This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

With the December Paris climate agreement, leaders and experts from around the world showed they overwhelmingly accept that human-caused climate change is real and, because the world has continued to increase fossil fuel use, the need to curb and reduce emissions is urgent.

In light of this, I don’t get the current brouhaha over the Trans Mountain, Keystone XL, Northern Gateway or the Energy East pipelines. Why are politicians contemplating spending billions on pipelines when the Paris commitment means 75 to 80 per cent of known fossil fuel deposits must be left in the ground?

Didn’t our prime minister, with provincial and territorial premiers, mayors and representatives from non-profit organizations, parade before the media to announce Canada now takes climate change seriously? I joined millions of Canadians who felt an oppressive weight had lifted and cheered mightily to hear that our country committed to keeping emissions at levels that would ensure the world doesn’t heat by more than 1.5 C by the end of this century. With the global average temperature already one degree higher than pre-industrial levels, a half a degree more leaves no room for business as usual.

The former government’s drive to make Canada a petro superpower distorted the Canadian economy into greater fossil fuel dependence, with catastrophic consequences when the price of oil collapsed. The lesson should have been learned long ago: Heavy dependence on a single revenue stream like fish, trees, wheat, minerals or even one factory or industry is hazardous if that source suffers a reversal in fortune like resource depletion, unanticipated cost fluctuations or stiff competition.

Coal stocks have already sunk to the floor, so why is there talk of building or expanding coal terminals? Low oil prices have pushed oilsands bitumen toward unprofitability, so why the discussion of expanding this carbon-intensive industry? Fracking is unbelievably unsustainable because of the immense amounts of water used in the process, seismic destabilization and escape of hyper-warming methane from wells. Exploration for new oil deposits — especially in hazardous areas like the deep ocean, the Arctic and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other critical wildlife habitat — should stop immediately.

Pipeline arguments are especially discouraging, with people claiming Quebec is working against the interests of Alberta and Canada because the leadership of the Montreal Metropolitan Community — representing 82 municipalities and nearly half the province’s population — voted overwhelmingly to reject the proposed Energy East pipeline project, which would carry 1.1 million barrels of oilsands bitumen and other oil products from Alberta to refineries and ports in the east. Some have thrown out the anti-democratic and, frankly, anti-Canadian notion that because Quebec has received equalization payments it should shut up about pipeline projects.

National unity is about steering Canada onto a sustainable track and looking out for the interests of all Canadians. Continuing to build fossil fuel infrastructure and locking ourselves into a future of increasing global warming isn’t the way to go about it. Shifting to a 21st century clean-energy economy would create more jobs, unity and prosperity — across Canada and not just in one region — than continuing to rely on a polluting, climate-altering sunset industry. Leaders in Quebec should be commended for taking a strong stand for the environment and climate — and for all of Canada.

The Paris target means we have to rethink everything. Energy is at the heart of modern society, but we have to get off fossil fuels. Should we expand airports when aircraft are the most energy-intensive ways to travel? Why build massive bridges and tunnels when we must transport goods and people differently? The global system in which food travels thousands of kilometres from where it’s grown to where it’s consumed makes no sense in a carbon-constrained world. Agriculture must become more local, so the Peace Valley must serve as the breadbasket of the North rather than a flooded area behind a dam.

The urgency of the need for change demands that we rethink our entire energy potential and the way we live. It makes no sense to continue acting as if we’ve got all the time in the world to get off the path that created the crisis in the first place. That’s the challenge, and for our politicians, it’s a huge task as well as a great opportunity.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Photo: Shannon Ramos via 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.

This is a guest post by Mitchell Beer. It originally appeared on GreenPAC.

The pitched media battle between Mayors Denis Coderre of Montreal and Naheed Nenshi of Calgary shows just how quickly the political debate can get nasty when the things that matter most to us are at stake.

It also points to what’s been missing so far in a suddenly much more open federal conversation on Canada’s energy choices and climate responsibilities.

The firestorm began last Thursday when Coderre, representing the 82 municipalities of the Montreal Metropolitan Community, came out against TransCanada Corporation’s controversial Energy East project. After careful study, he said, the MMC determined that the 1.1-million-barrel-per-day pipeline would deliver $2 million per year in economic gain to the Montreal region, against $1 to $10 billion in clean-up costs in the event of a major diluted bitumen spill.

