Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP deputy environment critic Linda Duncan shared a common response to the passage of Bill C-69 — which represented a change to modernize how projects such as pipelines, hydro dams and mines are reviewed — in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

In a word, they called it “appalling.”

“It was really undemocratic. It is a total missed opportunity,” said Duncan, who resigned from the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development over its handling of the bill.

“It was the most appalling process I’ve ever been through in my time in environmental law,” Duncan told The Narwhal in an interview. Duncan has worked in environmental law for 45 years.

The bill will replace the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals came into power on a promise to “restore lost protections” and implement “modern safeguards” after the Stephen Harper government rolled back key environmental laws in 2012, including reducing public input.

Canada’s environmental assessment laws have been criticized for being weaker than those in the U.S. and failing to consider the cumulative effects of projects, Canada’s international climate change commitments and the constitutional rights of Indigenous people.

These gaps have contributed to dysfunction in decision-making on major natural resource projects, leading to protests such as those around the Trans Mountain pipeline and the Site C dam.

“Over time, we have slid backwards,” Duncan said. “This was an opportunity to put in place — finally —  a strong federal impact assessment process and it’s a missed opportunity.”

Duncan noted the Liberals have not turned down a major project since taking power nearly three years ago. “And this law is not going to change that,” she said.

May said that before 2012, 4,000 to 5,000 projects a year were screened through the federal process each year. After Harper’s changes, that number was reduced to closer to 25.

“I don’t think that’s adequate,” May told The Narwhal. “Small projects not making the nightly news are sometimes the ones that need to be screened to make sure they’re not having a negative environmental impact.”

Bill C-69 doesn’t fix that problem, which May calls a “tragedy.”

“If you have a major reform effort and it’s bad, you’re not going to get back to it again for five to 10 years.”

Between 1975 and 2012, only two projects reviewed federally were rejected, May noted.

In a sign of how polarized natural resource debates have become in Canada, the Conservatives also panned the new Impact Assessment Act, calling it a “death knell” for natural resource projects.

Amendments improved bill C-69 — but is it enough?

Other environmental experts gave the bill cautious praise, after several amendments were made to improve the new law — but even they warned the devil will be in the details.

“The bill is far from perfect, but with these amendments we feel more confident that Canada’s new impact assessment regime will help ensure sustainability and avoid decisions that put politics ahead of science and environmental protection,” said Anna Johnston, a staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law.

“We were pleased to see important additions made to the Canadian Energy Regulator Act at the committee stage, including the requirement to consider climate obligations in the review of all energy projects,” said Nichole Dusyk, postdoctoral fellow at the Pembina Institute.

Johnston said crucial amendments were made to ensure decisions are no longer made in a black box. Now cabinet must make its determination based on five factors (not political considerations) and must provide a detailed rationale for the decision.

“There will be a lot more transparency in decision-making,” Johnston told The Narwhal.

The factors cabinet will consider in determining whether a project is in the public interest include the extent to which the project contributes to sustainability, the impact the project may have on the rights of Indigenous peoples and the extent to which the effects of the project hinder or contribute to Canada’s ability to meet its climate change commitments.

Gaps in Bill C-69 include what projects will be reviewed, discretionary powers

One of the biggest gaps in the new bill is a lack of clarity around which projects will actually be reviewed under the new Impact Assessment Act.

“The government has not released a draft list of projects that will be subject to Impact Assessment. Unless the list is significantly expanded, the Impact Assessment Act will ultimately do little to improve on the status quo and will not tackle cumulative environmental effects,” said Joshua Ginsberg, director of legislative affairs at Ecojustice.

Oilsands projects could still be exempted from the federal review process, for instance.

“The new laws will only be as effective as their implementation,” Ginsberg said.

Another major area of concern is the amount of discretion left to government.

“C-69 is just rife with discretion. Interestingly, Conservatives and industry are also expressing concern about that,” the NDP’s Duncan said.

Johnston said a good example of the amount of discretion allowed for in the bill deals relates to public participation.

“It says there will be meaningful public participation, but we don’t know how often the public will be engaged, how long the engagement periods will be, how much funding they’ll have, so there’s still a lot still to flesh out in the regulations,” she said.

Jamie Kneen, communications coordinator for MiningWatch, said the amendments “mildly improved” the bill but said “there’s a lot of wiggle room in there still for arbitrary decisions.”

Some of his biggest outstanding concerns include how often regional assessments (which look at the cumulative impacts of many projects in one area) and strategic assessments (which look at how policies like climate change ought to be applied) will actually be utilized — because they aren’t mandated.

“Those kinds of assessments either won’t happen or will be very limited in their scope,” Kneen said, pointing to the Salish Sea and the Gulf of St. Lawrence as places in need of regional assessments.

Rights of Indigenous peoples not fully incorporated

For Duncan, her biggest concern is that amendments to include the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People more prominently in the bill weren’t passed.

“They talk a big line about signing onto international treaties and then when it comes to actually instituting it in domestic law, there’s no commitment,” Duncan said.

“Most of our major resource projects are occurring on or impacting Indigenous peoples, their lands and their waters.”

Ball in Senate’s court

Duncan and May hold out hope that the bill may be improved in the Senate, with Duncan pointing to four Indigenous members of the Senate who she has shared her amendments regarding Indigenous rights with

“The ball is in their court now,” Duncan said.

Johnston, meanwhile, is concerned that the bill may not make it through the Senate before the next federal election 16 months from now.

“With the marijuana bill being knocked back and forth, there’s the potential that Bill C-69 could be held up so long that it actually doesn’t pass until after the next election, in which case we’re back at square one,” she said.  

But square one might not be the worst spot, given the flaws in the bill, according to May.

“If it didn’t pass, I wouldn’t be heartbroken,” she said.

Duncan hopes the Senate will travel and talk to people across Canada before passing the bill.

“[The Liberals] had a golden opportunity to put in place a credible review process,” Duncan said. “So many people put their heart and soul into coming up with a strong law. Very little of it was listened to.”

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Amongst all the hooting and hollering over the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, it’s easy to lose track of how on earth we ended up in this place of dysfunction.

But Canadians didn’t become deeply divided about oil pipelines overnight. Indeed, much of the current tension can be traced back to the federal review of Trans Mountain, which the National Energy Board (NEB) began in early 2014.

“The reality is that there are huge gaping flaws in the Canadian environmental review process that have been known about for decades and have never been fixed,” David Boyd, an environmental lawyer and associate professor at UBC, told DeSmog Canada.

“The process that was carried out to review the Kinder Morgan pipeline was full of holes.”

Those holes, according to Boyd, include a “complete failure” to consider the cumulative effects of projects, Canada’s international climate change commitments and the constitutional rights of Indigenous people.

“Even countries like the United States have a stronger approach to environmental assessment than Canada,” Boyd said. “It’s just completely greenwash to say that Canada has a rigorous review process.”

And yet, that hasn’t stopped politicians and the oil industry from claiming Canada has one of the most rigorous reviews in the world.

Despite promising to reform the review process while running for office, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved Trans Mountain, he said: “This is a decision based on rigorous debate on science and evidence.”

One of the major critiques of the NEB process that approved Trans Mountain was that the panel refused to consider the most recent peer-reviewed science on spills of diluted bitumen.

“How can you ignore the leading scientific evidence and then say you’ve conducted a rigorous review? It’s just a preposterous affront to reason,” Boyd said.

Pipeline debate taps into deeper challenges

“I think it’s fair to say that there’s a big transparency problem in Canadian environmental law,” Jocelyn Stacey, assistant professor at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, told DeSmog Canada.

