There are so many problems with B.C.’s current environmental assessment process that a review, announced Wednesday by Environment Minister George Heyman, will almost certainly mean improvements, say environmental groups.

Heyman said it is clear that the public has lost trust in the process, leading to conflict and uncertainty and government’s priorities are working with First Nations and ensuring the process is science-based.

“We’ll be working with Indigenous groups at every step of the revitalization process,” Heyman said.

“Our government wants to ensure we have a process that’s transparent, science-based, timely and provides early indications of the likelihood of success. This work will also contribute to our government’s commitment to fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” he said.

An overhaul of the process that decides whether major resource and development projects should proceed, will be spearheaded by a 12-member advisory committee, led by ecologist Bruce Fraser, former chair of the Forest Practices Board and the provincial Task Force on Species at Risk, and Lydia Hwitsum, former Cowichan Tribes chief and former chair of the First Nations Health Council.

Other committee members include First Nations, industry and union representatives and specialists in impact assessment, climate change and renewable energy.

The committee will release a discussion paper in May, including feedback from the Environmental Assessment Office, which will be holding government-to-government meetings with First Nations and meeting with industry, local governments and non-governmental organizations.

After a public comment period, the government will introduce reforms late fall. Priorities include enhancing public confidence, transparency and “protecting the environment while supporting sustainable economic development,” says a government news release.

Assessments already underway will continue under the current system.

“There have been too many instances where development has failed to ensure the health and safety of our local communities. This has left communities and First Nations with no choice but to use the courts to advocate for their own protection.” https://t.co/rjovpT4fuO

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 8, 2018

B.C.’s environmental assessment process brewing controversy

Controversies over environmental assessments in B.C., combined with the previous Liberal government’s increasing reliance on industry professionals for advice — something now under review by the province — have included the Site C dam, the Mount Polley tailings dam collapse and approval of the Woodfibre LNG facility on Howe Sound.

A high-profile conflict erupted after approval of a contaminated soil dump near Shawnigan Lake, a battle that pitted the community against the former B.C. Liberal government and revealed deep flaws in the assessment process, such as the “independent” engineering company being paid by the proponent.

B.C. Green Party MLA for Cowichan Valley Sonia Furstenau, who was at the heart of the fight against the soil dump, said the review is a first step in restoring public trust in the environmental assessment process.

ICYMI: Embattled Taskeo Mine Permits Show Why B.C. Needs an Environmental Assessment Overhaul

“There have been too many instances where development has failed to ensure the health and safety of our local communities. This has left communities and First Nations with no choice but to use the courts to advocate for their own protection,” she said in a statement.

“A robust environmental assessment process that includes adequate consultation and thorough scientific, evidence-based analysis will avoid costly legal challenges and save government from dealing with expensive clean-ups when projects go awry.”

A strong process will also provide greater certainty for industry, Furstenau said.

Ecosystems, cumulative effects should be considered in assessments

Gavin Smith, West Coast Environmental Law staff lawyer, said the move to overhaul the system is sorely needed as the current model is not working.

“It’s time for a new approach, one that safeguards ecosystems, recognizes indigenous jurisdiction, helps B.C. meet its climate commitments and responds to community voices,” he said.

A recent paper by WCEL examined flaws in the system such as weak public participation, the failure to consider the cumulative effects of development and the failure to recognize First Nations as decision-makers in their territories.

The review has the potential to ensure better decisions about projects such as mines and pipelines and to protect against “death by a thousand cuts” from the combined effects of may developments in a region, Smith said.

Peter McCartney, Wilderness Committee climate campaigner, echoed the long overdue theme and pointed to the Woodfibre decision as an example of valid concerns being ignored.

Bringing First Nations into the process and transparency around how public comment is taken into account should be priorities, McCartney said.

“And there needs to be a route to ‘no’ in this process,” he said.

Instead of looking at mitigation for problems such as putting a gravel mine in a salmon spawning area, there needs to be a clear ultimatum, early in the process, that says the project will not go ahead, he said.

ICYMI: B.C. Urged to Review Industry-Funded Science Behind Approval of Gravel Mine

Jens Wieting, Sierra Club B.C. Forest and Climate Campaigner, is cautiously optimistic that the plethora of problems with environmental assessments can be fixed.

“First, we need a climate test as part of environmental assessments because that will show us that some of the projects are inconsistent with our goals to stabilize the climate. That is true for LNG terminals and the Kinder Morgan pipeline,” he said.

Also, the entire ecosystem must be considered when a project is proposed.

“Ecosystems and endangered species are already under pressure and industrial development can be the tipping point. Look at the southern resident orcas — we know the Kinder Morgan tanker traffic would lead to extinction,” Wieting said.

Science-based decisions are needed and, if a project leads to extinction or the collapse of an ecosystem, it must be rejected, he said.

The overhaul of the provincial environmental assessment process comes after an announcement that the federal process is being streamlined.

A new Impact Assessment Agency will be tasked with carrying out reviews of all major projects, with a mandate to include health and social impacts and long-term effects on Indigenous people. Simultaneously the National Energy Board will be replaced by the Canadian Energy Regulator.

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The controversial $9 billion Site C dam project will be sent for immediate review with the B.C. Utilities Commission if NDP Leader John Horgan becomes B.C.’s premier, according to a landmark agreement between the NDP and Greens.

The agreement outlines the terms of a power-sharing agreement as well as a path forward on key election issues, including the future of the Site C dam.