‘Call a Spade a Spade. It’s a Bad Project.’

“An oil spill can’t just be turned off, and it would affect multiple waterways, including water basins and groundwater — you have to take all of this into consideration,” Coderre said. “Call a spade a spade: It’s a bad project.”

While groups like Montreal’s Équiterre applauded the MMC’s “courageous decision,” Nenshi went on the offensive — alongside premiers Rachel Notley of Alberta, Brian Gallant of New Brunswick and Brad Wall of Saskatchewan, Alberta opposition leader Brian Jean and federal opposition leader Rona Ambrose.

“The prime minister said he didn’t like Northern Gateway, he has said he did like Keystone,” Nenshi told CBC Radio’s The House Saturday morning. “I think it’s time for him to say he does like Trans Mountain and he does like Energy East.”

Nenshi went so far as to frame Energy East as a nation-building project, while comedian Rick Mercer scolded Coderre (and, presumably, the 299 other Quebec mayors who oppose the project) for thinking locally, rather than nationally. Veteran Quebec affairs correspondent Chantal Hébert was quick with her retort: “What has not panned out is their Pollyannaish strategy of selling the plan for an oil pipeline as a nation-building project—liable to bring the country together in the way that the railroad did in the 19th century,” she wrote.

We All Want the Same Things

But if you cut through the immediate controversy, it looks like Nenshi, Coderre and most of the rest of us are looking for the same things.

We all want steady, secure, well-paid jobs for ourselves, our families and our communities.

We all want clean water, whether it flows through the Bow River or the St. Lawrence River. (And we want a stable enough climate to reduce the likelihood of the Bow River overflowing its banks.)

Most of us want climate action that aligns with the 1.5°C long-term goal for average global warming that Canada and 186 other countries adopted at the United Nations climate summit in Paris last month.

We can all get carried away by an inspiring nation-building project that brings the country together on the eve of its 150th birthday. (Admit it. You know you can.) Even if Energy East is not that project.

And we should all want to see Alberta recover quickly and well from what Notley herself described as the “boom and bust roller coaster ride” of fossil fuel development in her election night victory speech last May 5. Anyone outside the western oilpatch who’s celebrating Alberta’s pain should consider some emergency nation-building of their own.

But that doesn’t make Energy East the solution. We’ve known for years that the large majority of the world’s fossil fuels are unburnable in any reasonable climate scenario, and there’s little reason to expect the project to survive a multi-trillion-dollar carbon bubble. With oil prices expected to stay low through 2018, and competing renewable energy options becoming more affordable by the day, it’s hard to imagine why TransCanada would even want to try.

So, yes, we should all be prepared to get behind a grand nation-building project that will deliver stable, secure jobs and put Canada on a path to drastically lower carbon emissions. We could start by committing to a plan to deliver a million climate jobs (actually, a million person-years of climate employment) over the next five years by investing in energy retrofits, public renewable energy, transit and “higher-speed’ rail.

That’s the kind of nation-building that brings people, cities and regions together, rather than driving them apart.

Mitchell Beer is President of Ottawa-based Smarter Shift and curator of The Energy Mix, a thrice-weekly digest on climate, energy, and low-carbon solutions.

Photo: Clive Clamm via 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.

The National Energy Board’s decision to grant Costco intervener status in its review of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline even though it had missed the deadline to apply is raising questions given that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was denied its request for an extension to the same deadline.

Costco submitted a late application to participate in the review of Kinder Morgan’s proposal to triple the capacity of its pipeline to Burnaby on April 9, 2015. The company argued that it received formal notice of the pipeline’s potential impacts on its Langley property on Feb. 4, 2015, when it was served with notice for land acquisition.

In a letter sent to all interveners, the National Energy Board wrote that Costco had provided sufficient reasons for the board to consider a late submission based on the fact “the project may cross Costco’s lands and it has the potential to be directly affected.”

American authorities are nervous about Kinder Morgan’s proposal to increase oil tanker traffic by a factor of seven through the shared waters off B.C.’s coast, particularly in light of the recent slow response to a small fuel spill in Vancouver Harbour.