“What we’re seeing with this project is that it taps into two really deep, deep challenges that Canada faces at the moment.”

Those questions are: how do we move to a low-carbon future in light of the fact we have tremendous oil and gas resources in this country? And: how do we reconcile with Indigenous peoples?

“Those problems are well recognized across the country,” Stacey said. “But when it comes to making really tough, potentially divisive decisions that will realize those promises, we’re not at a place where really big steps are being made.”

What is the ‘national interest’ anyway?

The big question is how to reconcile those two big questions with the “national interest.”

“Addressing aboriginal peoples’ concerns is in the national interest,” said Hans Matthews, who was a panellist for the National Energy Board’s review of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

“The ‘national interest’ places a greater priority on the economics of a project, whereas I think a lot of communities and impacted people are more concerned with the environmental components of the project,” he said.

“Should the people who are most impacted at the local level carry the load for…the national interest?”

Matthews is the president of the Canadian Aboriginal Mineral Association, which is advocating for an Indigenous-driven environmental assessment process.

“It would have a significant amount of involvement of the community from the get-go and it would entail a greater input and analysis and interpretation of community knowledge,” Matthews said.

Indigenous-led assessment would reduce the burden on the courts and also be in keeping with the government’s commitment to implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Matthews said.

“[The government] can’t in one breath say ‘okay, we’re going to approve this resource project’ but in the other breath say ‘we’re going to adopt UNDRIP.’ ”

Matthews’ comments are in line with those made by the Assembly of First Nations’ B.C. Regional Chief Terry Teegee, who spoke last week before a House of Commons committee reviewing Bill C-69 — a bill tabled by the Liberals to improve Canada’s environmental assessment process.

“This bill falls short in terms of recognition of the core principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Teegee said, noting that it fails to recognize Indigenous jurisdiction.

“We’re seeing that play out right now as it relates to Kinder Morgan, how First Nations who have made their decisions aren’t being recognized with regards to the final decisions of those major projects,” he said.

Lack of justification for decisions sows discontent

Stacey said a big part of what’s missing in the way Canada makes decisions on contentious projects is an evidence-based justification for those decisions.

In the case of the Trans Mountain pipeline, there was a federal order-in-council that constituted the reasons for the decision.

“But if you were to look at the order-in-council, you would find that there isn’t really an explanation of the decision itself,” Stacey said.

For instance, the order-in-council states that the project is not likely to have significant adverse effects.

“It’s not clear how they would reach that conclusion in light of the fact that the National Energy Board’s assessment found that there would be significant adverse effects on the endangered resident orca population,” Stacey said.

The decision also fails to reconcile further pipeline development with international climate obligations and doesn’t even reference protection of B.C.’s coast.

“That was a big part of the reason why B.C. wanted to intervene in the judicial review before the federal Court of Appeal — to make that point that the decision reasons mentions Alberta’s economy, but does not mention protection of B.C.’s coastline,” Stacey said.

Trudeau’s broken promise to re-do Trans Mountain review

Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May says the Liberals made a huge mistake in not fulfilling their campaign promise to re-do the Trans Mountain pipeline review if elected.

“I think they don’t understand how bad the National Energy Board study was,” May said. “They seem to have forgotten.”

Instead of starting the process over, Trudeau appointed a “ministerial panel” to fill in the gaps that’d been missed by the National Energy Board process.

The 58-page report submitted in November 2016 to Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr, concluded by posing six incisive questions to cabinet, including: “can construction of a new Trans Mountain Pipeline be reconciled with Canada’s climate change commitments?” and “how might Cabinet square approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline with its commitment to reconciliation with First Nations and to the UNDRIP principles of ‘free, prior, and informed consent’?”

“That review panel asked some thoughtful questions that they thought should be answered before the project was approved,” Boyd said. “And of course those questions were never answered.”

In a prescient moment, the panel also acknowledged the controversy likely to be created by the pipeline: “The issues raised by the Trans Mountain pipeline proposal are among the most controversial in the country, perhaps in the world, today: the rights of Indigenous peoples, the future of fossil fuel development in the face of climate change, and the health of a marine environment already burdened by a century of cumulative effects.”

The panel did not, however, make any recommendations on what to do about all those thorny issues. That got punted back to the federal government, which — rather than acknowledging the inevitable controversy of a decision of this magnitude — has chosen to ignore all that complexity in favour a single talking point: “This pipeline will be built.”

On top of that, the federal government has now entered financial negotiations with Kinder Morgan.

“I don’t think we would have seen this coming out of Harper,” May said. “This is a manipulated crisis. We’re being played for country bumpkin fools by Texas.”

Fixing environmental assessment (aka avoiding this mess in the future)

So how do we avoid this situation in the future?

“What we really need to be looking at — and what the opposition in B.C. I think is really grounded in — are these more pressing and difficult issues of Indigenous jurisdiction and reconciliation and how Canada as a resource based economy can move to a low-carbon future,” Stacey said.  

The federal government promised to reform how we assess projects like these in the future and to that end has tabled bill C-69, currently before the House of Commons. But it fails on several fronts, according to experts.

“The government of Canada spent over $1 million on a high-powered panel of environmental law experts … they held public hearings in 21 cities across Canada … they had over 1,000 submissions. They reported on what needed to be done. And Bill C-69 bears no resemblance to those recommendations,” May said.

“It doesn’t create an environmental assessment process that is credible.”

The timelines in the new bill for conducting an environmental assessment for major projects are even tighter than the timeline Kinder Morgan was subject to.

“I think that that should be a major concern,” Stacey said. “We can see very clearly from the response in B.C. that when you have controversial projects, it doesn’t do anybody any good to rush these through an assessment process.”

The bill also leaves room for oilsands projects to be exempted from federal review.

But Stacey’s biggest concern is that the bill is still focused on project-based assessment, rather than taking a larger view and looking at cumulative impacts.

“What you see bubbling up is that the really fundamental concerns about the pipeline are much bigger than the pipeline itself,” Stacey said. “By crafting a regulatory and assessment process around projects, it’s ill-suited to dealing with these bigger issues that people really want to see addressed in a meaningful way.”

What’s needed are mandatory “strategic assessments,” Stacey said.

These would look at the impacts of certain government policies, which often have much more profound environmental effects than any individual project. For instance, the federal government has committed to doing a strategic assessment of the climate impacts of existing federal government policies.

May holds out hope that Bill C-69 can be fixed in committee.

“Something went wrong somewhere,” May said. “I think we can fix it. This is so unacceptably bad.”

Image: Justin Trudeau attends the Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) Annual Corporate Client Conference in Ottawa. Photo via PMO Photo Gallery

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In December 2015, the world agreed to the Paris Accord; to slash greenhouse gas emissions to hold global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C (over what it was before the Industrial Revolution), and, if we miss that target, to as far below 2 degrees as possible.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is not an environmental agency. It advises governments about demand and supply of energy. Since 2012, IEA has warned that to avoid going over 2 degrees C, two-thirds of all known reserves of fossil fuels must stay in the ground until 2050.

But that was to stay at 2 degrees. We have made a commitment to hold at 1.5 degrees. That half a degree is the difference between low-lying island states surviving, or Arctic ice remaining over the North Pole in summer, or increasing the risk of losing the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet or Greenland ice sheet (either one of which implies an eight-metre sea level rise.)

It is hard to get a fix on our carbon budget. One problem is that dangerous levels of climate change are exacerbated by positive feedback loops — changes that release more greenhouse gases from nature due to warming driven by humans. So forest fires, melting permafrost and loss of ice drive up the warming that itself speeds up the warming.

