FREDERICTON – New Brunswick’s senior minister in the federal Cabinet says Ottawa views liquefied natural gas as dangerous cargo that can be banned from transport in Canadian waters.

Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson said March 31 that the federal conservative government has made it clear to U.S. companies they will not be able to bring large LNG tankers through Canadian waters off the New Brunswick coast.

Three American companies are planning to build LNG terminals on the Maine coast, across from New Brunswick on Passamaquoddy Bay.

The companies want to use Head Harbour Passage, an internal Canadian waterway, to bring tankers into the bay.

“Our position is that LNG is dangerous cargo,” Thompson said during a visit to Fredericton to announce innovation funding from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

“That is why [LNG terminals] have been turned down by just about every jurisdiction on the East Coast of the United States. All of those communities and states have said no simply because they view it as dangerous cargo.”

Officials with the U.S. companies believe they have the right to innocent passage through the Canadian waters that lead into Passamaquoddy Bay.

Gordon Grimes, an attorney for one of the companies, Quoddy Bay LLC, said recently that Canada is on shaky legal ground in claiming the right to say no to tankers in Head Harbour Passage.

He said the passage is used for international navigation and therefore there is a right of innocent passage.

Grimes said Canada already has endorsed the safety of LNG by approving terminals, including one being built in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Dean Girdis of Downeast LNG of Washington, D.C., another of the three companies planning to build a terminal on the Maine coast, recently warned that the U.S. will not back down on the issue because it would set a dangerous international precedent.

“If Canada does not permit freedom of navigation in this particular site, it puts to risk several other places in the world where billions and trillions of dollars worth of cargo go through territorial seas, places like the Taiwan Strait or the Strait of Bahrain,” Girdis told the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal.

“It would give small countries in those parts of the world a significant legal precedent to stop traffic. That has huge international implications.”

Thompson, Conservative MP for New Brunswick Southwest, said Ottawa is prepared to fight the LNG proposals all the way to international court, if necessary.

“We have stated that we will use every legal and diplomatic means to defend our position, which is ‘no’ to the transport of LNG tankers through Head Harbour Passage,” he said.

“We have made that perfectly clear.”

The Maine LNG proposals are strongly opposed by people living in southwest New Brunswick, where it is feared the industrialization of the Bay of Fundy will hurt tourism and fishing.