Enbridge Engaging in Whitewashing at Montreal Cancer Benefit

LettersMike Finck — Published February 12, 2013

Enbridge? Enbridge is promoting a concert against cancer?

Isn’t this the same multi-billion-dollar pipeline company that spilled more than 20,000 barrels of tar sands crude into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010, pouring—among other things—carcinogenic polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons into the environment? And wasn’t that a spill that has never quite been fully cleaned up?

I mean, if you want to polish your name, cancer research fundraising would be the way to go. But everyone knows you can’t polish a turd.

We are talking about the same company that, along with rival TransCanada Corporation, wants to pass these very same diluted tar sands via pipeline through Quebec, across the island of Montreal, right on through to eastern Canadian and European markets without so much as a “thank you” for absorbing the risk.

We aren’t just talking about a company that is merely complicit with the tar sands, but one that is downright dependant on and inextricably linked to the continued exploitation and growth of the Alberta tar sands, an industrial megaproject that counts among its major emissions known and suspected carcinogens like benzene and toluene.

Has anyone else seen photos of that tumour fish from Fort Chipewyan, AB, downstream from the tar sands? How is this acceptable?

I’m all for research into treatments for cancer, don’t get me wrong. But I think it’s equally important to recognize that fighting cancer, or anything for that matter, also means addressing the root causes.

So help me head-butt cancer in its proverbial gender-neutral gonads and deal with one of the root causes. Speak out about industrial megaprojects that make the rich richer and the poor sicker.

Fight back against tar sands pipelines coming to Quebec. Advocate a tar sands-free Montreal.

And let’s not let Enbridge think we don’t notice what they’re up to. We see what you’ve done here. And we still don’t want your dirty oil.

Enbridge and the Institut du cancer de Montréal are holding their Concert contre le cancer on Friday, Feb. 15, at the Maison Symphonique, located at 1600 St. Urbain St.

—Mike Finck