A group of European and Canadian scientists published their best estimates of our carbon budget in 2016 in Nature Climate Change. Their study set the carbon budget for global emissions from 2015 to forever at no more than 590 billion tons. That’s all we can emit.

In 2016, globally we emitted 49.3 billion tons, so now our global carbon budget is down to 540 billion tons. Do the math. At current emission rates, if we want to avoid disaster, we have approximately eleven years before we blow through the global carbon budget.

These are lines we cannot cross if we want to hold on to a functioning human civilization — not a collection of failed states, desperate environmental refugees and collapsing food systems.

So where is Canada in this? Canada’s climate target  — 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 — is described as our Paris target in national media and by the Trudeau cabinet. The problem is it is not our Paris target. Canada has yet to adopt a target consistent with 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees. Canada’s target remains the same one set by Harper in May 2015 — seven months before the negotiations in Paris. The Harper target equates to 2030 emissions of 517 million tons (or megatonnes).

Unfortunately, we are currently on track to miss the Harper target by 187 million tons.

“We can plan our way to a transition away from fossil fuels, and still help the Alberta economy.” #abpoli #bcpoli #cdnpoli #oilsands https://t.co/E8TYbbcCFf

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 25, 2018

So where is there room for a pipeline? Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has committed to capping oilsands emissions at 100 megatonnes/year. Current emissions are less than the cap — approximately 70 megatonnes/year. So Kinder Morgan’s emissions don’t even fit into a plan to meet Harper’s emissions targets.

As Jeffrey Sachs wrote in the Globe and Mail earlier this month: “The truth is that Alberta oilsands have absolutely no place in a climate-safe world. Investing in them is almost surely to be investing in a future bankruptcy.”

What about the constant claim that our economy depends on the oilsands?

Baloney.

Even at the height of oilsands growth when oil sold for more than $100/barrel, oilsands amounted to less than three per cent of national GDP. We can plan our way to a transition away from fossil fuels, and still help the Alberta economy.

Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired electricity are roughly the same as from the oilsands. While Alberta has promised to end coal-fired electricity by 2030, and is building 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity, it will also allow some of those coal units to convert to using inefficient fracked natural gas. Instead, we should invest in an enhanced east-west electricity grid and bring in renewables from neighbouring provinces, while Alberta takes advantage of its huge potential in solar and wind.

But that still leaves the oilsands, which can’t be allowed to expand emissions by 30 per cent. Here’s a solution: cap the oilsands at 70 megatonnnes/year and create jobs in Alberta by providing federal assistance to build upgraders and refineries.

Yes, those will inevitably include greenhouse gas emissions, but far fewer than shipping solid bitumen overseas to refining elsewhere. This path means we ensure we are producing bitumen on a declining basis, but upgrading and refining in Alberta and keeping those jobs here.

Canada has been losing refinery jobs for decades. That’s why the major oilsands unions, like Unifor, oppose Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline. In the 1970s, Canada had 40 refineries. Now we have 16 and buy our gas, diesel and propane from refineries in the U.S. at higher prices.

We import approximately 700,000 barrels of foreign crude per day to Eastern Canada. Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion will increase exports by 590,000 barrels per day. Why not stop imports, process bitumen in Alberta and sell it across Canada?

The answer comes readily. Big Oil has decreed that Canada provide raw resources for export, not value added.

But what if we took a page from Peter Lougheed’s book? His first rule for resource development was “think like an owner.” Instead of bailing out an American company, let’s put federal support behind building upgraders and refineries in Alberta — in exchange for which Alberta agrees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands to 35 megatonnes by 2050. We would end up with more jobs and a less volatile economy. There will also be lots of jobs in trying to clean up the tailings ponds and despoiled landscape of the Athabasca. Polluter pays.

That is the kind of bargain that makes sense. With this plan, you could say “the economy and the environment go hand in hand” without having to suspend disbelief.

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For years, we’ve been told again and again (and again) that Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline is desperately needed for producers to export oil to Asian countries and get much higher returns.

The way it’s been framed makes it seem like it’s the only thing standing between Alberta and fields of gold.

Small problem: Canadian producers already have the ability to ship their heavy oil to Asia via the existing 300,000 barrel per day Trans Mountain pipeline — but they’re not using it.

“Virtually no exports go to any markets other than the U.S.,” economist Robyn Allan told DeSmog Canada. “The entire narrative perpetrated by Prime Minister Trudeau and Alberta Premier Notley is fabricated.”

In 2017, the Port of Vancouver only shipped 600 barrels of oil to China. That’s less than a tanker load. That same year, the port shipped almost 13 million barrels of oil, or about 24 Aframax tanker loads, to the U.S.

In other words: oil tankers are being loaded in Vancouver, but instead of heading to vaunted Asian markets, they’re heading south to California.

Shipments to Asia reached their peak seven years ago when the equivalent of nine fully loaded tankers of oil left Vancouver for China. Since then, oil exports to Asia have completely dropped off.

Some experts suggest exports to Asia are very unlikely to rebound in the short-term, with producers from many other countries continuing to dominate such markets. Others take a more long-term view, remaining optimistic that opportunities will arise over time — and only after the pipeline is actually built

“There’s no appetite in Asia for heavy oil,” said Eoin Finn, former partner at KPMG, in an interview with DeSmog Canada. “They don’t have the refineries to refine it. And the world is swimming in light sweet crude that’s cheaper and easier to refine, and altogether more plentiful.”

“There’s no appetite in Asia for heavy oil. They don’t have the refineries to refine it. And the world is swimming in light sweet crude that’s cheaper and easier to refine, and altogether more plentiful.” https://t.co/XCN92a02eS

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 19, 2018

No guaranteed access to Asian markets

One challenge is that the Port of Vancouver can’t even physically fit the size of tanker required to economically compete with other shippers of oil to Asia.

The largest class ship that is allowed in Burrard Inlet is what’s known as an “Aframax.” It can only be filled to 80 per cent capacity due to depth restrictions. That means a tanker from the Port of Vancouver can only ship 550,000 barrels at a time.

Meanwhile, Very Large Crude Carriers — yes, that’s actually their name — are now embarking from Louisiana via its brand new port, carrying two million barrels each. They’re also used by many Middle Eastern producers.

Practically, this means that Trans Mountain will have a harder time competing with producers in countries that can pay far less to ship their cheaper-to-refine oil in much larger ships. Trans Mountain supporters suggest this could become quickly irrelevant if situations change: say, a war breaks out in the Middle East and takes millions of barrels per day offline.

There’s also no guaranteed demand for Alberta’s lower quality crude on the other side of the Pacific. While 13 producers and shippers have signed long-term contracts with Trans Mountain — a fact that’s leaned on heavily by the company to make its business case, as they represent 80 per cent of expanded capacity — none have buyers in Asia yet.

“It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. You need to build that pipeline before people are going to spend billions of dollars configuring their refineries to take your crude,” Jackie Forrest of ARC Energy Research told the CBC in a 2017 interview.

It’s expected that “sample shipments” of oil would be sent to various markets for testing once the pipeline was built.

But there’s very little proven interest in Alberta’s hard-to-refine oil. Instead, Asian countries are continuing to rely on imports of light sweet crude from Middle Eastern locales like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Qatar and Iraq. At this point, that appears unlikely to change in a significant enough way to make Alberta oil competitive.

Price discount results from lack of capacity, not location

The reality is that Alberta oil will always sell at a discount to lighter crude with greater market access.

