Danielle Boissineau, one of the blockaders, “but to anyone watching the Line 9 issue, it is clear Enbridge has no integrity. This work on the line is just a band-aid, a flimsy patch over the most outrageous flaws in the Line 9 plan.”
The release recognizes the area as “Traditional Mississauga Territory” and says the protest is aimed particularly at the tar sands.
“It’s the dirtiest oil in the world: it’s not worth the destruction it takes to produce, it’s not worth the risk to our watersheds to transport, and we definitely can’t afford the carbon in our atmosphere when it’s burned,” says Boissineau in the release. “At every step of the process, the Tar Sands outsources the risks onto our communities and poisons waterways like the Athabasca River and the Bronte creek while companies like Enbridge get rich.”
CBC is reporting about twenty people are involved in the protest. Enbridge has been granted permission to expand the flows in Line 9 and add diluted bitumen to products shipped through the 39-year old pipeline, but still requires a final sign-off from the National Energy Board before making it operational.