Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr told reporters Wednesday that ongoing oil pipeline reviews will continue on as usual, despite a promise by the Liberal government to make the environmental assessment process more robust.

“They have not stopped,” Carr said. “The process continues.”

Ongoing National Energy Board reviews will continue for projects like the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion even though the Liberal party platform promised an immediate review of the process, saying the renewed assessments will “restore robust oversight and thorough environmental assessments” and “restore lost protections” resulting from weakened environmental laws under the Stephen Harper government.

Minister Carr indicated the National Energy Board review process will undergo a transition but until that time, project reviews will remain unchanged.

“There will be a transition as we amend the ways in which the National Energy Board goes about the process of evaluating these projects,” Minister Carr said, “and we will announce those changes as soon as we can, but the process continues.”

The announcement has some wondering what to make of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s assertion that a more robust process would apply to the to Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

In August, Dogwood Initiative’s Energy and Democracy Director Kai Nagata pressed Trudeau to confirm if an NEB overhaul would apply to the Kinder Morgan project.

“Yes. Yes,” Trudeau said. “It applies to existing projects, existing pipelines as well.”

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Trudeau on Kinder Morgan

Justin Trudeau says if he's Prime Minister, Kinder Morgan will have to go back to the drawing board, saying "the process needs to be redone." Find out where candidates in your riding stand: http://votebc.ca/

Posted by Dogwood Initiative on Friday, August 21, 2015

“Okay,” Nagata said. “So if they approve Kinder Morgan in January, you’re saying…”

“No, they’re not going to approve it in January. Because we’re going to change the government,” Trudeau responded. “And that process needs to be redone.”

After the Obama administration's recent refusal of the Keystone XL pipeline through the U.S. and a nearly dead Northern Gateway on B.C. northern coast, Kinder Morgan is upping its efforts to ensure the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion goes ahead.

On Friday Trudeau publicly released ministerial mandate letters, including one to Minister Carr that instructed him to “immediately review Canada’s environmental assessment processes to regain public trust and introduce new, fair processes” as well as “modernize the National Energy Board.”

“You can't slap some new paint on the Conservative review process and call it credible after campaigning against it,” Keith Stewart, energy and climate campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, said.

“I don’t see how the Trudeau government can continue with the review of a pipeline under rules that Trudeau has denounced for ignoring climate impacts, failing to respect Indigenous rights, and lacking a grounding in sound science.”

This week marks the passing of one year since hundreds of protesters gathered on Vancouver’s Burnaby Mountain to disrupt crews performing exploratory drilling for the Trans Mountain pipeline.

A massive loss of faith in the NEB process was on full display on Burnaby Mountain after nearly 500 citizens were prevented from participating as intervenors in the Trans Mountain hearings.

This included a group of 27 climate experts, including economists, scientists and academics.

The National Energy Board also quietly removed oral hearings from the process, which means oral cross-examination and testimony under oath are no longer part of the review.

These procedural deficits have made it easy for Kinder Morgan to refuse to answer questions from expert interveners, such as lawyers from Ecojustice.

Even the province of B.C. has been put in a position where it must fight Kinder Morgan for basic information about the expansion project. In early 2015, DeSmog Canada revealed that the company was refusing to release spill response plans to the B.C. government, even though the same spill response plans had been made available to the public in Washington State.

Beyond that, the review process has excluded local First Nations to such an extent the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, which is located directly across the Burrard Inlet from Kinder Morgan’s facilities, launched a legal action to challenge the credibility of the review process.

Last fall, energy executive Marc Eliesen publicly abandoned his role as an intervenor in the review process, calling it “fraudulent” and an act of “public deception.” Eliesen accused the board of engaging in a process that was rigged with a “pre-determined outcome.”

The current pipeline review process also considers upstream oilsands impacts to the environment and climate outside the scope of a relevant environmental assessment.

Terry Beech, Liberal MP in Burnaby North-Seymour, told the Burnaby NOW no decision on the Kinder Morgan pipeline would be made under the current system.

“We are going to redo the National Energy Board process,” Beech said. “We’re going to broaden the scope. We’re going to make sure it’s objective, fair and based on science.

“We’re going to make sure proponents of any major energy projects, including Kinder Morgan, have to work towards getting community support and support from partner First Nations,” he said.