In fact, back in 2014 a vice-president at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers told the Toronto Star that “there’s always a natural discount in the range of $15 to $25 [per barrel].”

In recent years, the “discount” has hovered around $10/barrel.

Nothing about a new pipeline will change the fact that Alberta’s heavy oil takes more effort to refine into usable products and is located farther from major markets than most other sources.

“It’s the lack of pipeline capacity that creates the price discount for Alberta. It’s not where that pipeline capacity goes. It’s not the difference between the U.S. Gulf and Asia,” Tom Gunton, professor and director of Simon Fraser University’s resource and environmental planning program, told DeSmog Canada.

“It’s got to do with that there’s not enough pipeline capacity.”

When Trans Mountain was pitched in 2013, there was a legitimate shortage of pipeline capacity, a reality made more concerning to industry by massive production forecasts for future decades. It seemed like an imminent and long-term backlog was about to emerge — which would actually lead to a price discount.

But then the 2014-15 price crash happened, new pipelines came online and dozens of proposed oilsands projects were either scrapped or put on hold.

When former U.S. president Barack Obama’s vetoed TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in 2015 the backlog idea began gaining traction once again. But the veto has since been rescinded by President Donald Trump.

Gunton said that if you combine Keystone with Enbridge’s Line 3 and the proposed Mainline expansion, “there is more than enough pipeline capacity to meet all of Alberta’s needs without Trans Mountain” meaning that no serious price differential will emerge.

TransCanada spill in South Dakota responsible for current discount

The main reason that Alberta is currently experiencing a larger differential than usual (around $25/barrel) is because TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline spilled almost 10,000 barrels of oil into a South Dakota field in November — the third incident from the pipeline since 2010.

That resulted in a two-week shutdown, and the pipeline has been running at 20 per cent reduced pressure ever since.

As Allan pointed out in a letter to the Calgary Herald, this means that around 120,000 barrels per day have been backlogged, accounting for the widening differential. You can basically see the moment when the spill happened on differential estimations, increasing from $11/barrel in November to $25/barrel in February.

It is not a lack of market access to Asia that gutted returns for oil companies — it’s a pipeline spill. The phenomena of spills squeezing pipeline capacity is something Allan has previously documented.

Gunton said that even the two reports submitted by Kinder Morgan to the National Energy Board — the first of which was striked as evidence after its author, Steven Kelly, was controversially appointed to the regulator — didn’t identify an “Asian premium.” Instead, they argued that some of the shipments out of Alberta would have to go by rail due to inadequate pipeline capacity, reducing netbacks to producers. That’s no longer true.

“That’s another big lie that there’s this big demand in Asia,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “There’s this series of assumptions that are repeated so often that nobody questions them.”

Most expanded capacity will end up in California, not Asia

But while politicians like Rachel Notley continue to repeat the fiction “that there is now and will always be a pretty substantial market for bitumen in the Asia-Pacific” many analysts have identified that most oil shipped from the expanded Trans Mountain line via Vancouver (with a significant chunk already diverted in Abbotsford to Washington refineries) will end up in California in the short term.

A 2013 report from the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy argued: “Movement of crude supplies originating in Vancouver should satisfy U.S. West Coast demand before the first barrel crosses the Pacific to Asia.”

This is mostly because California is facing declining domestic production and imports from Alaska’s North Slope. Additionally, it already has refineries in place to process heavy oil, and Albertan bitumen could directly compete with Mexican Maya, a similar quality crude.

Based on 2017 data, only 3.4 per cent of California’s foreign crude imports came from Canada. That same year, half of the state’s imported oil came from Saudi Arabia, Ecuador and Colombia — which can all produce at far lower costs than Alberta. The state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard also rewards crude oil with lower carbon intensity, further benefiting OPEC exporters over Alberta.

“There’s no premium to go to California,” Finn said. “There’s probably a discount because it’s farther and costs more to have ships go down there.”

U.S. Gulf Coast remains most lucrative location

So where is Alberta’s slowly-but-surely increasing oil production supposed to go? Well, where it’s always gone — to the U.S. Gulf Coast, aided by TransCanada’s Keystone XL and Enbridge’s Line 3 pipelines.

Compared to shipping via tankers from Vancouver, the Gulf offers comparatively cheaper transportation fees and existing heavy oil refining capacity.

In addition, both Venezuela and Mexico’s heavy oil production have also been in steady decline in recent years, providing even more potential for Alberta to fill existing refinery capacity in the Gulf.

“As we implement climate policies and as the world transitions away from fossil fuels, production in Alberta is not going to grow very much,” Gunton said.

“It’s the highest-cost producer in the world. Consequently, the demand for pipelines is down. And there is more than enough pipeline capacity to meet all of Alberta’s needs without Trans Mountain.”

Economic circumstances have shifted dramatically since 2013 when Kinder Morgan first proposed the pipeline, which raises the question: does the company want to back away from the project for reasons that stretch beyond the opposition its facing in British Columbia?

Even with both the Alberta and federal governments discuss bailing out the private project, in an investor call on Tuesday, Kinder Morgan indicated the investment may still be “untenable.”

If the company walks, a government could either purchase the $7.4 billion project as hinted at by Premier Notley. Or, Kinder Morgan may opt to sue the Government of Canada via NAFTA.

Whatever happens, one thing seems certain at this stage: it’s not going to be predictable.

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In the mid-1970s, a young lawyer named Ian Waddell took a helicopter ride across the Crow Flats, in northern Yukon. He was accompanying Justice Thomas Berger on his visits to community after community — the so-called Berger Inquiry — to gain their input into a proposed gas pipeline from the Beaufort Sea to Alberta.

When they landed, Berger turned to him and, as Waddell recounts it, said, “You know, Ian, do you realize the magnificence of what we saw yesterday? It’s the last of North America — the eighth wonder of the world.”

That landscape the judge so admired is home to the Porcupine caribou herd, around 200,000 strong, which roam on the world’s longest land-mammal migration between Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. On the Canadian side of the border, two national parks, Ivvavik and Vuntut, protect much of the herd’s habitat.

But on the Alaska side of the border, the land and the herd that depends upon it have come under threat from oil and gas drilling after President Trump opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in his recent tax bill.

Caribou, like many large mammals, require huge tracts of relatively undisturbed land to thrive. The routes of migratory herds can be imperiled by development, such as pipelines or roads, that divides the landscape or gives easier access to predators. The area that could be opened to drilling is the Porcupine herd’s calving grounds, rich territory where the animals migrate each year to give birth.

It’s also the site of another kind of riches: the so-called “1002 area,” a potentially lucrative patch of land near Prudhoe Bay. It could contain more than six per cent of the total recoverable oil in the entire United States, at about 7.7 billion barrels.

Trump made the controversial decision to undo decades of conservation in the region, apparently, on a whim.

“I really didn’t care about it,” Trump told a congressional Republican retreat in early February. “And then when I heard that everybody wanted it, for 40 years they’ve been trying to get it approved, I said, ‘Make sure you don’t lose ANWR.’”

There may be something else Trump doesn’t know much about, though, and it could put the brakes on drilling in the refuge: a treaty, signed between the governments of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan in 1987.

The treaty requires that the governments “take appropriate action to conserve the Porcupine Caribou Herd and its habitat,” including considering effects of activities (like, for instance, drilling), avoiding disrupting migration and considering cumulative effects on the landscape.

After Waddell’s time in the north with Berger, he moved on to politics, serving as energy critic for the federal NDP and later as B.C. environment minister. But that experience never left him, and he recently revived the treaty in an article for The Hill Times.

“Canada should now argue that the treaty provides us the right to be consulted before a drilling permit is issued in ANWR,” he wrote.

