OTTAWA — The new Burnaby North-Seymour riding is likely to be ground zero of the battle over pipelines during the 2015 federal election campaign.

The riding, divided by Burrard Inlet into a Conservative-friendly north and a more New Democrat-leaning south, includes both Burnaby Mountain, site of recent anti-pipeline civil disobedience, and the Westridge Marine Terminal.

The terminal would load 34 tankers a month, up from the current five, if Kinder Morgan’s $5.4 billion expansion of its Trans Mountain oil pipeline goes ahead.

The riding also features one candidate who plans on putting the issue front and centre in the federal election scheduled for October.

Scientist Lynne Quarmby, recently acclaimed as the Green party candidate, is so devoted to the issue she got herself arrested during the recent Burnaby Mountain protest against Kinder Morgan’s.

She said she is the only anti-Conservative candidate who can claim to be unambiguously opposed to Harper’s long-stated, but so far unsuccessful, campaign to expand the number of oilsands pipelines in Canada.

“I don’t want to be too immodest, but I think actually the riding needs me,” Quarmby, whose campaign manager Pete Fry is the son of Vancouver Centre Liberal MP Hedy Fry, told The Vancouver Sun.

“I think I’m the one who can beat the Conservative candidate.”

But only four per cent of Burnaby North-Seymour voters voted Green in the last election, and Quarmby is facing some tough competition to beat Conservative candidate Mike Little, a three-term North Vancouver district councillor.

The Liberal nominee is entrepreneur Terry Beech, 34, who claims to be Canada’s youngest-ever councillor, due to his election to the Nanaimo council 15 years ago.

The favourite for the NDP nomination is Carol Baird Ellan, former chief judge of the B.C. provincial court, who is competing against teacher-actor Michael Charrois at next month’s nomination meeting. Both are Kinder Morgan critics.

The riding they’re fighting over is one of six new ones created by Elections Canada after the 2011 vote to take into account B.C.’s growing population.

The Conservatives have 21 B.C. seats, the NDP a dozen, Liberals two and the Green party one.

Recent polls have the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP all hovering around 30 per cent, with the Greens at 12 per cent.

Pipeline politics mean different things to different parties:

• For Harper’s Conservatives, the issue doesn’t necessarily pose a significant threat in B.C., say analysts.

For one thing, it is assumed that the minority of people who tell polls they favour pipelines is assumed to be roughly the same demographic as British Columbians who tend to vote Tory, said pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos.

Another pollster, Greg Lyle, said the only significant risk would come if there’s a major Canadian or international spill that dominates headlines for a number of days.

“For the Tories, pipelines rally their base and may help them pull in a ‘hard hat’ vote that otherwise might not be accessible,” Lyle said. “Events are the wild card.”

• For the NDP, the pipeline issue represents a bit of a balancing act. The party doesn’t want to be labelled anti-development, as former provincial NDP leader Adrian Dix was in the 2013 campaign.

Leader Tom Mulcair has opposed outright Enbridge Inc.’s $7.9 billion pipeline to Kitimat, but has only attacked the National Energy Board process when it comes to the Kinder Morgan expansion.

He has argued that it’s unfairly weighted in favour of the applicant, and the review would be re-launched with fairer rules under an NDP government.

To the anti-development charge, Mulcair points to his approval of a pipeline when he was a Quebec cabinet minister, and to his support for an Alberta pipeline to Eastern Canada to support refinery jobs in Canada.

• The Liberals are perhaps in the toughest spot in dealing with the pipeline issue, as Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is even more nuanced on pipelines than the NDP — opposing Gateway but making vague comments that suggest both support for and skepticism of the Kinder Morgan project.

“The issue of Kinder Morgan is complex, and I believe I am the only candidate who has been working to really understand it by knocking on doors, meeting with representatives of local environmental groups, and engaging in discussions with Kinder Morgan,” Beech, the Liberal candidate for North Burnaby-Seymour, told The Sun.

“Any decision on such an important issue must be based on facts and evidence, not ideology.” That approach will be a problem at the doorstep, according to Kennedy Stewart, an NDP MP and the current representative for Burnaby-Douglas, which disappears under the realignment of boundaries.

“Wishy-washy won’t cut it,” said Stewart, an outspoken Kinder Morgan critic who will run in Burnaby South in the 2015 election.

poneil@postmedia.com

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