The agreement sets out a requirement to “immediately refer the Site C construction project to the B.C. Utilities Commission” to investigate the economic viability and consequences of the project for British Columbians.

During the election campaign the Greens vowed to stop the Site C project outright while the NDP committed to send the project for independent review by the B.C. Utilities Commission, a body designed to regulate BC Hydro and electricity rates. The B.C. Liberals exempted Site C from utilities commission scrutiny.

At a joint press conference Tuesday, Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver said he and his two fellow Green MLAs negotiated strongly with the NDP caucus on the fate of the Site C project.

“We came in there very strong on Site C,” Weaver said. “We did not take this lightly.”

The Greens pressured the soon-to-be government on the exact terms of their commitment to send the project for review, Weaver said.

“We got a response that frankly was the right response we were looking for.”

Premier Christy Clark, now facing an inevitable loss of confidence in the house, vowed to push the Site C project “past the point of no return” before the election.

In response to questions, Horgan said Site C construction will not be paused while the commission evaluates the project.

Weaver noted that although construction has not been stopped families facing eviction by B.C. Hydro have been granted an extension of time on their land.

“The Boons have not been evicted from their property,” Weaver said, referring to Ken and Arlene Boon, farmers leading the fight against Site C who were facing eviction at the end of May.

Horgan said his party’s plan for the Site C dam, which requires considering lower cost options for the public, paved the way for the historic NDP-Green power-sharing agreement.

“The draft document we shared with Andrew and his team, that was I think, the foundation for what allowed us to work forward together.”

The Site C dam is the most expensive public infrastructure project in B.C.’s history. The reservoir created by the dam will flood 107 kilometres of the Peace River, destroying thousands of hectares of prized agricultural land and unique ecosystems. It has been under construction for nearly two years in what is an eight-year construction timeline.

The Site C dam is the most environmentally destructive project ever considered under the federal Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, as detailed by the federal-provincial panel tasked with reviewing the project in 2013.

That panel, chaired by Harry Swain, did not make a recommendation for or against the project because the province had failed to both investigate alternatives, such as geothermal, and to demonstrate the need for the power Site C will generate.

In a previous interview with DeSmog Canada, Swain said, “there is no need for Site C.”

“If there was a need, we could meet it with a variety of other renewable and smaller scale sources.”

The panel called on B.C. to send the project to the B.C. Utilities Commission, but the province ignored that recommendation and decided to forge ahead with the project.

Image: Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver and NDP Leader John Horgan release a joint Supply and Confidence Agreement that calls for an immediate review of the Site C project, May 30, 2017. Photo: BC NDP via Flickr

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The National Energy Board (NEB) is a “captured regulator” that has “lost touch with what it means to protect the public interest.”

That’s what Marc Eliesen — former head of BC Hydro, Ontario Hydro and Manitoba Hydro, and former deputy minister of energy in Ontario and Manitoba — told the NEB Modernization Expert Panel on Wednesday morning in Vancouver.

“The bottom line is that the board’s behaviour during the Trans Mountain review not only exposed the process as a farce, it exposed the board as a captured regulator,” he said to the five-member panel.

“Regulatory capture exists when a regulator ceases to be independent and objective.”

The Trans Mountain pipeline was reviewed with what many consider a heavily politicized NEB process, one that Trudeau had committed to changing prior to issuing a federal verdict on the project.

That process included what Eliesen describes as gutted environmental legislation, the removal of “essential features of a quasi-judicial inquiry” including the cross-examination of evidence and the limiting of participation of intervenors in such a way it “predetermined the outcome in favour of the pipeline proponent.”

Eugene Kung, staff counsel at West Coast Environmental Law, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that the hearings for the project were the worst he’s seen in almost 10 years of practising regulatory law.

But that doesn’t seem to be an accident. Eliesen — who withdrew as an intervenor from the NEB review of the Trans Mountain project in 2014 due to the “fraudulent process” — argues the problems go far deeper than just the Trans Mountain review, predominantly linked to the “revolving door” between industry and the board.

“This ‘modernization’ is some spinmaster’s term,” he said. “It’s about public trust and the fact the NEB has lost this trust to the Canadian public.”

Move of NEB Head Office to Calgary Arguably Compromised Independence

In 1991, the NEB’s head office was moved to Calgary, and legislation was changed to require all permanent members to reside in Calgary.

It’s a decision that Eliesen says was completely unexpected and ultimately a political move by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney; most other regulatory agencies are located in Ottawa to prevent being influenced by the industry in which they’re supposed to regulate (including finance regulators, even though Toronto is often considered Canada’s finance city).

If it was indeed politically driven, the plan seems to have worked.

More than two-thirds of the staff didn’t move to Calgary, and their positions were subsequently filled by former employees of the oil and gas sector. This has resulted in what some call a “revolving door” between the two; as Eliesen pointed out in his presentation, some former NEB chairpersons have been inducted into the Canadian Petroleum Hall of Fame.

“I’m not suggesting any nefarious activities,” he says. “It’s just that you adopt the headspace and the attitude of the energy industry of Alberta. When you have the legislation changed as well to ensure that all the permanent members reside in Calgary, then you have a major, major bias.”

It’s something he argues got worse under former prime minister Stephen Harper, who took full advantage of it in his final months (appointing many former industry veterans to key positions with the board, including Steven Kelley, who previously worked as a consultant for Kinder Morgan on the Trans Mountain project).

Even one of the five members of the NEB Modernization Expert Panel previously served as president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association. That same person, Brenda Kenny, signed a 2011 letter to key cabinet ministers petitioning for regulatory overhaul.