In an interview with DeSmog Canada, he explained, “If we’ve got a treaty with the United States, we could press that treaty — use that treaty — to raise a little hell.”

A small member of the large porcupine caribou herd. Photo: Peter Mather

NDP, Greens take on Alaskan drilling in House of Commons

Elizabeth May has had her eyes on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for decades, since she was a senior policy advisor to Progressive Conservative environment minister Thomas McMillan, and later as the executive director of the Sierra Club.

Now, as head of the federal Green Party, May is the only MP to have brought the issue up in the House of Commons.

“It’s been appalling to see Donald Trump as president for many, many reasons, but this is one of those things that he might do that represents irreparable harm,” she says.

Even under Stephen Harper’s notoriously pro-oil government, Canada remained resolute against drilling in the refuge.

New Democrat MP Richard Cannings says he plans to raise the issue in the House of Commons if the drilling plan goes ahead.

“This is what this treaty was drawn up for — this kind of situation,” he said, noting that the Liberals are under pressure to protect caribou and that this “might be an easy win for them,” to make some progress on protecting one of the last intact herds.

Gwich’in sounding the alarm

Its habitat is a place Cannings, like Waddell, is familiar with from time spent on the land in his former life as an ecologist. As was the case for Waddell, the northern Yukon left an impression that he carried with him to Ottawa.

“I think that Canada should stand up for the Porcupine caribou herd, for the First Nations that have relied on that herd over the millennia, because our whole ecosystem up there is related.”

The Gwich’in have been sounding the alarm on drilling in the refuge since Trump’s election.

“The Gwich’in call this area ‘Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit,’ the Sacred Place Where Life Begins,” Vuntut Gwich’in Councillor Dana Tizya-Tramm told DeSmog Canada in November, a year after Trump’s victory.

“It is a keystone in the ecosystems of the Arctic, and the heart that beats outside of the Gwich’in chest.”

Tizya-Tramm expressed horror at the idea of degrading the habitat the caribou depend on, emphasizing the interconnected and fragile nature of the coastal plain, which has been described as the Serengeti of North America.

Cannings says the Gwich’in would be consulted and involved in negotiations with the U.S. over the treaty.

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Canada’s fishery laws are back — well, on the first step to being back, at least. On Tuesday morning, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Dominic LeBlanc officially announced the introduction of an heavily amended Fisheries Act, the key piece of legislation that was gutted in 2012 by the federal Conservatives. And fishery law experts are thrilled.

“The government’s made good on its promises,” said Linda Nowlan, staff lawyer and head of the West Coast Environmental Law’s marine program. “They’ve not only restored lost protections, especially for fish habitat, but they’ve also introduced a number of modernizations that were long overdue.”

It’s also being hailed on the East Coast.

“This is like Christmas Day for fishery policy nerds,” said Brett Favaro, research scientist at the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University.

‘You can’t protect fish without protecting fish habitat’

The most significant change is restoring the “HADD prohibition” — which stands for the “harmful alteration, disruption or destruction” of fish habitat. That meant the minister had to specifically authorize any activities that would result in impacts of fish habitats.

That key provision was removed in 2012 and replaced by a prohibition against “the carrying on of a work, undertaking or activity that results in serious harm to fish that are part of or support a commercial recreational or Aboriginal fishery.”

In other words, it seriously limited the scope of the legislation.

In March 2012, a letter signed by over 600 scientists was submitted to then-prime minister Stephen Harper that argued the change would be a “most unwise action, which would jeopardize many important fish stocks and the lakes, estuaries and rivers that support them.”

The new approach was considered impossible to enforce. Nowlan said there were zero prosecutions for fish habitat damage between 2012 and 2016.

“You can’t protect fish without protecting fish habitat,” said Nikki Skuce, director of Northern Confluence, which works to protect wild salmon watersheds in northwestern B.C. “It’s really great to see habitat protections restored in the new Fisheries Act and measures in place to address cumulative effects to rivers such as the Fraser and Skeena.”

The return to the “HADD” provision removes any ambiguity in what constitutes protected fish habitat.

“If there’s fish there and they live there, it’s fish habitat,” Favaro said. “And you’re not supposed to destroy it unless you get permission to do so by the minister.”

New provisions include public registry, management agreements with Indigenous bodies

But the amended Fisheries Act doesn’t just revert the legislation back to how it was before the changes in 2012 — after all, that version hadn’t been updated since 1977 when it was introduced by Minister LeBlanc’s father.

Tuesday’s announcement included a series of significant modernizations.

Those include granting the ability to implement short-term restrictions on fisheries in the case of emergencies, like the recent right whale die-off; prohibiting the capturing of whales for keeping in captivity; requiring the minister to consider the rebuilding of fish stocks; making explicit acknowledgments and requirements to include Indigenous peoples and knowledge systems; allowing for Canada to enter into management agreements with Indigenous governing bodies; and granting the use of alternative compliance mechanisms.

There’s also a new online public registry meant to increase transparency. Nowlan explained that this will help prevent cumulative impacts to fish habitat, as it’s often small projects that build up to damage ecosystems (as opposed to one larger, more visible project). Favaro said such a registry will help keep track of the small cumulative impacts and allow people to decide if we’re achieving the goal of no net loss of fish habitat.

“Right now, we don’t even know all the activities that are happening and impacting fish habitat,” Skuce said. “That’s a strength of the new Act.”

The government also pledged $284 million over five years to improve enforcement of the new laws.

Minister still has a considerable amount of discretionary power

It’s not all perfect though.

Martin Olszynski, assistant professor in law at University of Calgary and expert in fishery law, said there’s an unfortunate use of “discretionary language,” meaning that many components of the proposed legislation are basically up to the opinion of the minister — and requiring no specific evidence.

While he noted that some issues are very complex and that flexibility can be required, the “old-school language” of ministerial discretion does leave a lot of doors open.

“There are some mandatory provisions, but definitely there is still a lot of that discretionary language,” he said. “The question is just whether or not in after spending some time on those issues, are there some objective criteria or benchmarks that could be included that would help frame that discretion?”

For example, there’s a section about implementing measures to manage the decline of fish stocks. The newly amended legislation includes the phrase “if the Minister is of the opinion that a fish stock that has declined to its limit reference point or that is below that point would be impacted.” That’s not satisfactory for some.

“I was hoping for a line that was not ‘if the minister is of the opinion that a fish stock has declined,’ but ‘if the fish stock has declined as determined by the best available evidence then there should be measures in place aimed at rebuilding the stock,’” Favaro said.

As he noted, the current wording could feasibly mean that a minister can simply “not believe” that fish stocks have declined, or take it into account and decide not to act.

Missing provisions

Observers have also found a number of omissions from the new Act.

Olszynski noted there’s no reference to an annual or biannual report on fish habitat in Canada. He says there is also a lack of clarity about how the new Fisheries Act will relate to the upcoming impact assessment legislation that will replace the current Canadian Environmental Assessment Act).

Skuce, the World Wildlife Fund Canada and Green Party leader Elizabeth May all criticized a lack of provisions on harvesting fish via fish farms.

Kris Statnyk, a Gwich’in lawyer with Mandell Pinder, tweeted: “Among the mandatory considerations BC First Nations sought that do not appear in the discretionary list in the Bill: compliance with UNDRIP, consistency with international standards and commitments, climate change, First Nation fishing and management plans.”

Bill expected to become law in 2019

It will take some time for Bill C-68 to wind its way through parliamentary committee, and it’s not expected to become law until mid-2019.

