Where will the workers building a liquified natural gas (LNG) facility near Squamish, B.C. live?
The answer to that question is in the air after District of Squamish councillors voted 4-3 to reject a one-year permit for a cruise ship that would have housed the Woodfibre LNG crews.
The decision came after heavy pressure from community members to reject the plan, citing concerns about traffic, safety and potential human rights impacts.
“We are becoming more and more aware of the human rights impacts of resource extractive industries and the transient workforce they bring into small communities throughout the country, throughout the world,” said Sue Brown, director of advocacy for Justice for Girls.
“It’s well documented there is an issue associated with gender-based violence, sexualized violence, human trafficking, commercial exploitation, increases in organized crime and traffic impacts that all come to bear on the community.”
Brown said there were also concerns about health and safety for workers, including the apparent lack of a plan on how the issue of toxic drugs would be handled in the facility.
She added the public hasn’t yet seen a gender and cultural safety plan the provincial government required from the project.
“Ideally, we want to see our governments coming up with solutions …we shouldn’t be leaving it to the corporations,” she said.
Tracy Saxby, executive director of community group My Sea-to-Sky said locals felt that the company was trying to rush approval through.
“It seemed like they were really using that as a pressure tactic to really crunch council and expecting a rubber stamp and they didn’t get it,” she said.
“If they really cared about the community and the concerns of the community they would press pause right now they would do the studies that are being asked of them … there would be meaningful consultation they would do a hazard assessment to ensure their workers are safe.”
In a statement, Woodfibre LNG president Christine Kennedy said the company was disappointed with council’s vote.
“The District has asked repeatedly since 2019 – to the company and to regulators – that the Woodfibre LNG project workforce be housed outside Squamish, which is exactly what the floatel delivers,” Kennedy wrote.
“In a community that welcomes tens of thousands of visitors each year, the rhetoric of some council members directed toward the skilled craft workers that will make up the project’s workforce seems out of place,” she added.
“These men and women are simply looking to do a good job, feed their families and have a safe and comfortable place to live while minimizing any disruption that an approved project could have on the community. If these people visited as tourists, they would be welcomed.”
Kennedy said the floatel had been approved by the federal, provincial and Squamish Nation governments, adding that the provincial government has jurisdiction over floatel-related management plans.
Construction on the LNG plant continues, Kennedy said.
The Woodfibre LNG project has been approved by both the provincial and federal governments, and has secured environmental certificates from the Squamish Nation.
The project, which has been in the works for more than eight years, has faced significant opposition from community and environmental groups.
When complete, the LNG plant will be licensed to export about 2.1 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year for the next 40 years from a former pulp mill about seven kilometres south of Squamish.
Speaking at the B.C. legislature Wednesday, Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation Josie Osborne urged the company to continue to work with the municipality to get it the necessary information to proceed.
“The two parties clearly need to work together on that,” she said.
“They’ve got up to 30 days to reconsider the decision, so I encourage them to keep working together.”
Squamish Mayor Armand Hurford said it was a complicated issue for the municipality, adding the district feels at times overwhelmed by the scale of the project and the number of decisions it must make associated with it.
“We’re also a regulator in our own way and in our own sphere of decision-making, so those other orders of government and regulators … we’re left with the pieces that sort of fall out of those processes that aren’t yet addressed,” he said.
Hurford said it was clear to councillors that the community had major concerns about a number of outstanding issues with the “floatel” proposal, some of which he said should have been addressed by the proponent years ago.
At the same time, he acknowledged the need to come to some kind of a resolution around housing the project’s workers, given housing in the community is already at a premium and affordability is hard to find.
“The community simply can’t absorb it,” he said.
“Perhaps the solution is a floatel, maybe it’s in that location and accessed as proposed, but there’s more work to be done to ensure that’s an easier decision for council to take on.”
Hurford said there could be other pathways to a resolution, including the possibility of parking the cruise ship elsewhere or getting to approval through the rezoning proposal.
Council can also reconsider the application within 30 days if the mayor or one of the councillors who voted in the majority brings it back for debate.