At an all-candidates debate on CFAX radio on May 2, Green Party candidate Chris Maxwell flatly denied that party leader Andrew Weaver supported a proposal to build an oil refinery in Kitimat at the end of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

Fleming: We have made our position clear on pipelines. Andrew Weaver actually has not. He supports, apparently, a refinery in Kitimat which would load onto supertankers...

Maxwell [interjecting]: That’s an alternative fact, Rob.

Fleming: It’s not. He has said it repeatedly on the public record.

Maxwell: No, he has not.

Actually, he did:

Times Colonist: Green Party MLA backs David Black’s refinery proposal

Georgia Straight: B.C. Green MLA Andrew Weaver okay with Kitimat oil refinery

“Do I think David Black’s proposal has merit? I do.”

Weaver suggests processing bitumen into a lighter form called “synthetic crude” before the resource is piped from Alberta to the B.C. coast. “But then you still want to keep the upgraded products out of the water, so then you would refine that as well,” he said.

Weaver said that the B.C. Green Party is “not opposed to oil” because being anti-oil means disagreeing with “everything around us”.