“We’ve already said there will be no decision on Kinder Morgan in January. Kinder Morgan will have to go through a new, revised process.”

Image: Burnaby Mountain protest by Zack Embree

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Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has been Prime Minister for nearly 72 hours and for a large number of people, Canada is well into the 'Everything is Awesome' phase of his tenure.

But for some, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's honeymoon is already over. It ended around noon when he released a statement on Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, describing his administration as "disappointed." To them it is a glaring "told-you-so" moment — one that exposes Trudeau once and for all as a corporate, right-of-centre wolf in progressive’s clothing. 

But what if it's not that moment? 

If anything, Canadians have seen that Trudeau is a savvy politician. During these early days in office he’s got a lot of politicking to do — and not just with Canadians worried about the climate.

In the same statement that Trudeau expressed his disappointment, he also pivoted to focusing on clean energy jobs.

“The Government of Canada will work hand-in-hand with provinces, territories and like-minded countries to combat climate change, adapt to its impacts and create the clean jobs of tomorrow,” the statement read.

So before anyone gets themselves in a tizzy, let's take a look at Trudeau's position on pipelines more generally and explore the nuance of today's important announcement.

Trudeau’s Keystone XL Support

In October 2013 the Liberal party backed the Keystone XL pipeline and won confidence from oil industry supporters when Trudeau told the Calgary Petroleum Club, “Let me be clear: I support Keystone XL.”

But Trudeau also added, “Perhaps the greatest indictment of the [Conservative] government is this: it has had the better part of a decade to remove the barriers preventing the U.S. from approving this project.”

“The [Conservative government] poked and prodded, annoyed and irritated the Obama administration at every turn. Largely, I suspect, because they don’t know how to work with people who don’t share their ideology."

This dovetails with what Foreign Minister Stephane Dion indicated yesterday: Canada wants to take on a more refined diplomatic approach to relations with the U.S.

“We don’t want it to be an irritant…we understand the Americans have to look at this very closely,” Dion said.

Both Dion and Trudeau indicated that although they support the Keystone XL, they respect the decision-making authority of the Obama administration — something the Harper government continuously strained diplomatic relations by failing to do. During his years of lobbying for the pipeline, Harper forcefully said he wouldn’t “take no for an answer” and called its approval a “no brainer.”

Trudeau responded to Obama’s decision to reject the pipeline Friday by saying, “We are disappointed by the decision but respect the right of the United States to make the decision. …The Canada-U.S. relationship is much bigger than any one project and I look forward to a fresh start with President Obama to strengthen our remarkable ties in a spirit of friendship and co-operation."

Trudeau’s Energy Diplomacy

The Prime Minister is playing a politically smart game, according to Kai Nagata, Director of Energy and Democracy at the Dogwood Initiative, by remaining consistent in their position on Keystone while acknowledging Canada’s relationship with the U.S. transcends this one issue.

"The undiplomatic conduct of the previous government gave Obama a lot of political cover to reject this project," Nagata said.

He added that in the years since Trudeau publicly backed the Keystone industry has been forced into retreat by plummeting oil prices.

"The Liberals committed their support to Keystone XL when oil prices were over a hundred dollars a barrel,” he said. “The world has changed a lot since then."

During the federal election the Conservatives lost 18 seats in British Columbia, Nagata said, in large part because of energy issues linked to the contentious Northern Gateway and TransMountain pipelines.

British Columbians are awaiting Trudeau’s final word on the deflated Northern Gateway pipeline, a project that, like Keystone, has been symbolic in the grassroots fight to prevent growing fossil fuel infrastructure.

Trudeau has also promised to revamp the National Energy Board’s pipeline review process to ensure environmental assessments take upstream and climate impacts into consideration — something the Harper government refused to do.

On the campaign trail, Trudeau told Nagata an overhaul of the review process would apply retroactively to the TransMountain pipeline expansion which is currently under review.

Nagata said a new political field has opened up for leaders like Trudeau and Obama when it comes to fossil fuel infrastructure.

“I think that the drop in oil prices helped create the political conditions for a domino effect around these pipelines because the market case for them isn’t there right now.”

Trudeau's Promise of Stronger Industry Regulations and Pipeline Reviews

Along with pledging a tanker ban on British Columbia's north coast and opposing the Northern Gateway Pipeline, the new Prime Minister has also refused to back the Energy East pipeline, and promised a more robust pipeline review process.