“She is in a real conflict of interest,” Eliesen says. “She’s the last person to be on a panel trying to evaluate how to bring back to the public trust to the National Energy Board.”

How to Fix the National Energy Board, Canada's Captured Regulator https://t.co/mHjDbb2iRj #cdnpoli #EnergyEast #TransMountain @james_m_wilt pic.twitter.com/8So7hzWUQ1

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 10, 2017

Many Structural Changes Required to Fully ‘Modernize’ the NEB

Kung, who also presented to the expert panel on Wednesday, expressed concerns about the relationship between the NEB and industry. He says there are many structural ways that such capture can be fixed.

Currently, the NEB receives a majority of its funding from industry, something Kung suggests should be addressed.

Its “very important role” in data collection and forecasting (such as the exhaustive “Canada’s Energy Futures” reports) don’t currently consider climate commitments such as the Paris Agreement, with the latest NEB report imagining a “business-as-usual” world that features an increase of four to six degrees Celsius in average global temperatures. That’s another thing that Kung says needs to change in the modernization.

Patrick DeRochie — climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence — agrees, arguing that the NEB needs to better align climate and energy policy: “It’s not there right now. With this energy transformation we’re seeing for renewables right now, it’s not adequate. We need to bring that into the 21st century.”

(Conversely, Eliesen disagrees and suggests the NEB be solely a quasi-judicial agency and the energy information and advisory mandate be removed).

A key concern for Kung is also about NEB personnel. He acknowledges the board possesses technical expertise and that it’s tricky to find that kind of knowledge in people who haven’t worked in the industry at some point.

“But the way you can separate it structurally is making their role slightly different so they’re not making a decision, for example, about national or public interest,” he says. “Because that’s an impossible decision to make by a captured regulator.”

Proposed Solutions Include Replacing Board Members, Relocating Head Office

Eliesen proposed two major solutions to the review panel.

First, remove all current board members and replace them with people that reflect a broad range of background and expertise, not just the oil and gas industry. And secondly, relocate the NEB’s head office back to Ottawa.

These two decisions would create a firewall of sorts between industry and the board.

In addition, he suggested that environmental assessments be undertaken outside of the NEB, enforcement of pipeline safety be increased, and proponents be required by the NEB to provide alternative routes for pipelines.

Vancouver was only the third stop of 10 for the expert panel. The final “engagement session” in Montreal will conclude on March 29.  The panel is required to submit a report and recommendations to the Minister of Natural Resources around May 15.*

It’s a timeline that DeRochie suggests has made the process “really rushed,” noting that some of the 12 discussion papers weren’t even posted on the NEB Modernization Panel website by the time the first engagement sessions started in Saskatoon. However, DeRochie presented at the engagement session in Toronto on Feb. 1, and said that he went in “kind of cynical” but emerged feeling like they “really did seem like they wanted to engage us and fix this regulator.”

“It’s either get this right or face a bunch of political and legal challenges to every single energy project moving forward,” he says. “I think all stakeholders — industry, government, indigenous communities and ENGOs — want to avoid that.”

* Update: Feb 9, 2017. This article originally stated the panel report was due March 31, as stated on the National Energy Board's website. However, the date has been updated to May 15, as stated in the National Energy Board's terms of reference for the review panel.

Images: Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr. Photo: Canada 2020 via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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When you stare at climate change, sometimes climate change stares back.

So what happens when one refuses to look away?

That’s the challenge taken on by filmmaker Josh Fox in his new film, How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change.

Like its title, the film is a long and artful look at an almost too-familiar topic, but one that takes you to unexpected places.

Fox, celebrated for his award-winning documentary GASLAND that charted the impacts of prolific fracking in the U.S., including near his home in the Delaware river basin, begins How to Let Go of the World by celebrating a local success against the gas industry in Pennsylvania.

But his celebration, which is marked by some impressive dad dancing, is cut short by the realization that a beloved family tree has been overtaken by woolly adelgids, an insect infestation prompted by the warmer winters of climate change.

Josh Fox will attend a film benefit screening of How to Let Go of the World in Vancouver on May 23, 2016. Tickets and event details available on Facebook or through the Rio Theatre. The event is hosted by DeSmog Canada, Gen Why Media and the Rio Theatre. All filmmaker proceeds will go to the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Fort McMurray Fire Relief Fund. Event is 19+.

Fox then casts his gaze out to other impacts of a hotter climate, including the devastation wrought in New York and New Jersey by Hurricane Sandy.

Tunnelling into the climate science with well-known climate advocate Bill McKibben and famed climate scientist Michael Mann, Fox faces head on the stark realization that current efforts to address climate change — the agreements, and targets and innovations — are mere trifles if immediate reductions in the world’s total carbon emissions aren’t happening

Trailer: HOW TO LET GO OF THE WORLD AND LOVE ALL THE THINGS CLIMATE CAN'T CHANGE from JFOX on Vimeo.

The film channels Fox’s deep sense of personal despair and the social-political languor that such feelings give rise to.

But it is here at this low point, Fox’s intuitive filmmaking takes flight, bringing us into an alternate world of hope, dance, creativity, resilience and on-the-ground storytelling that drives the remainder of the film’s narrative.

“The moment you surrender, I really think that’s the moment, when you change,” Fox says in a narrative voiceover. “But that’s also the moment you find the revolution inside.”

“What are the things climate change can’t destroy?”