“A catastrophic oil spill would set the Puget Sound clean-up effort back decades, and result in billions of dollars in harm to our economy and environment,” the state’s Ecology Department officials wrote to Washington Governor Jay Inslee in 2013 in documents obtained by the Globe and Mail.

The officials also raised red flags about Canada’s oil spill response capability, writing: “B.C. lacks authority over marine waters, and their federal regime is probably a couple of decades behind the system currently in place in Washington State. … When it is spilled, we are concerned that dilbit oil may be considerably more toxic and damaging, and far more difficult to clean up, than conventional crude from Alaska.”

The documents also indicate that American officials urged the U.S. to sue the NEB for barring the EPA from participating in the hearings on the grounds that it had missed the deadline to apply.

Ultimately, the EPA was granted a lower status as a “commenter,” which does not provide the same ability to provide sworn evidence or ask questions of the proponent.

Asked why Costco was granted intervener status when the EPA was not, National Energy Board Communications Officer Tara O’Donovan told DeSmog Canada that the EPA never officially asked for intervenor status — instead, they asked for an extension to the deadline to apply. The board denied that request in this ruling “as the EPA had not outlined how it would be impacted if it was not able to submit a late application.”

“This letter did not provide any information about the EPA’s mandate, why it sought participation in the hearing, or whether it sought intervenor or commenter status. The Board is required by natural justice to make each decision solely on the basis of the information filed on its record,” O’Donovan wrote via e-mail.

The EPA subsequently filed a late application to participate as a commenter, which “included further details on the agency and the relevant information or expertise it could provide to the board.” The board then granted the EPA commenter status in an April 2, 2014, ruling.

The Globe reported this week that EPA officials wrote in e-mails that the NEB’s decision was contrary to the boards’ obligations under Canadian law. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act requires the NEB to “consult and co-operate” with the EPA.

 “It does appear that NEB should have consulted with the U.S. (and, in turn, EPA and other such agencies) given the scope of the project which will increase tanker traffic in the [Puget] Sound. … NEB never actually sent out an offer to consult as contemplated by Section 18 of the CEAA,” wrote Courtney Weber of the agency’s Seattle office in the documents obtained by the Globe.

The National Energy Board is expected to make its recommendation to the federal government by January 2016.

The board has been criticized for eliminating all oral cross-examination of evidence during the Trans Mountain review. Many of the province of British Columbia's questions — including its request to see Kinder Morgan's oil spill response plan — have been refused. The City of Burnaby says only three of its last 217 questions were answered.

In late March, several B.C. mayors declared non-confidence in the National Energy Board and called on the federal government to put the current process on hold. The mayors also called  upon the Government of British Columbia to re-assert its role in environmental assessment and to establish a provincial process to assess the Trans Mountain proposal.

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.

With 2014 drawing to a close, DeSmog Canada decided to take stock of its most popular stories of the year.

Readers came in droves for our in-depth reporting on climate change, oilsands and oil pipelines, but they also loved articles about potential solutions to our climate change woes. Indeed, two of our Top 10 posts are on Canada’s geothermal potential.

Without further ado, here are DeSmog Canada’s Top 10 articles of 2014. Thanks for reading!

1. Bill 4 Passes: B.C. Parks Now Officially Open…To Pipelines and Drilling. More than 10,000 citizens wrote letters and signed petitions to try to stop the B.C. government from passing Bill 4, which allows for industry (and others) to carry out "research" in provincial parks related to pipelines, transmission lines, roads and other industrial activities that might require park land.

2. PHOTOS: Famed Photographer Alex MacLean’s New Photos of Canada’s Oilsands are Shocking. One of America’s most famed and iconic aerial photographers used his unique eye to capture some new and astounding images of one of the world’s largest industrial projects.

3. Debunked: The Top 10 Stupid Arguments in Neil Young Debate. You may recall that in January last year, Neil Young created one helluva stir with his Honour the Treaties tour. The Alberta media hyperventilated with these Top 10 stupid arguments.

4. Alberta Partners with Major Oilsands Companies to Develop Kindergarten to Grade Three Curriculum. This story created such an uproar that at least one company dropped out of curriculum development.

