Editor:
Recently the Sechelt District Council voted to approve spending $12,000 in support of a “Sue Big Oil” effort, organized by the West Coast Environmental Law Society.
In my opinion this is a bad decision by Sechelt Council, for the following reasons.
1. What does $12,000 get? Possibly 20 hours of a decent lawyer’s time. A suit such as this, if it goes ahead will run to hundreds of thousands, or into millions of dollars.
2. Sechelt’s ante of $12,000 will only be the start. The problem is once you are in, you are in, and it’s almost a given that the organizers will be back for more, and more.
3. West Coast Environmental Law is well established and I believe has a good reputation. However, Sechelt will be hooking its yoke not just to WCELaw, but to others NGOs with a variety of motivations and agendas.
4. It is not clear that Sechelt Council has an “end game” result in mind. (Punish Canadian oil companies? Shut down Canadian petroleum production? Get compensation for some undefined social costs?)
Finally, council members were clearly responding to some loud voices on the Coast calling for Sue Big Oil.
Surely, this does not give council a community-wide mandate to start Sechelt down this road.
John Hansen
Sechelt
