VANCOUVER -- Faced with a six-fold increase in oil tanker traffic in their Burrard Inlet home if Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion project goes ahead, the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation says it’s time for Metro Vancouver and British Columbia to get serious about alternative energy.

And to drive the point home, the Tsleil-Waututh, whose community sits directly across the inlet from Kinder Morgan’s Westridge oil export terminal, are organizing a summit in Vancouver later this spring that they say is a call to action on exploring clean energy alternatives to oil.

The Tsleil-Waututh initiative comes at a time of unprecedented investment in energy in this province. The largest oil and gas companies in the world are lining up with offers of multi-billion dollar investments aimed at developing totally new industries and new markets that proponents say Canada needs if its most valuable export, energy, is to survive, let alone thrive.

But these investments bring their own issues.

“You can only have so many pipeline corridors across British Columbia, there’s only so much water to produce the natural gas,” said Vancouver energy lawyer David Austin, referring to proposals for new or expanded energy export terminals at Vancouver, Kitimat and Prince Rupert.

The Tsleil-Waututh conference, Transitioning From Oil Dependency, is not just about opposition to Kinder Morgan’s $5.4 billion pipeline expansion, said Tsleil-Waututh chief Justin George, but about looking at clean alternatives and creating business partnerships to make those alternatives happen. “I see this issue as multi-faceted,” George said. “It’s not just a First Nations issue. It’s all of us as human beings making it better for the next generation.”

“We don’t disregard that there needs to be an economy but it has to be sustainable.”

The conference is specifically aimed at First Nations, municipalities, environmental groups, federal and provincial government representatives, renewable energy organizations, the legal and risk management communities, unions and the academic community, said conference organizer Geoff Greenwell of 2G Group.

“Of course all concerned citizens and community members are welcome as well,” he said.

The 500 members of the Tsleil-Waututh, whose name means People of the Inlet, fear an oil spill is inevitable if Kinder Morgan’s proposal to increase the capacity of the Trans Mountain Pipeline from 300,000 barrel a day to 890,000 barrels a day goes ahead. But the increase in tanker traffic alone, from the current level of five a month to 34 a month passing in and out of Second Narrows, will bring its own pollution which George said will harm the sea life that the Tsleil-Waututh have depended upon for generations.

The Tsleil-Waututh support development; they have a deep history of trade, George said, citing Russian beads that have been found at old village sites as examples of a centuries-old trading economy on the inlet. They are partners in a subdivision development on reserve lands, have profitably invested in a wind turbine company and have their own wind turbine distribution business. They are committed to economic development, George said.