Seeking out places where the battle is being waged against climate change, Fox travels to the jungles of the Amazon, to Ecuador, Samoa, and Zambia, all in search of the meaningful human experience that thrives despite the fight.

On a trip to China, Fox interviews climate activist and energy democracy advocate Emma Chou who says society has lacked the “moral imagination” necessary to surmount the obstacles to clean energy and a stable climate.

“The moral imagination allows us to think outside of this box, having a moral value of what you want as a person as an individual. What do you want out of our own humanity?” Chou says.

The conversation proves to be a major turning point for Fox, who realizes his personal climate despair is an inadequate response to the global challenge at hand.

“I felt ashamed that I ever wanted to sit at home and do nothing….so stupid to think that way, it’s just not possible. What’s required is so much more.”

“If there was any idea that could rocket you off to the stratosphere, [the moral imagination] is it,” he says.

“The moral imagination designed and built the first solar panels, wind turbines, and geothermal power plants…the basic truth that renewable energy can provide 100 per cent of the power needed on this planet.”

“There’s no end to human innovation once the moral imagination is evoked.”

Image: Screenshot from How to Let Go of the World.

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A film documenting a battle that has stretched over almost a quarter century, pitting communities and environmental groups in B.C’s Kootenays against supporters of a proposed wilderness ski resort, is showing to sold-out audiences across North America.

The stunning scenery of the Purcell Mountains, iconic historical clips and the even-handed exploration of a clash between two visions of wilderness make Jumbo Wild an extraordinary documentary that transcends local issues and delves into the ideological battle between those who want to keep the wild in wilderness and those who believe development gives people access to nature.

“We saw sold-out shows at almost all the stops along the way and that’s because the bigger questions being addressed about how we define wilderness and what makes a place sacred are important to people around the world,” said Tess Byers, spokeswoman for Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company that funded and promoted the Sweetgrass Productions film, directed by Nick Waggoner of Salt Lake City.

In Victoria, where the film was first shown to a sold-out audience in October, a planned Dec. 10 free screening at Patagonia on Yates Street sold out immediately and there is the possibility of a second showing in January (you can add your name to the waitlist here).

[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Jumbo Wild will also be available on iTunes, Vimeo, Amazon, GooglePlay, Vudu and Playstation on Dec. 11 and will be available in February on Netflix and Hulu. Showings also continue across North America and individuals can host their own screening for $99. All proceeds will go to Wildsight, a group that has fought the Jumbo Glacier Resort proposal since its inception.

The film is now being seen around the world and inspiring audiences to take action, not only on protection of the Jumbo Valley, but also in their own backyards, said Robyn Duncan, executive director of Wildsight.

The saga of the Jumbo Wild campaign is a story of love for wild places, a community coming together to successfully oppose a development they do not want and the story of the Ktunaxa Nation standing their ground to protect their sacred territory, Duncan said.

“The film resonates with people on a deeper level, cutting to the deeper questions of what is wilderness and what are we, as a society, willing to do to protect the wild,” she said.

Patagonia Funding of Doc Rankles Oberto Oberti

However, the Patagonia funding created a controversy of its own, raising questions about bias, especially as the company has supported Wildsight’s fight against Jumbo Glacier Resort and is now advocating for the remote Jumbo Valley to be protected.

But director Waggoner was determined to do justice to all sides of the argument, Byers said.

“While Patagonia’s pro-conservation stance has been no secret for several years, Nick Waggoner made this film and he approached it as a documentary endeavour in every way,” Byers said.

“He gave significant credence to the developers’ arguments during research, production and in the final film that frankly outweighs the balance present in many modern social documentaries.”

That was not the view of Oberto Oberti, the architect who first envisioned the mega-resort in the Jumbo Valley and who has been battling ever since to make his dream a reality.

Waggoner spent a considerable amount of time with Oberti and Glacier Resorts vice-president Grant Costello while making the film, but did not immediately disclose who was funding the project.

“It may be offensive to Canadians (and to justice) to see that a movie made by an American and as an advertising project for a foreign company like Patagonia is made to reverse the CORE land use decision (the legal, political, democratic and moral foundation of the two decades of process for the Jumbo Glacier Resort project) when both sides of the story are not given equal weight,” Oberti wrote in an open letter to Waggoner after being informed about Patagonia’s involvement.

But the film takes a remarkably balanced stance, showing Oberti, not as an evil developer riding roughshod over local wishes, but as a man who believes in his mission and in the ultimate good of building a resort that will allow others to experience the beauty of the area.

“Are you proposing to Patagonia the idea that to keep the JGR territory for exclusive use of wealthy heliskiers and for snowmobilers is a better use?” Oberti asks in the letter.

One of the most telling segments of the film is when Oberti, who was born in Italy, says “creating a mountain resort and access to the mountains is like creating a cathedral” and describes the soaring peaks and glaciers as the “Alps multiplied by 1,000 times.”

For many opposed to the plan for a billion-dollar, 6,300 bed resort, the commercialisation of the Alps is exactly what they want to avoid.

“My church is up there. You can’t get any closer to God can you?” asks Nolan Rad, who has spent almost seven decades hunting, trapping and fishing in the area.

The ultimate opposing viewpoint to Oberti’s vision comes from Joe Pierre of the Ktunaxa First Nation, who regard the area as sacred.

“He’s come here to build a monument to himself. Talk about being offensive to a world view that for 400 generations have never even considered that. It’s hard to take,” Pierre said in the film.

A rare nod to the animosity created by the proposed development comes from Grant Costello.