5. Top Five Craziest Things Climate Change Recently Did in Canada. From the mass die-off of sea scallops on the West Coast to a jump in Lyme disease because more ticks are suriving the winter, this Top 5 list attracted a lot of eyeballs.

6. Top 5 Reasons Why Geothermal is Nowhere in Canada. Canada is the only country on the Pacific Ring of Fire without any commercial geothermal power plants, despite having abundant potential and, ironically, Canadian energy companies running geothermal power plants around the world.

7. Top 10 Quotes from Canada’s Muzzled Scientists. Environics Research collected dozens of quotes from scientists who allege the Harper government is muzzling them, interfering with their research and ignoring their findings — particularly when it comes to evidence that covers issues such as climate change and other impacts of unsustainable industrial development.

8. Energy Executive Quits Trans Mountain Pipeline Review, Calls NEB Process A ‘Public Deception'. Marc Eliesen had some scathing words for the National Energy Board when he dropped out of its review of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain oil tanker and pipeline project. He called the review process “fraudulent” and a “public deception” and called for the province of B.C. to undertake its own environmental assessment.

9. New Maps Reveal B.C. Has Enough Geothermal Potential to Power Entire Province. As B.C.’s politicians contemplated flooding the Peace Valley for the Site C hydroelectric dam, a new report from the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association said the province is sitting on a figurative gold mine of geothermal power with low environmental impact.

10. Only Four in 10 British Columbians Have Heard Of This $7.9B Mega Project — Have You?. The Peace River Country, which spans the Alberta-B.C. border, feels a world away to the 75 per cent of B.C.’s population that lives in the Lower Mainland or on Vancouver Island. But, as the biggest infrastructure project in the province’s history, the $8 billion Site C dam stands to impact all British Columbians — from the implications for our electricity bills to the flooding of some of our province's most valuable agricultural land.

Photo: Alex McLean. Surface oil on tailings pond at Suncor mine near Fort McMurray.

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.

An energy executive is weighing in on the federal review of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion with a scathing letter that calls the National Energy Board’s review process “fraudulent” and a “public deception” — and calls for the province of British Columbia to undertake its own environmental assessment.

Marc Eliesen — who has 40 years of executive experience in the energy sector, including as a board member at Suncor — writes in his letter to the National Energy Board that the process is jury-rigged with a "pre-determined outcome."

Eliesen is the former CEO of BC Hydro, former chair of Manitoba Hydro and has served as a deputy minister in seven different federal and provincial governments.

In his letter, Eliesen tells the National Energy Board (NEB) that he offered his expertise as an intervenor in good faith that his time would be well spent in evaluation Trans Mountain’s proposal.

“Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that the board, through its decisions, is engaged in a public deception,” Eliesen writes. “Continued involvement with this process is a waste of time and effort, and represents a disservice to the public interest because it endorses a fraudulent process.”

Eliesen writes that he was dismayed when the oral cross-examination phase was removed from the Trans Mountain hearings. He notes that oral cross-examination has served as a critical part of all previous Section 52 oil pipeline hearings.

“It is my experience that when a proponent does not face the spectre of oral cross-examination, their written responses to interrogatories suffer from a lack of detail and accountability,” Eliesen writes. “Still, I was willing to see the results of the Information Request process the board promised would be sufficient.”

When those information requests came back, however, Eliesen lost all hope in the process.

The unwillingness of Trans Mountain to address most of my questions and the board’s almost complete endorsement of Trans Mountain’s decision has exposed this process as deceptive and misleading. Proper and professional public interest due diligence has been frustrated, leading me to the conclusion that this board has a predetermined course of action to recommend approval of the project and a strong bias in favour of the proponent.

In effect, this so-called public hearing process has become a farce, and this board a truly industry captured regulator.

A regulator is considered ‘captured’ when it turns into more of a industry facilitator, rather than a regulatory watchdog.

Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion proposal would triple the amount of oil the company ships to Burnaby and increase the number of oil tankers travelling through Vancouver Harbour and the Gulf Islands seven-fold.

National Energy Board Has 'Pre-Determined Course of Action' to Approve Trans Mountain: Eliesen

Eliesen argues that a series of National Energy Board decisions reflect a pre-determined outcome.

