https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/01/10/Horgan-Lamb-Trans-Mountain-Pipeline/
[links and images in online article]
Horgan Goes from Lion to Lamb on the Trans Mountain Pipeline
BC still opposes the project, but it’s not leading.
By Andrew Nikiforuk 10 Jan 2019 | TheTyee.ca
When the National Energy Board announced conditional approval for the
Trans Mountain pipeline project in 2016, BC NDP leader John Horgan sent
party members an important letter.
Horgan, then opposition leader, said Kinder Morgan’s proposed pipeline
expansion and the resulting “seven-fold increase in tanker traffic”
would put the interests of British Columbians, salmon and the coastal
economy at risk.
Horgan offered the usual bromide about how “a strong economy goes
hand-in-hand with a healthy environment.”
But then he made this promise.
“We need to have a credible process to evaluate the risks,” Horgan
wrote. “We don’t know what level of risk we’re dealing with on Kinder
Morgan because Stephen Harper tailored the NEB to approve pipelines —
rather than test scientific evidence or gather public input. Why is
[former premier] Christy Clark hiding behind a flawed process created by
Stephen Harper?”
Two years later, another flawed hearing run by the same discredited
National Energy Board is taking place on the same uneconomic pipeline
expansion.
Yet Horgan seems to be in full retreat. The politician who once promised
to use “every tool in the toolbox” to protect B.C.’s coastal economy and
environment now appears mostly tool-less and toothless.
As premier, Horgan has championed a liquefied fracked gas export
industry by showering its earthquake-making developers with tax breaks
and royalty credits.
Horgan has also become “chummy” with the pipeline’s new owner, Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau, another business-as-usual politician.
While the Alberta government has spent more than $30 million to bombard
the airwaves and Internet with pipeline propaganda, the B.C. government
has remained relatively mute.
There are no provincial advertisements about the need for an unbiased
made-in-B.C. environmental assessment even though prominent members of
the NDP have demanded them in the past.
There are no ads defending orca and salmon populations on the verge of
extinction and now facing not a seven-fold but as much as a 20-fold
increase in tanker traffic.
There are no ads about the inappropriateness of storing five million
barrels of diluted bitumen in the middle of Burnaby.
There are no ads explaining how the main argument for the pipeline —
access to Asian buyers that will pay higher prices — is flawed because
they represent only 13 per cent of the global market for heavy oil.
(North America, meanwhile, accounts for 57 per cent of global heavy oil
demand.)
And there are no ads about industry’s shoddy record of cleaning up
marine oil spills, let alone diluted bitumen.
What kind of government lets another government spread propaganda about
a mega-project without articulating and defending the interests of
British Columbians?
Also galling is the government’s new Clean BC plan, which makes no
mention of the risk of oil tankers, or the role increased oil sands
production, driven by the pipeline expansion, would play in climate change.
Even the conservative International Energy Agency says that the world
can’t build any more fossil fuel infrastructure, including LNG plants
and bitumen pipelines, if we hope to meet global climate targets.
But the strongest example of backpedalling comes from the dismal
“reconsideration” hearings for the Trans Mountain expansion.
In August, a federal Court of Appeal ruling found that the National
Energy Board’s troubled 2016 review of the Trans Mountain project was so
flawed that it failed to provide the federal cabinet with the necessary
information to make a decision on approving it.
The review, which also ignored economic risks, climate change and
contained numerous errors spawned more than 15 legal challenges
resulting in the Federal Court of Appeal ruling.
The court ruled that the board erred by excluding the impacts of marine
shipping on resident killer whale populations. It also found that
consultation with First Nations was meaningless.
In response to the ruling, the federal cabinet ordered the board to do
an environmental assessment on the impacts of bitumen tanker traffic and
a new round of consultations with First Nations. The federal government,
which bought the pipeline for $4.5 billion last year, gave the board 22
weeks to complete both tasks.
While many participants have criticized the process for its bias,
brevity and narrow scope, the NDP government has sat on its hands.
In other words, Horgan has dropped his toolbox and became a politician
missing in action.
Given that the quashing of the federal pipeline certificate also
nullified the provincial approval (it too was based on the National
Energy Board report, which the courts said was riddled with “successive,
unacceptable deficiencies”), Horgan could have pulled out of “the flawed
process created by Stephen Harper” and ordered a real provincial
environmental assessment.
In 2010, the former B.C. government signed an agreement that handed over
responsibility for environmental assessment for five major projects to
the National Energy Board, including the Kinder Morgan pipeline. A 2016
B.C. Supreme Court decision found that the handoff wasn’t legal and that
the provincial government had a duty to represent the best interests of
British Columbians.
That same year George Heyman, then the NDP’s environment critic, accused
the Clark government of betraying the public interest and “passing the
buck” by not insisting on a “a made-in-B.C. environmental assessment”
for the pipeline.
But Horgan and his government have chosen to pass the buck by not
insisting on a “a made-in-B.C. environmental assessment.”
