The following is a commentary written by Adam Scott, the Climate & Energy Program Manager with Environmental Defence, which originally appeared at The Hill Times Online on Monday, March 9. We post it here with permission from the author.
By ADAM SCOTT
TORONTO—The regulatory process that reviews energy projects in Canada has always had problems. But since the 2012 omnibus legislation, which gutted environmental protections and weakened the National Energy Board (NEB) process, the system that reviews major energy projects in Canada has lost both effectiveness and legitimacy with the public.
The NEB process is now mandated to be complete in just 15 months, which is far too little time to review major projects, such as TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline—the longest and largest tar sands pipeline ever proposed.
In an acknowledgement of this impossible timeframe, the NEB has rushed to start the hearing process before it has even finished reviewing TransCanada’s 30,000-page application. The window for the public to apply to participate in hearings has already closed, yet TransCanada is expected to make major changes to the Energy East project, possibly moving the tanker terminal and pipeline route hundreds of kilometres on the south coast of the St. Lawrence River. How can the public determine if they have concerns with the project, when the project plan is incomplete?
Once the hearing process begins, getting critical information on the project doesn’t get easier. As an intervener in ongoing NEB hearings for the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the city of Vancouver made nearly 600 formal requests for information on the proposal. Kinder Morgan has flatly refused to answer 291 of those, and the NEB refused to compel the company to do so.
It gets worse. First Nations in Canada have a constitutional right to full consultation on these projects, yet an artificial 15-month timeframe for review appears to ignore those constitutional rights. Ontario Regional Chief Stan Beardy wrote to Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford in early February expressing “grave concern” from First Nations about the NEB process. Beardy pointed out that the board has been inaccessible and unwilling to share information.
The NEB also severely limits the scope of its reviews. The board has been explicit that it will refuse to accept any evidence suggesting that pipelines could lock Canada into increasing levels of climate pollution, at a time when Canada has promised the international community it will cut back. By itself, Energy East is projected to increase Canada’s climate pollution equivalent to putting seven million new cars on our roads—a statistic that doesn’t include the climate pollution from burning that oil.
More than 1,800 individuals, groups and First Nations applied for permission to participate in the upcoming hearings for Energy East, and more than two-thirds of them requested to share concerns about the climate impacts of the proposal. The NEB has already ruled that any evidence on climate impacts will be inadmissible the pipeline’s hearings. How do Canadians determine if massive fossil fuel infrastructure projects are in our national interest when we don’t look at climate pollution, the defining issue of our times?
Ironically, the NEB allows information on how the project would create economic benefits ‘upstream’ from the expansion of tar sands oil production in Northern Alberta. However, a citizen could be barred or turfed from hearings for pointing out that that the same increase in oil production will lead to ‘upstream’ air, water, and climate pollution and will impact First Nations communities living in proximity to the tar sands.
Perhaps most galling, under the new rules brought in 2012, the NEB no longer has the final say on whether a project it reviews should go ahead. It merely passes along its opinion to the federal cabinet, which can do whatever it wants in the end. Is it any wonder public opposition and legal challenges to pipeline projects continue to pile up?
The federal government and opposition parties should recognize the urgent need to restore Canada’s democratic and environmental protections, in order that we can have a real conversation about the national interest where the concerns of the public can be heard and weighed. And until they do, public opposition to these projects will only get louder and stronger. Canadians of all stripes have a deep respect for fairness. Until the process governing major energy projects in Canada is rebuilt in the interests of protecting the public interest, getting one of these projects actually built will be an uphill battle.