Olszynski said he’s looking forward to seeing how the committee studies the bill and which witnesses they bring in. Along the way, he said that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans could  be clearer on some of the more ambiguous provisions in the new legislation.

But on the whole, Tuesday was a huge win for advocates of stronger environmental laws.

“I hope we’ve learned from our mistakes,” Nowlan concluded. “More than 25 years ago, we had the Atlantic cod collapse. Now, we’re seeing more and more salmon populations being proposed as species at risk. Canada’s fisheries law really needs to do a better job of protecting fish and their habitat, and these amendments look like they’re going to take a big step in that direction.”

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Scientists and environmental groups breathed a sigh of relief when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly followed through on a campaign promise to modernize Canada’s environmental laws.

Within a year of being elected, the Liberals initiated four parallel reviews of key environmental legislation weakened or eliminated under former prime minister Stephen Harper.

But now, as that review process is coming to a close, experts are back to holding their breath.

“There is a real climate of concern right now,” Aerin Jacob, Liber Ero scholar and conservation scientist with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, told DeSmog Canada.

The federal government’s response to bold recommendations for reforming the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the National Energy Board Act, the Fisheries Act and the Navigation Protection Act is “underwhelming,” Jacob said.

Federal Response to Environmental Reviews Vague, Concerning

That response — released quietly this summer in the form of a 24-page, diagram-filled discussion paper — was so scant on details experts say it’s distressing.

“This was all under the radar in a very worrying way,” federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May told DeSmog Canada. “I just get the feeling like someone’s pulling a fast one.”

“Releasing this at the end of June with a public comment period ending August 28th, I can’t begin to imagine the average person or even the attentive environmentalist was properly alerted to the content of this document.”

ICYMI: 10 Reasons Ottawa Should Rebuild Our Environmental Assessment Law from Scratch

After multiple requests, the federal government recently extended the public submissions period until September 15.

May said the federal response lacked substance and paves the way for maintaining the devastating changes made to environmental laws under Harper.

“We’ve had all of these consultations with experts and citizens across Canada and now we end up — either by design or happenstance — with the federal government actually rejecting all the key recommendations by the panels without even explicitly saying so.”

“I’m apoplectic with rage that this is being proposed,” May said.

“Now we’re looking at mild tweaking as opposed to the massive repair of our gutted environmental laws.”

May said the regulatory system has been calibrated to serve the needs of industry.

“The changes to our laws have converted many of our agencies into a corporate concierge service to aid the approval of projects,” she said.

Linda Duncan, NDP member of parliament for Edmonton-Strathcona and Energy and Climate Change critic, said it’s troubling that the Liberals have continued to approve major resource projects while relying on “emasculated” laws and processes.

Federal approvals for several controversial projects, including the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, Enbridge Line 9 pipeline, the Site C dam and the Pacific Northwest LNG export facility, have been granted while the review process has been ongoing.

“The government continues to drag its heels on tabling the promised reforms,” Duncan said, adding onlookers have every right to be concerned appropriate actions won’t be taken to meaningfully restore Canada’s environmental laws.

“The initial concept paper issued by the government in response to their own expert review and public feedback is almost completely dismissive of the reforms called for,” Duncan said.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna told DeSmog Canada in an e-mailed statement, “We are committed to making environmental assessment and regulatory changes that regain public trust, protect the environment, support reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and ensure good projects go ahead and get resources to market sustainably.”

ICYMI: Trudeau Promised to Fix the National Energy Board. Here’s What His Expert Panel Recommends

Pipeline and Major Project Reviews Plagued With Problems

The laws under review affect everything from fish to water to climate change to how we get energy.

“We entrust government to guide this process that helps us make decisions as a society on what kind of projects and infrastructure we want to see in our environment and on our lands,” said Katie Gibbs, executive director of the science-advocacy organization Evidence for Democracy. “That’s such a fundamental way government touches on and impacts our lives.”

Some of the most contentious project reviews in Canadian history have taken place in recent years.

The Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline hearings were beset with problems stemming from what many have identified as a collapse of public trust in the process and Canada’s regulatory bodies.

Matters were made worse when the Harper government forced changes through the budget process to expedite project reviews and weaken public participation in environmental assessments.

Trudeau’s promise of environmental reform spoke directly to the question of how Canada could conduct more meaningful, credible scientific reviews of resource projects with a goal of selecting projects best situated to serve the public interest. (Although it’s important to note Trudeau did not follow through on an explicit promise to restart the Trans Mountain pipeline hearing under a new, modernized review process).

“These are some of the biggest challenges Canadians face today and we have a real opportunity to do things better,” Jacob said.

Is Trudeau Quietly Turning His Back On Fixing Canada’s #Environmental Laws? https://t.co/x9EcM6Nq6B @LindaDuncanMP @ElizabethMay #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 12, 2017

Federal Position Big Step Back From Bold Expert Recommendations

However, the federal government’s discussion paper takes a big step back from the panels’ bold recommendations, Jacob said.

In partnership with 24 other scientists, Jacobs spearheaded the writing of a report, Strong Foundations, that identifies gaps in the government’s response.

“Some of the gaps we talked about mentioned, for example, that we need to have decision rules. These rules would lay out how government — cabinet or the minister, whoever makes the final decision on an environmental assessment — how they came to that decision,” Jacobs said.

Environmental assessments incorporate multiple streams of information, including science produced on behalf of a project proponent, third-party reviews, academic research and traditional Indigenous knowledge.

“All of this information is taken into account in how we make decisions but unless you clearly lay out what role those things play in a decision, it remains a black box.”

ICYMI: Strategic Assessments: A Surprisingly Simple Solution to Canada’s Stalled Energy Debate

Jacobs said the report also touches on the need for greater transparency in the use and sharing of data, incorporation of the precautionary principle, assessment of regional and cumulative impacts as well as impacts of projects on larger national goals like Canada’s climate commitments under the Paris Accord.

Gibbs said Canada has the opportunity to become much more strategic in how and when it uses environmental assessments and what role science plays in those processes.

“One big issue that is left unaddressed is what will even trigger an environmental assessment. Even if you do have an incredibly strong environmental assessment process, if you don’t have a strong evidence-based trigger for what projects actually go through that process, it could end up being meaningless,” Gibbs, a co-author of the Strong Foundations report, said.

Jacob, Gibbs and their co-authors submitted their report to the federal government as part of the discussion paper’s public comment period.

ICYMI: Open Science: Can Canada Turn the Tide on Transparency in Decision-Making?

Fatal Flaws Not Addressed…Yet

Chris Tollefson, lawyer with the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation, said the Liberals could take a political hit for missing this generational opportunity to repair legislation.

”The government will have to realize the risk it’s taking here by potentially reigning in its aspirations and rolling over to industry pressure,” he said.

The government has been under tremendous pressure both in terms of lobbying and also tight review timelines, Tollefson said, and that could account for some of the gaps in its current position.

Of prominent concern to Tollefson, who has represented numerous individuals, environmental groups and First Nations in hearings and legal challenges of major projects, is the use of science bought and paid for by project proponents.

“In that respect the current model is fatally flawed,” he said.

One of the panel’s recommendations for environmental assessments is that Canada move to a model that relies on truly independent, cutting-edge science.

“That is a game changer,” Tollefson said.

“If we miss this opportunity to think more broadly about how we assess major projects, to put them into the proper social, environmental and economic context they deserve, that really is a missed opportunity we potentially won’t have for another generation.”

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Canadians could be forgiven for being a bit confused about how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doing on climate change these days.

Last week he approved one of the largest sources of carbon pollution in the country — the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal in B.C.