When the National Energy Board put Lyne Mercier in charge of the
reconsideration hearing, Horgan’s government said nothing while a number
of the 64,000 faxed submissions from B.C. citizens highlighted a problem.
Mercier, a former energy CEO and Harper appointee to the board, had to
recuse herself from the Energy East pipeline hearing due to conflict of
interest allegations.
Along with three other board members, she had met with former Quebec
premier Jean Charest, then a paid consultant for the company seeking to
build the pipeline.
A 2017 federal report acknowledged the National Energy Board had deeply
tarnished its reputation.
“Canadians have serious concerns that the [board] has been ‘captured’ by
the oil and gas industry, with many board members who come from the
industry that the NEB regulates, and who — at the very least appear to —
have an innate bias toward that industry,” the report noted.
But Horgan’s government didn’t challenge another biased process with an
artificial deadline conducted by a captured energy regulator.
One of the first big issues tackled by the reconsideration panel
concerned basic geography.
Should the National Energy Board only consider impacts of tankers and
bitumen spills on orcas within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit,
or should it consider possible effects within the 200-nautical-mile area
known as the “Exclusive Economic Zone”?
Almost all the interveners, including the State of Washington, supported
the 200-nautical-mile limit for the review. Canada and Alberta argued
for the 12-mile limit in assessing risk.
Tankers don’t stop at the 12-nautical mile limit, and spills can happen
beyond the arbitrary boundary. Last January an Iranian oil tanker
exploded after colliding with a cargo ship in one of the richest fishing
grounds in the South China Sea.
The disaster released a million barrels of condensate into the ocean
about 160 nautical miles off the coast of China.
But the National Energy Board ignored that evidence and instead ruled
that it would stick with 12 nautical miles for its rushed review.
Did Horgan dig into his toolbox and lead a campaign to argue that the
scope of the hearing was pathetically narrow?
No. His government filed no specific submission to the National Energy
Board on the issue.
“It was disappointing,” said Eugene Kung, a lawyer with West Coast
Environmental Law Centre. “On the 200-nautical-mile question, it would
have been nice to have had the added voice of the B.C. government.”
But the Tsleil-Waututh Nation acted like a true government. They filed a
motion with the board challenging the limited scope of the review and
other errors. It warned the board that if it didn’t correct these
factual and legal errors, then “further litigation will become more likely.”
The Tsleil-Waututh motion also emphasized that the board had seriously
erred by not revisiting the economic case for the project, which was
based on a single flawed Kinder Morgan study. Much has changed since
then. Project costs have increased, which translates into higher tolls
for shippers, which, in turn, undermines the project’s economics. At the
same time oil prices have fallen and become more volatile.
The Tsleil-Waututh Nation also said the government’s decision to appoint
two new members to the three-person review panel meant oral Indigenous
history and tradition evidence presented during the first hearings would
not be given proper consideration.
The nation’s no-nonsense motion to the board gave the B.C. government a
great opportunity to speak up for British Columbians.
But all it could muster was a two-page letter supporting the nation’s
motion and a similar one filed by Living Oceans Society. The provincial
government finally mentioned that perhaps the review should extend to
possible impacts within the 200-mile limit, as the submissions “raise
sufficient doubt as to the correctness of the board’s decision.”
The board dismissed the Tsleil-Waututh arguments and application for
review, guaranteeing that the pipeline expansion will face more court
challenges.
Last December, the board’s reconsideration panel invited interveners to
submit their opening statements.
Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May filed a six-page statement
highlighting her constitutional duty to represent what her constituency
truly cared about: salmon recovery and killer whales.
The Tsleil-Waututh Nation, which believes a government should represent
the interests of its people, didn’t mince words either.
The nation argued that the board couldn’t simply plug “marine shipping
into the designated project and run the analysis based on the old
evidence… which is stale-dated, inaccurate and therefore unreliable.”
The City of Vancouver talked about the “unacceptable risk of oil spills”
and the City of Burnaby itemized the significant threat to public
safety, the environment and the coastal economy.
And what did the Horgan government say? It delivered a whimper instead
of a salvo.
It submitted a brief letter that said the pipeline should not go ahead.
It said the province was “concerned about the adverse effects of
Project-related marine vessel traffic on southern resident killer
whales.” And it was concerned “about the adverse environmental and
socio-economic effects of a spill from a Project-related tanker into the
marine environment.”
But the next paragraph reassures the board that it wasn’t too concerned.
If the board does approved the pipeline, as it most likely will, the
B.C. government asked the board to “attach clear, stringent and
enforceable conditions to the certificate” so adverse effects are
“mitigated to the greatest extent possible.”
The government’s statement didn’t address the project’s shaky economics,
the unfair limits on the reconsideration hearing, the blatant conflict
of interest (the owner of a pipeline gets its own discredited board to
assess marine impacts), the project’s contribution to climate change or
First Nations’ rights.
Actions speak louder than words, and it’s apparent that Horgan has no
intention, as he promised in 2017, to use “every tool in the toolbox to
defend our coast from the threat of increased oil tanker traffic. [Tyee]