Just before last year's federal election, major environmental organizations held polls in British Columbia to see how voters felt about oil tanker traffic in B.C. waters. The results were impressive, with 80 per cent favouring a legislated ban on tankers in B.C. coastal waters.

New Democrats and the Green party were careful to call for tankers to be banned from "northern coastal waters." Others like ForestEthics, a non-profit environmental organization with volunteer-staffed offices in Canada and the U.S., were a little broader and less specific when they rejoiced over the poll results. Nikki Skuce, billed as a "Senior Energy Campaigner" on ForestEthics' web page, is quoted as saying it was now time to see "this opposition translated into a full, legislated crude oil tanker ban for B.C.'s coastal waters."

Other environmentalists drew the attention of all party candidates in the May 2011 federal election to the 80 per cent bantankers vote, and suggested dire things would happen to those who ignored the obvious wishes of the people. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff promptly announced he would move to implement such a ban if he became prime minister.

The decision proved disastrous for Ignatieff and the Liberals, while Stephen Harper's Conservatives, who openly supported (and still do) tanker traffic, were triumphant in the poll that counted.

In the past few weeks, the oiltanker-traffic debate, which many thought won back in 1972 when Canada and the U.S. came to agreement on tanker routes well away from the northern B.C. coastline, has again erupted with renewed confusion. Make that "with renewed confusion for me," because for the life of me I can't understand how tanker traffic off our rugged northern coast can be more environmentally hazardous than ever-present tanker traffic off our rugged southern coast.

The oil-tanker debate today is focused on the Enbridge proposal to build a pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, from which port the natural resource could be shipped worldwide, but with China the prime recipient. Opponents of the project are articulate, well organized and accurate in their claim that increased tanker traffic means increased risk of accidents with subsequent disastrous results.

What isn't talked about so much are the already existing hazards off our south coastal waters, those we enjoy watching from Dallas Road as they move up and down the strait. Do we even view those freighters, tankers, barges, ferries hustling back and forth, picking up or dropping off pilots, as hazards?

Or is scenic marine traffic something we've just become used to - and we know we can't do without?

We may lament the presence of oil tankers, may even have voted for them to be banned when the 2010-11 polls were taken, without giving a thought to life without tankers or the huge oil barges used to maintain our daily shots of the fuel we love to hate. Life without the internalcombustion engine would undoubtedly be better for the health of us all, but disastrous to modern demands of society and commerce. Sure, we could live without oil and gasoline, but it wouldn't be much fun - and banning oil tankers would not mean an automatic end to oil spills or other marine disasters.

Between 1997 and 2003, the Canadian Coast Guard studied the coastal environment of B.C. and came up with some interesting statistics on marine traffic. It reported tankers carrying liquid cargo, primarily oil, made an average 2,739 trips a year through Vancouver, Victoria or Juan de Fuca Strait zones and comprised one per cent of all traffic. Another 1,278 tankers carrying liquid chemicals, including petroleum or natural gas, traversed the same zones for another one per cent of total traffic.

Bulk cargo freighters carrying cars, grain, ore, etc. averaged 29,253 for seven per cent of the traffic; tugs, towing or propelling barges, totalled 117,319 or 29 per cent; fishing vessels, including catching, processing or transporting under the Fisheries Act, 11,078 or three per cent; vessels not included in any other category, 19,541 or five per cent.

And then the big one: Passenger, including ferry and cruise ships, 229,095 - or 56 per cent of the average annual vessel movements of 401,301 individual threats to our southern coastal waters.

Should we ban them all, cruise ships and ferries and the tankers and barges that bring in the pollutants for our cars, buses and trucks to convert to lethal gas?

Or is it just tankers moving crude oil or gasoline to China we want to ban? And if so, why? Not a revival of the 1800s' loathsome "yellow peril" whisper, surely.

jhume@shaw.ca