BURNABY—At Trans Mountain’s Burnaby Terminal, the endpoint of the federally-owned pipeline, large tanks that store diluted bitumen and refined petroleum products are painted green.

It’s an attempt to camouflage the industrial operation against the dense forest that separates it from Simon Fraser University’s mountaintop campus.

But green paint and a row or two of trees can’t hide the site from the suburban neighbourhoods that sit just a few hundred metres from the nearest oil-filled tanks.

And, for some voters in this relatively new riding — Burnaby North-Seymour — the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is a pill that may be too bitter to swallow.

The electoral district encompasses parts of Burnaby and, across the Burrard Inlet, parts of North Vancouver as well.

This is where the Trans Mountain pipeline ends, where the 13 tanks storing oil products at the Burnaby Terminal are set to double with the expansion to 26, and, where the number of tankers travelling through the Burrard Inlet to the Westridge Marine Terminal is expected to increase sevenfold.

It’s where hundreds of people have gathered to protest of the federal government’s decision to approve the pipeline expansion; where more than a couple hundred were arrested for blocking the company’s access to its property.

Incumbent Liberal candidate Terry Beech acknowledges that many of his constituents are against the controversial project, which the Trudeau government purchased last year for $4.5 billion.

“I can say with confidence that constituents in Burnaby North-Seymour, on balance, are opposed to this project,” he says on his website.

Beech voted against the project in the House of Commons, but his party is determined to see the pipeline built. Whether it will cost this rookie MP his seat, remains to be seen.

It’s a toss-up who wins the riding, according to 338Canada Project, an electoral projection project by P.J. Fournier, a professor at Cégep de Saint-Laurent in Montréal.

Beech’s main competition is NDP candidate Svend Robinson, a veteran politician who served as a member of Parliament for 25 years after first being elected in 1979. Amita Kuttner, who holds a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics, is running for the Greens.

Both the NDP and the Greens have said they would cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

For Charlene Aleck, a former elected councillor for Tsleil-Waututh Nation, whose key concern in this election is preserving the natural environment, it’s coming down to a choice between those two parties.

Beech has been a strong voice of opposition to the pipeline in Parliament, Aleck said. But his party supports the project.

The work Tsleil-Waututh Nation is doing to stop Trans Mountain and protect the land, water, and air is for “future generations … and our relatives that don’t have a voice, including the salmon and the orca,” she said.

“It’s something worth preserving. We know we can’t get it back to its natural state, but we can do our best,” she said.

On a rainy Wednesday afternoon in one of the closest neighbourhoods to the Burnaby Terminal, Peter Eccles said the pipeline expansion is “a disaster waiting to happen.”

“It is not good for this neighbourhood by any stretch,” he said.

Eccles, now retired, used to work as a senior general counsel for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. He voted NDP in 2015 and he’s voting NDP again this time around.

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“I certainly won’t vote for the Liberals no matter what they offer, because they bought a pipeline,” he said.

Eccles said he’s anticipating a minority government, which could mean the Greens and the NDP hold the swing vote.

“I can’t see the NDP voting in favour of the Trans Mountain pipeline. I certainly can’t see Svend Robinson voting in favour of it,” he said.

At a house nearby, Jim Henderson, who owned a flooring company and is now retired, called the pipeline project “disgusting.”

He said he voted Liberal in the last election, but the party won’t have his support this time.

“They’re shipping bitumen … right into our backyard and risking our ocean and I don’t see the point,” he said.

“It’s a dinosaur idea. We’re supposed to go electric. What the hell are we doing shipping oil.”

But Henderson said he thinks it’s too late to the stop the project now, so he’s voting for Heather Leung.

Leung is now running independently after the Conservatives dropped her earlier this month over offensive comments she made about LGBTQ people. In two videos, one from 2011 and one undated, Leung called the LGBTQ lifestyle “perverted” and voiced support for conversion therapy.

Dropping Leung meant the Conservatives essentially forfeited the riding because the deadline for candidates to register to run in Monday’s election was September 30. Leung says on her website that although she is running as an independent candidate, she would support a Conservative government on motions of confidence or budgetary appropriations.

Both the Conservatives and the People’s Party of Canada, represented by Rocky Dong in Burnaby North-Seymour, support pipelines and have committed to expand oil and gas production.

Henderson said he will support Leung because she said she’ll vote Conservative in Parliament and he thinks the Conservative Party will get a better handle on the budget.

“They’re not quite as foolish with the money,” he said.

Pollution is another key concern and on that, he said, the Conservatives will be “horrible.”

“The only ones that are good at pollution to me is the Greens, and they’re not going to get in,” he said.

This is one of a series of stories looking how national issues in this federal election are playing out in communities and ridings across British Columbia.

With files from Melanie Green

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