Trudeau said environmental assessments under the Harper government were "politically torqued" and required an overhaul.

Thursday Liberal party House Leader Dominic LeBlanc said the government recognizes Energy East could have economic benefits, but indicated a stronger review process will be critical to the pipeline’s success.

"I also recognize in the same breath that in order to get such a complicated project approved, there have to be robust and stringent and independent environmental reviews," LeBlanc said.

"And there has to be a much more concerted effort on the part of the government of Canada — and to be honest the company and the provincial governments, I think have recognized this — but the federal government was pretty absent, in terms of working with communities and First Nations and trying to build understanding, information and support around a process of review that is credible and independent."

If all of this comes to pass, then Northern Gateway is consigned to the dustbin of history and both the Kinder Morgan TransMountain expansion and TransCanada's Energy East pipeline will start their reviews again under new tougher regulations. Environmentalists, however, are sensibly skeptical— especially about the Liberals apparent dissonance between acting on climate while growing the fossil fuel sector.

“Obama has sent a clear message that you can’t be a climate leader and build pipelines, a message that Prime Minister Trudeau cannot ignore,” Caitlyn Vernon, campaigns director for Sierra Club BC, said.

Karen Mahon, executive director of ForestEthics Advocacy, echoed the sentiment.

“This rejection sets an important precedent in the run up to the Paris climate talks that we hope Prime Minister Trudeau will take to heart — we cannot protect the climate and approve more pipelines and expand the tar sands. Approving pipelines while claiming climate leadership is clear contradiction,” Mahon said.

"To Change Everything, We Need Everyone"

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is less than a week into the most important job of his life. Like President Obama, he came into it on the heels of an extremely unpopular predecessor. He promised hope, change and a different way of governing. He has an extremely ambitious agenda which will require reaching out to industry, business, other politicians and environmentalists and getting them to work together to be successful. And he needs to do it all in with the legacy of his father's 'National Energy Plan' looming over his head for a still-angry subset of western Canadians. 

Trudeau’s response today may signal a conciliatory posture towards the pipeline industry and a sign that campaign promises are little more than hot air. Or it can also be seen as a first measured response to the complex political challenge ahead of him.

For the moment, the majority of Canadians seem content to believe the latter. 

Image: Flickr

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The results have been in since December but there’s still no indication of when the Alberta government’s internal report on pipeline safety will be available to the public.

NDP energy critic Rachel Notley believes Energy Minister Ken Hughes is deliberately withholding the report out of fear that it will make safety an even greater issue in the pipeline debate. She told the Calgary Herald she believes it’s part of a broader communications strategy.
    

“At the end of the day what we really need is for the public to review the review,” she said. “We’re the ones to whom Ken Hughes owes an obligation—not the shareholders of multinational corporations.”
    

Hughes denies the allegation that keeping the results of the report from going public has anything to do the Obama administration’s upcoming decision regarding the future of the Keystone XL pipeline. He says the government needs more time to review the results and that industry is still reviewing its own practices as well. He added that pipeline safety is just one part of a larger process and that he will release the information “in the not too distant future.”


This news comes several days after the National Energy Board discovered that Enbridge is failing to comply with safety regulations at ninety percent of its facilities. When ordered to reveal whether the company’s pump stations had backup power to operate emergency shut downs, Enbridge revealed that only eight of its 125 stations across the country complied with regulations.

Enbridge claims the breach in safety measures was merely a misunderstanding, caused by changes in the way the NEB has interpreted rules, despite those rules having been in place for more than a decade.
    

“Enbridge would never knowingly operate outside of regulatory requirements. In fact, we do more than ask people to trust us, we say look at the evidence. We say look at our record, which is better than the industry average,” Enbridge spokesperson Graham White told CBC News.
    

The oil company’s explanation for the lapse doesn’t inspire much faith in the contents of the Keystone safety report, particularly in light of Hughes’ comment that the report is “highly technical,” requiring more time to fully understand the nature of it.

Another strike against Canadian oil development followed this morning when the Globe and Mail reported that the European Union has proposed labeling Canadian tar sands dirty energy, a move that has Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver threatening to take the European Commission to the World Trade Organization on the grounds that it was discriminating against Canadian exports and in contravention of international trade rules.

Image Credit: LOOZRBOY via flickr.

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