“They reflect a lack of respect for hearing participants, a deep erosion of the standards and practices of natural justice that previous boards have respected, and an undemocratic restriction of participation by citizens, communities, professionals and First Nations either by rejecting them outright or failing to provide adequate funding to facilitate meaningful participation,” Eliesen writes.

To illustrate this behaviour, Eliesen outlines six examples:

1) Intervenors being excluded from the formulation of the list of issues to be taken under consideration during the review. Kinder Morgan’s opinion, on the other hand, was taken into account when formulating the list.

2) The board refusing requests from intervenors — including municipal governments and First Nations — for more time to prepare information requests (due to the highly technical, voluminous nature of Trans Mountain’s application).

3) The lack of basic professional standards of disclosure, source verification, references and methodology in Trans Mountain’s studies.

“It is shocking that in a process such as this where due diligence is required on a major capital project that the board has not held Trans Mountain to a minimum professional standard of accountability and transparency,” Eliesen writes. “The Board’s veneer examination of the proponent’s case is reflective of a decision not to dig too deeply for fear the economic case may crumble, or a lack of economic, financial and business acumen on behalf of the Board to know where and how to dig.”

When basic business questions are asked by intervenors, Trans Mountain refuses to answer them, Eliesen adds.

4) The board’s axing of oral cross-examination. The Government of Canada’s Department of Justice has informed the board that evidence given without cross-examination should be rejected. The Department of Justice stated “Canada’s position is that cross-examination is necessary to ensure a proper evidentiary record …” Furthermore, “cross-examination serves a vital role in testing the value of testimonial evidence. It assists in the determination of credibility, assigning weight and overall assessment of the evidentiary record. It has been termed ‘the greatest legal invention ever invented for the discovery of truth’ … without cross-examination the board will be reviewing only untested evidence.”

5) The board's failure to compel Kinder Morgan to answer questions adequately. In the absence of oral cross-examination, the board is relying on written information requests between intervenors and the proponent. However, Trans Mountain has failed to respond in a way that addresses the core elements of most questions — and the board has failed to compel them to answer.

“They have either provided non-responses, general statements, or referred back to the inadequate information in the original application that gave rise to the question in the first place. In many instances Trans Mountain has assumed the regulator’s role declaring that the question asked is outside the List of Issues established by the NEB,” Eliesen writes.

Out of the approximately 2,000 questions not answered by Trans Mountain that intervenors called on the board to compel answers to, only five per cent were allowed by the board and 95 per cent were rejected.

6) Trans Mountain has failed to answer even the Province of British Columbia’s questions, so the province asked the NEB to compel Trans Mountain to answer. But guess what? That request was also denied by the board.

“The board has sided with Trans Mountain dismissing the Province of B.C.’s need for answers in pursuit of its duty to British Columbians,” Eliesen writes in his letter. “The NEB’s bias in support of the proponent is reflecting poorly on the Province of B.C. in that it is unable to obtain necessary answers to conduct its due diligence.”

Province of B.C. Should Cancel Equivalency Agreement, Launch Own Review of Trans Mountain

Eliesen finishes his letter by calling on the Province of B.C. to cancel the equivalency agreement with the federal government to undertake its own environmental assessment as the only meaningful way to get answers to its questions.  

Andrew Weaver, Green MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head, joined the call for the B.C. government to issue the 30-day notice required to cancel the equivalency agreement with the feds and launch its own, separate environmental assessment process.

“In the past week alone we have seen Kinder Morgan sue Burnaby residents for trespassing on parkland and one of the most credible intervenors, Marc Eliesen, fully withdraw from the hearing process,” Weaver says.  

The June 2010 equivalency agreement signed between the federal government and province set the review process for major pipeline and energy projects under the National Energy Board, with final approval to be determined by the federal cabinet. The equivalency agreement for the Trans Mountain project can be cancelled with 30 days notice.

“The B.C. government needs to stand up for British Columbians,” Weaver says. “What we need is a made-in-B.C. environmental assessment that is controlled by British Columbians to ensure our concerns get respected and that our questions get answered.”

Marc Eliesen Letter of Withdrawal from Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion NEB process

Photo credit: Jenny Uechi, Vancouver Observer

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.