The week before that his government announced it would stick with Harper-era emissions targets.

Now Trudeau has announced the creation of a pan-Canadian carbon-pricing framework, which means our country will have a carbon tax nation-wide for the first time ever.

So are we hurtling toward overshooting our climate targets or are we finally getting on track?

Let’s look first at the carbon price announcement.

The carbon price will begin at $10 in 2018 and will scale up $10 per year until 2022.

The announcement “sends a clear signal that we’re all in this together and that we need a federal approach to regulate carbon pollution,” said Amin Asadollahi, lead for climate change mitigation at the International Institute of Sustainable Development.

The timing seems right as well, with a new Nanos poll showing 77 per cent of Canadians support or somewhat support Canada pursuing a national plan to meet international climate commitments. Additionally, 62 per cent of Canadians support or somewhat support a national carbon price.

Under the new framework, provinces will have the autonomy to choose a carbon pricing mechanism that works for them, whether carbon tax or cap and trade, and all revenues generated in province will stay in province.

Having a pan-Canadian framework for pricing carbon creates incentive for businesses, Assadollahi said, and “harmonizes the approach rather than having patchwork policies across the country.”

However, critics have already come out against the price as too weak to be useful.

“I was very disappointed we were starting with $10 per tonne,” said Elizabeth May, leader of the federal Green Party, “which is so low under British Columbia’s carbon tax of $30 per tonne. It was an obvious political calculation.”

And bringing the provinces together may be harder than Trudeau bargained for.

Already Premier Rachel Notley has announced Alberta will only support the plan in exchange for pipeline access to tidewater. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who has been a vocal opponent of carbon pricing for years, used the announcement to reiterate his position, saying the announcement wasn’t worth the carbon emissions it took to fly environment ministers to Ottawa.

May told DeSmog Canada the “recalcitrance of the provinces is very disconcerting.”

May said the environment ministers of Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, who were visiting a meeting of the ministers this morning, made a statement by walking out in response to Trudeau’s carbon price announcement.

“Ministers of provinces storming out of meetings is just childish,” May said, especially given the flexibility of the carbon price plan to suit individual provinces and territories.

Canada’s New Carbon Price: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly #carbontax #cdnpoli #climate https://t.co/g9nBo5m8d2

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 4, 2016

Matt Horne, senior policy analyst with the Pembina Institute, said the Prime Minister made a smart political move in considering differences among provinces in the plan.

“The feds were wise not to be too prescriptive here,” Horne told DeSmog Canada.

“The decision they made on the flexibility of the mechanism and revenue generated is interesting,” Horne said. “You have got to achieve this level of ambition but how you do it and how you use the revenue is up to you.”

“That gives maximum space to someone like Brad Wall to make this work in Saskatchewan.”

Province by province regulations will be necessary to meaningfully reduce emissions where they start.

A recent report by Mark Jaccard, climate policy analyst and professor at Simon Fraser University, found a carbon tax of $200 per tonne would be necessary to catalyze significant climate action and a transition to renewable energy systems.

Jaccard said an overreliance on carbon pricing can mask a suite of alternative options like sector-by-sector performance standards, renewable portfolio standards, mandatory market shares and zero-emission vehicles.

“Ninety per cent of the reductions in the last eight or nine years…in California are occurring because of the flexible regs, not because of that very low floor price in their cap-and-trade,” Jaccard told DeSmog Canada in a recent interview.

Whether or not this federal government will be a strong actor on climate change remains to be determined.

For Kai Nagata, communications director at the Dogwood Institute, Trudeau’s carbon price announcement should be viewed within the context of last week’s approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal.

“If you set a weak carbon pricing target, that means to hit your pollution reductions targets you have to reduce actual carbon infrastructure. Are we doing that? Not at all, in fact, quite the opposite.”

“This is the dilemma,” Nagata said, “no one believes carbon pricing alone, through whatever form, is going to reduce pollution enough to get at base pollution levels.”

“The only thing that would really take a bite out of Canada’s carbon pie is to stop adding fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Nagata added if Trudeau fails to put pressure on the energy sector to reduce emissions, that pressure will be placed on other less-polluting sectors and individual citizens.

“It’s fundamentally unfair and it will have the effect, if they continue to approve extraction and production, of subsidizing the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the ordinary citizen.”

Alex Doukas, senior campaigner at Oil Change International, also pointed to the issue of subsidies.

“Setting a strong national carbon price is potentially a very important step forward for Canadian climate action,” Doukas said. “But there’s a multi-billion-dollar elephant in the room: Canada still gives $3.3 billion in subsidies to oil and gas companies each year.”

Doukas said the Trudeau government needs to complement its carbon price with an “ambitious timeline for phasing out all of its fossil fuel subsidies.”

“Otherwise, the Trudeau government’s incentives to polluters risks cancelling out the newly announced carbon price.”

So while some Canadians are celebrating the announcement of a national carbon tax as a victory, it will remain pyrrhic until Trudeau implements the types of regulation that will actually bring significant emissions reductions and starts to make the tough calls on building new fossil fuel infrastructure. Until then, we’re going to hold the applause.

Update: October 4, 2016. The provincial environment ministers walked out of a meeting of ministers in Montreal, not out of the House of Commons as was previously stated. Kai Nagata’s title has been updated from energy and democracy director to communications director. 

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Justin Trudeau and his cabinet must uphold their promise to respect First Nations rights when it comes to federal decision-making for the Site C dam, federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May told DeSmog Canada while visiting a portion of the Peace River that will be flooded should the $9-billion project proceed.

“To me this project represents the litmus test for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his entire cabinet in their central commitment to establish a nation to nation relationship built on respect for Canada’s Fist Nations,” May said during an interview for a new DeSmog Canada Site C video.

May and DeSmog Canada were in the Peace Valley for the annual Paddle for the Peace where hundreds of people representing local landowners, First Nations, and environmental organizations voiced their opposition to the Site C dam.

“I’ve been working to stop Site C for a long time,” May said. “I've been trying the best I can to make sure every member of Parliament understands we can't give any more permits out without violating relations with First Nations.”

Chief Roland Willson from the West Moberly First Nations said the project violates the rights of Treaty 8 First Nations.

“The Site C dam impacts us by destroying the last functional 80 kilometres of the Peace River valley that we have left,” he said.

“We’re fighting Site C in the courts because it’s the right thing to do,” Willson said, adding that under Treaty 8 his nation has the right to hunt, fish and gather medicines on their traditional territory in perpetuity.

“B.C. is ignoring — and Canada is ignoring — its obligation to the treaty.”

The West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations are fighting the Site C dam in both B.C. and federal courts.

Over 250 academics, several of Canada’s most prominent environmental organizations and human rights group Amnesty International have criticized the B.C. government’s decision to forge ahead with Site C construction despite the pending legal challenges.

"As a new Liberal government they made promises to science-based evidence-based decision making, to respect for First Nations,” May said. "If they take any of those commitments seriously they can’t issue a single additional permit." 

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Former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government issued 14 permits for work on the $9 billion Site C dam during the writ period of the last election — a move that was offside according to people familiar with the project and the workings of the federal government.

“By convention, only routine matters are dealt with after the writ is dropped,” said Harry Swain, the chair of the Joint Review Panel that reviewed the Site C dam. “Permits and licences are only issued when a government considers the matter to be non-controversial and of no great public importance.”

Swain served for 22 years in the federal government, ending as deputy minister of Indian and Northern Affairs and later Industry. In an exclusive interview with DeSmog Canada last year, Swain said the B.C. government shouldn’t have moved ahead with construction on the dam until the demand case became clearer.

Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May noticed all of the Site C permits had been issued in late September, just weeks before October’s federal election.   “They saw that they were unlikely to form government again so they began making appointments and decisions during the election,” May told DeSmog Canada. “Usually during the writ period the government operates as a care-taker government, doing what’s absolutely necessary.”   Land clearing has begun on the dam, while opposition has continued to grow. First Nations are challenging the project in court over treaty issues and a protest camp was set up in the construction zone in December. (In Photos: The Destruction of the Peace River Valley for the Site C Dam)   “These permits are really quite distressing,” May said. “You get two departments issuing all these permits in a two-week period. It looks orchestrated by the former government.”

‘The Honour of the Crown is at Stake’

A broad coalition of organizations from across Canada has called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to halt construction of the Site C dam by refusing to issue further federal permits needed for construction of the project, which will flood 23,000 hectares of land along 107-kilometres of the Peace River Valley.   An open letter from the coalition urges Trudeau to rescind all permits and to re-examine the previous government’s approval of the dam, which was given despite the review panel’s finding that it would infringe upon the treaty rights under Treaty 8.   “It’s bad enough to have disputed lands devastated by damage like this. But to have actual treaty rights and treaty-protected activities essentially removed … the honour of the Crown is at stake in something like this,” May said. “The Crown chose to ignore a finding in the review that these treaty rights were going to be irreparably harmed.”   May argued that, given its commitment to a new relationship with Canada’s First Nations, the federal government shouldn’t issue any further permits.   “They can’t undo permits that have already been issued or replace forests that have already been clear-cut, but any future permits need to have a very huge hold until treaty rights issues are resolved,” she said. 

“The review panel’s report clearly stated that not only was there massive environmental damage that could not be mitigated but that the erosion of treaty rights could not be mitigated. That’s an astonishing conclusion. Especially since the panel also found that the public interest case was pretty muddy.”

BC Hydro in Court for Injunction Against Protest Camp Monday

BC Hydro is scheduled to go to court on Monday to seek an injunction to have the protest camp removed. Documents filed in that case focus on financial issues, with BC Hydro arguing a delay in construction will cost it money, while expert witnesses for the protesters argue that a one-year delay will actually save taxpayers $267 million because power demand forecasts have fallen.   BC Hydro has always argued the financial argument for the project is strong because of growing power demand, but economists and the crown corporation’s former CEO Marc Eliesen have challenged that and called for a third-party assessment.

Site C Dam Slated For Audit

Meantime, B.C.’s Auditor-General stated this week that the Site C dam has been identified as a project needing an audit, but no timeline has been set for that work.   “As a British Columbia ratepayer it’s very clear that Site C is likely to put British Columbia into a negative economic situation, at least at the beginning of its lifespan without any benefit to British Columbians,” May said. “It’s for the LNG industry.”   Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green Party, added his voice to the call for a delay in Site C construction in the legislature on Thursday, citing significant risk to taxpayers and the provincial economy.   “Site C should have been subject to the B.C. Utilities Commission, but the government felt it would slow down their political agenda too much,” he said. “It is risky and foolish. British Columbians are going to be paying for this project for decades.”   Weaver argued that in the absence of a vastly expanded LNG industry, the power from the Site C dam won’t be needed — an argument DeSmog Canada has explored in depth.

Wind Energy Association Driven Out of Province

Weaver also warned on Thursday that proceeding with Site C is actively driving clean energy investment out of the province.   Two weeks ago the Canadian Wind Energy Association announced it was closing up shop in B.C. because of a lack of opportunity to develop new wind projects in the province. Instead, the association will focus on Alberta and Saskatchewan.

“We obviously have limited resources, and we’re going to focus our efforts on those markets which provide the greatest opportunities in the short term to see more wind energy deployed in the country,” CanWEA president Robert Hornung told Business in Vancouver.

Hornung added: “While B.C. has tremendous untapped potential for wind energy … it’s also true that, at this time, there’s no vision of short-term opportunities emerging in B.C.”

Industrial demand for power in B.C. is falling due to the closure of mines and pulp and paper mills, both big electricity consumers. And with the Site C dam on the books, BC Hydro doesn’t anticipate any calls for power until 2030 — which means the prospects of new wind power projects have effectively been killed.

"Rather than let the market take the risk for energy infrastructure projects, this government is using billions of taxpayer dollars to get Site C ‘past the point of no return,’ ” Weaver said.

George Heyman, the NDP critic for the green economy, told the Georgia Straight this week that the government is failing to support renewable energy.

"That's a problem for development of jobs and industry in every corner of B.C.," Heyman said. 

"And it's a problem for British Columbians who think we should be taking advantage of dropping tech prices and advancing technology in both wind and solar and other forms of energy production — instead of throwing all of our eggs into the basket of one big dam in Northeast B.C. with a price tag that's likely to go up steeply in the coming years."

You can click here to read more about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and climate change.

Image: Construction on the Site C Dam by Garth Lenz.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As the COP21 climate talks get underway in Paris, Canada is enjoying a newfound place in the international spotlight.

Canada announced today it will contribute $30 million to finance climate projects in the world’s least developed countries as part of a larger $2.65 billion pledge that will support the transition to low-carbon energy sources in developing nations.

This contribution is a significant overhaul of Canada’s previous $300 million pledge under the Conservative government.

“Canada recognizes the importance of supporting adaptation action in the most vulnerable countries, which are struggling with the impacts of climate change,” Catherine McKenna, environment and climate change minister, said. “We are proud to be part of this joint effort to further support the Least Developed Countries Fund.”

Even Bill Gates expressed his appreciation for Canada's larger pledge.

With @BillGates & @JustinTrudeau before "mission innovation": mobilisation for research in clean energy #COP21 pic.twitter.com/c8fdoqMySt

— Ségolène Royal (@RoyalSegolene) November 30, 2015

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also told media Canada still has work to do.

“We have a tremendous level of action and commitments made, and we know we have work to do, which is why we started the work of getting together even before coming to Paris," he said.

Trudeau added Canada has an opportunity to become a “purveyor of solutions” and put forward “innovative thinking” at the climate talks.

Speaking alongside other heads of state, Trudeau said, "Canada is back my good friends we’re here to help!" to applause.

Federal Green party leader Elizabeth May said Canada’s broad delegation to the talks, which includes Premiers, Ministers and members of the opposition, points in a positive direction.

“First Nations and NGOs are invited to participate the way they used to,” May said. “It’s back to normal. It’s how it used to be.”

“I think we and all Canadians should work as hard as we can to put together new targets, new commitments to financing, and re-ratify the Kyoto protocol in order to have access to new clean energy.”

"Everyone is waiting to see what 'New Canada' will do."

May added she hopes to see Canada’s delegation push for a strong agreement, including a mandatory review of countries’ progress every three years.

She also hopes to see more legally binding language in the treaty.

“We know the targets won’t be legally binding but the architecture of the treaty should be legally binding — and that’s still in square brackets,” May said.

She added, “everyone wants to see what New Canada will do.”

Canada has previously played a positive role in the climate negotiations.

“As the past has shown, Canada can punch above its weight for good, but can also punch above its weight for bad when it wants to sabotage progress,” she said.

“I think the public mobilization and citizen movements need to keep pushing government. In the context of the horrors of what happened in Paris people can get easily distracted by terrorism but as terrifying as ISIS is, climate change is a much bigger problem.”

“Climate changes is relevant to unrest in Syria through drought,” she said. “We need to keep pushing.”

Image: Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.