An internal National Energy Board email appears to boast about provisions that prevented the public from cross-examining witnesses at a pipeline hearing that took place in 2012.
“Having only final oral argument and no cross-examination worked well in this case due to the highly technical issues regarding engineering and integrity,” an NEB manager wrote in the email, obtained by a Waterloo, Ontario “citizen investigator” under Access to Information rules.
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“The lack of public input is actually a liability,” Louisette Lanteigne told the Vancouver Observer. “You need cross-examination. You need it to understand the logic of why the decisions are being made.”
NEB staff “[underestimate] the intelligence of the public because they assume we don’t understand basic engineering,” she said.
