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“The idea is to build a much bigger foundation and have big, big buffers so a ship would glance off it into the middle of the channel,” he said.

Marine safety expert Joe Spears of the Horseshoe Bay Marine Group said it’s important to look at safety “with fresh eyes” because there are usually ways to improve protection for people and property.

“The North Shore bridges are part of Canada’s critical infrastructure, so we need to deal with this in a holistic fashion and look at every aspect. Organizations shouldn’t be afraid to talk. That’s good ocean governance,” he said.

The federal government approved the tripling in size of Kinder Morgan’s oil pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby last year. The company said 408 tankers per year will transit the harbour over the 50-year lifespan of the project, passing under three bridges — the Lions Gate and Ironworkers, which are provincially maintained, and a railway span owned by Canadian National, 110 metres from the Ironworkers.

The channel is narrowest under the railway bridge at only 120 metres wide. Aframax-sized tankers, with the capacity to carry up to 120,000 metric tonnes of crude oil, clear it by just 37 metres on each side. Gunn said the S6-14 code doesn’t apply to the railway bridge.

“I’d like to see the code applied to it as well. A lot of jobs are dependent on it, especially with the grain terminal expansion,” he said.

News of the provincial review has reached Sandro Scola, senior manager of bridges and structures for Canadian National based in Chicago. He wants to learn more about the province’s findings.

“I will be calling Mr. Nyland,” Scola told Postmedia News in an email.

Gunn said the ministry’s scrutiny indicates that engineers are “obviously concerned” something could happen despiteincreased safety measures such as additional escort tugs, experienced pilots and state-of-the-art navigational equipment.

Port of Vancouver spokeswoman Kristina Driedger said the port’s authority does not extend to the highway bridges.

“We are not the owners or operators of the bridges,” she said in an email.

Richard Wiefelspuett, executive director of a government and industry-funded organization called Clear Seas, said a general risk assessment which was done for the pipeline project did not extend to the bridges.

“A tanker hit on a bridge would be a bad thing. Our preference is prevention,” he said.

The concerned engineers produced an animated video last year which presents a scenario in which they said the Ironworkers could come down. The video shows a series of events: a rudder failure on the tanker, collision with a steel tower on the railway bridge, the tower dropping upright onto the tanker and subsequently plowing into the Ironworkers.