The opponents don’t believe humans should be allowed to change the environment, he explained.

“I don’t want to lose to these people. That’s what it really comes down to,” he said.

However, for Glacier Resorts and Oberti, the lengthy battle was all but lost in June when Environment Minister Mary Polak decided the project had not substantially started before its environmental certificate expired.

To continue would mean starting the environmental assessment process from scratch.

But Oberti is not ready to give up and is planning a smaller development that would avoid the need for a full environmental assessment.

Tommaso Oberti, Pheidias Group vice-president, said in an e-mail to DeSmog Canada that the company is working on a revised master plan.

“It won’t look very different. It will just be a smaller development. I don’t know yet what the timelines will be,” said Tommaso Oberti, who has not watched the film.

“But I understand there is some beautiful scenery (in the film),” he said.

So, the battle for the wilderness is not yet over and, whether or not skirmishes will continue in the peaks and glaciers that surround the Jumbo Valley, the film documenting the fight is now inspiring communities around the world.

Image: Howard P Smith, First Light on Jumbo.

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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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Economist and former ICBC president  Robyn Allan withdrew from the National Energy Board’s (NEB) review of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project Tuesday, saying she can no longer “endorse a process that is not working.”

In a letter addressed to Sherri Young, secretary of the NEB, Allan said the “review is not conducted on a level playing field” and that because the panel is “not an impartial referee…the game is rigged.”

Allan said she began to seriously question the process when oral cross-examination was removed from the process.

“I had concerns with what that would do to the overall calibre of the process,” she said.

Allan said she wanted to “participate in good faith through the process of information requests” but now that it has been completed “it’s very clear it has been an exercise in futility.”

“I wanted to see the process through enough to unequivocally conclude that it’s broken,” she said. “ Now I see it’s beyond repair.”

Allan said the limited scope of the board’s review of the process is an “unconscionable betrayal of Canadians.” 

“The board does not include the very serious issues the Canadian public expects the scope to include. And that’s not just the absence of greenhouse gasses in the review and the very serious implications of those for climate change — we don’t even have a classical economic scope of issues,” Allan said.

Allan said the review does not give full consideration to the impact the added Trans Mountain pipeline will have on the whole system, including the increase of tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet.

Concerns are running high in the Vancouver area after the accidental release of bunker fuel from a cargo vessel in English Bay called the city’s oil spill response capabilities into question.

“You’ve see even just from the bunker C fuel spill in the Burrard Inlet that they were totally incompetent in their ability to deal with [a spill],” she said, adding that the board will only consider the incremental rise in tanker traffic in Vancouver’s waters resulting from the Trans Mountain expansion, but not the impact on tanker traffic as a whole.

“They’re not looking at the whole system,” she said. “This is a deception being perpetrated on the public.”

Allan also said the board relies too heavily on Kinder Morgan’s assessment of risk. Recently the City of Vancouver, City of Burnaby and Tsleil-Waututh Nation commissioned an oil spill assessment by modelling experts Genwest Systems that found two key faults with Kinder Morgan’s oil spill assessment.

Allan said she expects the board to support Kinder Morgan’s risk assessment over those submitted by third parties and downplay the significance of spill risks for the project as a whole.

“The board will say — because Kinder Morgan says — that a spill is ‘not likely’ and therefore we don’t have to consider the cost or the implications.”

Recently NEB chair and CEO Peter Watson addressed public concern over the review process in British Columbia where opposition parties, several major environmental organizations and municipal leaders are calling on the provincial government to pull out of the federal process.   

Allan called the public outreach “duplicitous.”

“The public relations activities that Mr. Watson has been involved in are media spin,” she said. “It’s part of a strategy to lull the Canadian public into a sense of safety when none exists.”

Allan said intelligent Canadians don’t necessarily have the time to investigate the federal government’s review process. She felt she might be able to help: “from the beginning with my expertise and ability and concern I felt that was an effective role I could play.”

Now, after a year of pro bono engagement with the process, Allan says she can no longer participate in good faith.

“What I’ve concluded is the game is rigged, the National Energy Board is a captured regulator and their actions are putting the healthy and safety of the economy, society and environment at risk.” 

Robyn Allan Withdrawal Letter NEB May 19, 2015

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This piece originally appeared in the Times Colonist.

At a cost of $8.8 billion, the construction of the Site C dam would entail the largest outlay of taxpayer money in B.C. history.

That’s 18 times the cost of B.C.’s fast ferries, or 11 times the cost of a sewage-treatment facility for the Capital Regional District. Heck, it’s the most expensive infrastructure project currently proposed in all of Canada.

Yet a BC Hydro survey in July 2014 found only six in 10 British Columbians had even heard of the project.

Perhaps that’s because Site C, proposed for near Fort St. John, is out of sight, out of mind for the vast majority of British Columbians. The dam — given the green light by the province a week before Christmas — would be the third on the Peace River and, if built, would flood the river valley for 107 kilometres, affecting 13,000 hectares of agricultural land.

The province has capitalized on the “out of sight, out of mind” factor to try to get away with ignoring recommendations made by its own expert panel.

In its recommendations, the joint federal-provincial panel said it had neither the time nor the resources to analyze the costs of the project and couldn’t determine that the dam was needed on the timeline provided. It recommended a review by the B.C. Utilities Commission, a body created for exactly this purpose.

