Article content continued

Christenson, a country singer who has twice been nominated for a Juno Award, will remain in police custody pending a court appearance Wednesday in Vancouver.

“I’m more afraid of climate change than I am of jail, and I’m willing to risk arrest to send a message to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Canada shouldn’t be building more dirty pipelines. This project doesn’t have the consent of many of the First Nations it passes through, and thousands of people, including myself, aren’t going to stand by and let it get built,” said Christenson in a statement Tuesday.

Photo by NICK PROCAYLO / PNG

Photo by Handout

In February, the National Energy Board recommended that the federal government approve the $9.3-billion pipeline expansion that would twin the existing 1,150-kilometre pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby, built in 1953, and nearly triple capacity. Tanker traffic from the Burnaby terminal on the Burrard Inlet is estimated to increase from 60 tankers a year to more than 400.

The Alberta government says it needs the extra pipeline capacity so it can export more crude oil to Asia and beyond. The B.C. government and the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby are opposed, due mostly to the risk of an environmental disaster and the impact on marine life and some First Nations bands, but also because of the economics of the project. Bitumen is expensive to extract from the oilsands and demand from Asia has so far been sporadic.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to green light the project in the coming weeks.

— with files from Scott Brown, David Carrigg and Canadian Press