• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska March 14, 2023
U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse March 14, 2023
$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’ March 14, 2023
UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’ March 9, 2023
Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions March 9, 2023
Next
Prev

Witnesses Bring Blistering Criticism to Trans Mountain Review Panel

August 22, 2016
Reading time: 4 minutes

Maureen/Flickr

Maureen/Flickr

 
Maureen/Flickr
Maureen/Flickr

Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion came in for blistering criticism over the last week, as the City of Vancouver, First Nations, and climate and community advocates questioned the need for the project and the impartiality and effectiveness of the federal panel set up to review it.

The panel, announced last May by Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, has a six-month mandate to double-check the National Energy Board’s approval of the $6.8-billion diluted bitumen pipeline, subject to 157 environmental, financial, and technical conditions. The decision also faces court challenges from the Squamish Nation and two environmental groups.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe

Last week, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and City Manager Sadhu Johnston told the review panel that Kinder Morgan has no social licence or economic justification to triple the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline.

“There is no question from our analysis it’s not worth the risk. In fact, it’s not in Canada’s interest,” Robertson said, on the first of three days of panel hearings. “People and the environment are at risk, but there is very significant risk to Vancouver’s economy and the region’s economy.”

The second day of the hearings saw more than 300 members of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations show up to protest the project, the National Observer reports. On Day Three, the hearing room was almost empty—a reaction that spoke louder than any rally, according to Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.

“We’re not confident in the process,” Phillip told panelists. “Should we appear to endorse a process that is fundamentally flawed or do we do our speaking in the streets?”

“We’re in this together,” he added. “It’s not simply an Indigenous issue. It’s a fundamental human rights issue, it’s a climate change issue, it’s an environmental issue.”

Earlier in the week, former KPMG partner and PhD chemist Eoin Finn pointed to serious flaws in the panel process, reports The Observer’s Elizabeth McSheffrey.

“The NEB denied intervener status to hundreds and in the end, even resorted to locking the public out of public hearings,” he said. “In short, the NEB process is possibly the greatest farce ever inflicted upon Canadians, up until now.”

But even by that standard, he described the ministerial panel as a “slapdash reno job” whose “independence qualifications” are open to question, given panelist Kim Baird’s past business relationship with Kinder Morgan.

“This is simply unacceptable, an insult to the intelligence of Canadians,” Finn said. “It falls far short of what was promised by the federal government,” with a panel mandate that “seems to accept that the rather ill-defined, ‘significant adverse environmental risk’ is an appropriate test for an environmental assessment.”

On the Dogwood Initiative website, anti-fossil analyst and ex-journalist Kai Nagata concludes that the panel process runs counter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s election promise to overhaul the NEB review process for existing project proposals as well as new ones. “If Trudeau issues permits on the basis of the slapdash assessment process so far, he won’t just face lawsuits from First Nations,” Nagata writes. “He’ll be betraying a written promise to British Columbians.”

After Nagata questioned candidate Trudeau on the issue during a campaign stop in B.C. last fall, he says he received a follow-up letter from Liberal Party President Anna Gainey. “Thank you for writing regarding the Liberal Party of Canada’s position on the Kinder Morgan Pipeline,” she wrote. “As you are aware, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada have serious concerns with the process surrounding the approval of this pipeline. We cannot support the pipeline in its current form because the Conservatives have not ensured environmental, community or stakeholder consent.”

Gainey added: We agree with what you, and Canadians across the country, have been saying for a long time: Canada’s environmental assessment process is broken.”

After publicly releasing the letter for the first time, Nagata compared the Liberals’ election commitment to the conduct of the ministerial panel, noting that there was no public record of testimony, no information on how or whether stakeholders were invited to participate, no process for testing contradictory evidence, and no apparent plan for reviewing 15,000 responses to an online questionnaire and hundreds of pages of scientific evidence rejected by the NEB.

“The conclusion I am forced to draw is that this ‘redo’ is nothing more than a political barometer for the government,” Nagata writes. “With no investigative powers, scientific expertise, or resources to speak of, the panel members sit mutely in their chairs and jot down a few half-hearted notes as people plead with them from the microphones. At the end, their report goes into a top hat and—poof!—the minister pulls out a yes or a no.”

“I’ve never been more frustrated in my life,” one participant told Nagata. “What a joke,” said another.



in Canada, Cities & Communities, Climate & Society, Climate Action / "Blockadia", Demand & Distribution, First Peoples, Fossil Fuels, Jurisdictions, Legal & Regulatory, Pipelines / Rail Transport

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Environmental Defence Canada/flickr
Shale & Fracking

Repsol Abandons Plan to Ship Canadian LNG to Europe

March 17, 2023
193
U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr
Oil & Gas

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
118
David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr
Community Climate Finance

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
352

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
352
Environmental Defence Canada/flickr

Repsol Abandons Plan to Ship Canadian LNG to Europe

March 17, 2023
193
Rebecca Bollwitt/flickr

Fossils Stay ‘Oily’, Gibsons Sues Big Oil, U.S. Clean Energy Booms, EU Pushes Fossil Phaseout, and Fukushima Disaster was ‘No Accident’

March 14, 2023
181
Joshua Doubek/Wikipedia

No New Jobs Came from Alberta’s $4B ‘Job Creation’ Tax Cut for Big Oil

October 6, 2022
816
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board/flickr

$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’

March 14, 2023
242
Behrat/Wikimedia Commons

Hawaii Firm Turns Home Water Heaters into Grid Batteries

March 14, 2023
443

Recent Posts

U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
118
EcoAnalytics

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
126
Raysonho/wikimedia commons

Purolator Pledges $1B to Electrify Last-Mile Delivery

March 14, 2023
81
United Nations

UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’

March 10, 2023
94
Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions

March 10, 2023
185
jasonwoodhead23/flickr

First Nation Scorches Imperial Oil, Alberta Regulator Over Toxic Leak

March 8, 2023
376
Next Post

Clouds' climate impact defies simple analysis

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}