The province decided to go ahead with the project without that independent analysis. Normally, the people appointed to these panels file their reports, then quietly slip into the abyss. But in an unprecedented turn of events, the chairman of the Site C panel spoke out last week in an interview with my online news outlet, DeSmog Canada.

Harry Swain said the government was unwise to ignore his panel’s recommendation for a review by the BCUC and should have held off on making an investment decision.

“Wisdom would have been waiting for two, three, four years to see whether the projections they were making had any basis in fact,” Swain said.

The province continues to argue that there’s no need for an independent review of costs because the project has already been thoroughly reviewed by — guess who? — BC Hydro itself.

“Is the answer, therefore, that such projects are only to be examined by the proponent?” Swain said.

Swain, a former deputy minister of Industry Canada and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, described the province’s failure to investigate alternatives to the dam as a “dereliction of duty.”

The province was instructed to investigate geothermal 32 years ago when the Site C dam was first turned down by the BCUC.

Questioned by Oak Bay-Gordon Head MLA Andrew Weaver on the government’s decision to forge ahead with the dam in the legislature last week, Energy Minister Bill Bennett said: “We looked at absolutely everything, and the decision that we made on this side of the house was to honour the ratepayer.”

But that’s not what the province’s expert panel said in its report.

“The panel concludes that a failure to pursue research over the last 30 years into B.C.’s geothermal resources has left BC Hydro without information about a resource that BC Hydro thinks may offer up to 700 megawatts of firm, economic power with low environmental costs,” the report read.

The Canadian Geothermal Energy Association says geothermal can meet all of B.C.’s future energy needs at a lower cost than Site C, with fewer environmental impacts. The association has requested meetings with Bennett, with no success.

That’s dumbfounding enough, but especially when you consider that Site C is expected to lose at least $800 million in its first four years of production, because it will generate more power than the province needs at triple the market rate, so it will be sold at a huge loss.

The project is now facing six legal challenges, including lawsuits filed by Treaty 8 First Nations and the Peace Valley Landowners’ Association, which could prevent construction from beginning this summer as scheduled.

“I think the province was determined to go ahead with the project from the beginning,” Swain said.

Question is: What more would it take for the province to reconsider its decision to forge ahead with this dam without having the costs and need independently reviewed?

Image Credit: This portion of the Peace Valley will be flooded in the construction of the Site C dam. Photo by Robin via Flickr.

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Since DeSmog Canada broke the story two weeks ago that Kinder Morgan publicly released its emergency oil spill plans for the Trans Mountain pipeline in Washington State while withholding or severely redacting the exact same plans in B.C., there's been a firestorm of activity on the topic.

The story has now been covered by the Globe and Mail, the CBC and the Canadian Press, the issue was raised in the House of Commons this week and the president of Kinder Morgan and the chair of the National Energy Board (NEB) have been forced to respond.

Kinder Morgan and the NEB angered the B.C. government in January after ruling the company could keep spill response plans for the proposed oilsands pipeline secret due to "security concerns."

This week Kinder Morgan president Ian Anderson defended the company’s actions, saying the NEB did not demand disclosure of the plans.

“We in no way want to have this perceived lack of transparency around our emergency response plans as any indication of us wanting to hide anything or keep anything a secret,” Anderson said.

“There are very real security concerns that we have with respect to posting our full and complete plans where critical valves and critical access points to the system are delineated.”

Anderson elaborated that requirements for disclosure are different in Washington State.

In January the NEB ruled Kinder Morgan was not obligated to provide the plans despite multiple requests from the province of B.C., an intervenor in the federal Trans Mountain pipeline review process.

In a motion to the federal regulator, the province called Kinder Morgan’s redactions “excessive, unjustified and prohibitive.” B.C. added the withheld information “thwarts” their review of the pipeline expansion project and “precludes a thorough understanding of Trans Mountain’s [emergency management plan] by the Board and all intervenors.”

The release of the plans in Washington “renders inexplicable” Kinder Morgan’s insistence the information remain secret north of the border, B.C. argued. The fact emergency information is available in the U.S. “calls into serious question the legitimacy of Trans Mountain’s claim that what is presumably almost identical information ought…not to be disclosed,” the province told the NEB.

Victoria MP Murray Rankin raised the issue in the House of Commons on Feb. 23, saying:

"Kinder Morgan is allowed to keep its plans for oil-spill recovery secret from the people of Victoria and from all British Columbians — the very kind of plans that are routinely available across the border, in Washington state. This deplorable secrecy does no favour to the resource industry which depends upon social licence from first nations and from communities small and large trampled by a government that allows our resources to be sold at any price."

A spokesperson with the NEB said the federal regulator is considering making public emergency response plans mandatory for energy companies operating existing pipelines, the Canadian Press reports.

“Our chairman is not very happy that there’s a lack of transparency around these emergency response plans,” Darin Barter said. “Canadians deserve to have that information. There’s a public will for that information. Industry needs to find a way to make that information public.”

Barter added the NEB is not pushing for a legislative change around emergency plan disclosure requirements, but is seeking greater transparency from companies.*

* Correction February 25, 2015: This article has been corrected to show the NEB is not seeking a change in legislation but rather greater transparency from companies.

Image Credit: Trans Mountain

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The way tensions between pipeline opponents and Kinder Morgan contractors have escalated during the last week should come as a surprise to no one.

The mishandling of the National Energy Board review of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker proposal has created the conditions for the situation now unfolding on the mountainside.

And with the continuing loss of faith in these federal reviews — which even before being refigured to “expedite” energy proposals were already ill-equipped to grapple with the larger societal issues, such as climate change, related to energy proposals — we can expect to see more controversy across B.C. and likely along the route of TransCanada’s Energy East.

How did it come to this?

In 2012, the federal government passed omnibus budget bill C-38 — despite significant upheaval in Parliament — which overhauled Canada’s environmental assessment process.

The changes contained in that bill condensed project review timelines, seriously restricted public participation in the assessment process and limited what environmental concerns are deemed relevant to projects such as pipelines.

Now, during the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline review process, these changes are coming into effect.

It began with climate change impacts being overlooked in the terms of reference for the review — just as they had been in the Enbridge Northern Gateway review. But then it got worse. 

Hundreds of concerned citizens who considered themselves directly affected by the project were denied intervener status by the National Energy Board, the federal body overseeing the pipeline review process.

A group of 27 climate experts, including economists, scientists and political and social scientists, were rejected from participating in the hearings because they wanted to discuss the project’s significance to Canada’s climate targets.

In total, 468 citizens had their application for intervenor status rejected, leading stultified onlookers to call the process “Kafkaesque.”

To add insult to injury, the National Energy Board then quietly removed oral hearings from the review process, meaning oral cross-examination — during which live witnesses are questioned under oath — will play no role in the Trans Mountain pipeline review.

This step reduced the Kinder Morgan “review” to a mere paperwork exercise.

Participants are allowed to pose questions via writing to Kinder Morgan about the impacts of its proposal to triple the amount of oilsands bitumen it ships via pipeline to Burnaby — but the company has failed to treat these questions seriously.

For instance, Ecojustice lawyers asked the company to explain the potential effect of an oil spill on marine fish.

Kinder Morgan’s response? “Harm to marine fish populations seems to be the exception, rather than the rule, following marine oil spills.”

That was one of the better answers compared to the 20 Ecojustice questions Kinder Morgan refused to answer on the basis they were “not relevant” or the company simply didn’t know the answer.

Even the Province of British Columbia had to ask the National Energy Board to compel Kinder Morgan to answer dozens of questions the company had skirted — including failing to provide emergency response documents.

The review process has been so incomplete the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, whose territory overlooks the Burrard Inlet and Kinder Morgan tanker facilities, launched a legal action to challenge the review process on the basis of failed consultation and a fundamental mischaracterization of the project, which includes not just an expanded pipeline but terminals, storage facilities and increased tanker traffic.

Energy executive Marc Eliesen quit the review process amongst much fanfare earlier this month, saying it was “fraudulent” and an act of “public deception.” He accused the NEB of jury-rigging the process with a “pre-determined outcome.” (Read more about Eliesen’s crippling reasons for leaving.)

What’s more, a new report from SFU and The Goodman Group Ltd. shows Kinder Morgan exaggerated the jobs associated with the pipeline construction while seriously underplaying the risk of a potential pipeline rupture. And remember, this pipeline has already ruptured on several occasions, including once in 2007, sending 250,000 litres of crude into the community and 70,000 into the Burrard Inlet.

So with a community on edge and unconvinced of the benefits of the pipeline, and with the local municipality officially opposed to the project, Kinder Morgan perhaps made a critical error sending survey crews to conservation areas on Burnaby Mountain with chainsaws in September.

The city of Burnaby responded with issuing a stop work order claiming the company did not have the right to damage property protected by city bylaws. The National Energy Board, however, told the company to continue on with its legally allowable work, even if that meant cutting down trees on the mountainside.

It’s within the minutia of that legal interpretation — the tension between community self-determination and the energy board’s ruling on allowable survey work — that the Burnaby Mountain protest movement was born.

And for all the reasons above — not to mention the upstream impacts of oilsands development on climate, local ecosystems and First Nations’ territorial rights — this fight should surprise no one.

There has been no credible and democratic way for residents of Burnaby, or citizens in B.C. for that matter, to weigh in on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. There has been no legitimate forum for the concerns of the community, of local First Nations and of a variety of climate and environmental experts.

Although Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan has promised to fight the pipeline by every available legal means, the federal government has made it virtually impossible for citizens to register their opposition to this project in any way other than protest.

And that’s a problem. Because with similar opposition foreseeable for TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline (especially after the company’s downright dirty PR tactics were leaked in documents from Edelman last week), Canada can expect more of these conflicts in our future.

And we should not have to stand for that.

This set of circumstances is fair to no one: not to locally elected municipal leaders looking to represent their constituents, not to communities looking to protect their environments and personal well-being and not to companies looking for stable operating conditions.

The act of proposing a pipeline is a legitimate thing to do in our society. Businesses should have the opportunity to pursue economic opportunities just as communities should have the opportunity to say no if a proposal doesn’t fit in with their long-term plans.

But with a government working in the interests of industry, citizens have been left out of the decision-making process, where the only way to register their voice is from behind the blockade line where they are marginalized, or worse, criminalized as radicals.

Our federal government is failing to lead on one of the biggest issues of our time. What Canada really needs is a grownup national conversation about an energy strategy that meets Canada’s international climate commitments. Until that happens, these debates will continue to play out dysfunctionally during technical review processes that were never designed to answer such large societal questions.

So as the saga of Burnaby Mountain continues to unfold, we should all be asking: who really is acting in the public interest? 

Image Credit: Zack Embree

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The Sussex University economist has aligned himself with climate denial and his tweets are highly entertaining – shame this book is so damn conventional.

Professor Richard Tol has authored a ruthlessly conventional £57 textbook on the economics of climate change. I took the hit and skimmed the book so you don't have to. 

Climate Economics presents a concise yet comprehensive treatment of neoclassical environmental economics with reference to the problem of climate change and climate change mitigation.

‘Neoclassical’ economics is the school of economic thought that now almost entirely dominates the field.

This school is taught in almost all UK universities, receives the bulk of funding – at least in the Anglophone world – and structures how most professional economists and commentators on the economy think about the world.

Neoclassical economics emerged in the ‘marginalist revolution’ of the 1870s, purporting to show that any economy can be analysed not by reference to how it produces or consumes, but with reference to how individuals freely choose to maximise their utility.

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Rational Individuals

It is fundamentally based on the method of marginal analysis. This means that it looks, in particular, at how a system behaves when changes made to it are very, very small – marginal.

@DeSmogUK it's a fair reflection of your state of mind

— Richard Tol (@RichardTol) September 11, 2014

The justification for this approach is that it is based on the principle of optimisation. If rational individuals seek to maximise their utility, given their resources are not unlimited, they will aim to ensure they get the most value possible from each £1 they have.

This means the marginal £1 is of particular concern for them. Similarly, if firms are profit-maximising, they will be concerned with the marginal revenue they can get from selling one extra unit of their output.

All of this makes for quite neat mathematical solutions, and provides some apparently robust answers to big questions: can a capitalist economy ever be stable? How much should firms produce? What is the optimal amount of pollution?

Flawed Approach

A neoclassical theory of growth has been developed which shows that a capitalist economy can produce stable economic growth over very long periods of time, based on the idea of individual optimisation by consumers and firms.

Tol’s growth model, as presented in the book, is a derivative of these general neoclassical models.

When dealing with climate change, however, this is a deeply flawed approach. First, it depends on being able to say what the marginal effect is, and on the assumption that the impact of this marginal effect will be limited.

This is unlikely to apply to the climate: because the system is so complex, the impacts of even small additions to (for example) the total volume of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted may themselves not be small. In mathematical terms, the system is strongly non-linear.

Tipping Points

There may be “tipping points”, like the melting of permafrost, that cannot be accounted for in a marginal analysis.

Instead of a nice, smooth set of “choices” and clear outcomes about how much GHG society should emit, we might well have very “lumpy” outcomes, with sudden, dramatic changes to the climate occurring from relatively small further increases in GHGs.

Second, the analysis also assumes that decisions are in some sense reversible. In other words, the consequences of any decision taken now can be entirely or at least substantially reversed.

There are no truly permanent consequences to decisions. This underlying belief follows from the assumption of optimising behaviour by rational individuals: for individuals to be able to choose rationally when there is uncertainty about the future, they have to be able to consider different possible courses of action to make the comparison.

Threatened with Extinction

But if some course of action are irreversible, this comparison doesn’t make much sense. In particular, there is no convincing way to assign a monetary value to different outcomes – how do we assign a value to a species threatened with extinction? What is the point of comparison here?

These general issues feed into the book’s approach, which is wholly uncritical of its own assumptions. For instance, Tol talks about the “marginal impact” of CO2 emissions.

Yet, if these CO2 emissions set off a “tipping point” a marginal analysis is useless: there is no margin, just an enormous loss from the release of methane trapped in permafrost and other feedbacks.

Tol advocates trading of pollution permits as a “solution” to climate change, the idea being to find the “optimal” level of GHGs, given the presumed costs that they impose.

This belief in trading is fundamentally flawed and derived from a result known, after its proposer, as the Coase Theorem.

But Coase’s Theorem, which purports to show that allowing people to trade licences to pollute will reach an 'efficient' solution only applies when there are no “income effects”.  

Put simply, it only works when different people and institutions trading are indifferent to how much money they actually have – clearly not the case.

Blasé Assumptions

The book uses the EU trading scheme as an example, but notes only “teething problems” rather than suggesting any more fundamental issues at stake.

There is a rather blasé set of assumptions scattered throughout the book, in keeping with its neoclassical bias.

Often this leads it into making unexamined neoliberal claims about the world.

For instance, it says only “non-economists” would be in favour of substituting more expensive domestic energy for cheaper imports of energy. But this ignores work on dynamic trade theory by people like the Cambridge economist Ha Joon Chang.

And elsewhere, Tol claims governments are bad at “picking winners” – that they are not as good at free markets at allocating research funding and supporting new industries.

This ignores the work of Marianna Mazzucato on the critical role governments have always played in supporting new industries.

Tol is equally blasé about the prospects for technological progress. On the basis of the Kaya equation – that total emissions is equal to income per person, times population, times emissions intensity – the book suggests that technological change alone will be sufficient to meet climate change goals.

Social Justice

This flies in the face of work by Peter Jackson who shows that the scale of emissions reduction per £1 produced, with continued economic growth, is completely implausible given current or any plausible future technology.

There is also little or nothing in this book about equity and justice beyond the usual concerns of neoclassical economics for “Pareto efficiency” and the First Welfare Theorem.

And yet the effects of climate change will be uneven globally – and contributions to its cause are also uneven.

There is, in practice, an almost-total mismatch between the likely victims of climate change, and those most responsible for causing global warming.

Tol ends up presenting a pleasantly optimistic view of the future in which the “marginal” costs of climate change can be met with a somewhat increased rate of investment in technology, and some minimal government intervention to correct “externalities”.

These conclusions follow pretty directly from the book's unexamined neoclassical worldview. They are not necessarily correct.

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