This story was originally published in 2019. Go here for our explainer on what the 2021 election results mean for environment and climate policy.

Well, well, well, the dust has settled (kind of) and Canada has a Liberal minority government.

Wait, what exactly is a minority government?

Here’s how it works: there are 338 seats in Canada’s House of Commons. To govern unilaterally, a party needs to win 170 seats. That’s what we Canucks call a majority government.

If no party wins more than 170 seats, you have what we call a minority government. That means the party that forms government will need the support of other parties to pass any legislation. It also means they can face a non-confidence vote at any moment, so they better keep themselves in the good graces of some allies.

Who those allies will be is the big, unanswered question at this hour.

What we know is this: the Liberals need 13 extra seats to stay in power. As of Tuesday morning, the Conservatives won 121 seats, the NDP won 24 seats, the Bloc Quebecois won 32 seats and the Greens won three seats.

The Liberals could work with either the NDP or the Bloc Quebecois (or some combination thereof) and remain in power.

Both the NDP and the Bloc have strong environmental platforms — arguably stronger than the Liberals — so if anything the Liberals can be expected to take a stronger stance on environmental issues.

There’s much we don’t know, but here are a few things we can reasonably expect to happen on the environment file.

1) The carbon tax will stay in place

An escalating price on carbon has been the cornerstone of the Liberals climate plan and they’ll have plenty of support to keep the carbon tax in place. The NDP also promised a carbon tax, but vowed to take it a step further by removing exemptions for heavy polluters.

Meanwhile, the Bloc Quebecois proposed that Ottawa impose a carbon tax in provinces where greenhouse gas emissions per capita are higher than average and that the proceeds be paid to provinces where emissions are lower, creating a form of green equalization. Trudeau will almost certainly be concerned about Albertan alienation, so he’ll avoid getting involved in that plan.

2) About those fossil fuel subsidies …

Back in 2015, the Liberals promised to phase out fossil fuel subsidies over the “medium term,” but Environmental Defence estimates the federal and provincial governments are still handing out $3.3 billion a year to the fossil fuel industry. A September 2018 report found that although there has been some progress on fossil fuel subsidy reform in Canada in recent years, there is still a significant amount of work to be done for Canada to meet a G7 country promise to end all “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” by 2025.

The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois campaigned on a promise to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies — a policy that enjoys tremendous public support. With the parties needing to work together, we should expect this phase out to happen sooner rather than later.

3) The Trans Mountain pipeline debate is unlikely to be re-opened in Parliament, unless …

While many of the opposition parties might want to re-open this debate, it’s hard to see an opening for them to do so given the pipeline is already approved. Even if the NDP, Greens and Bloc Quebecois wanted to force a confidence vote on it, the Conservatives would side with the Liberals on this one.

However, the Liberals still need to find $10 to $15 billion to build the pipeline.

“The public financing of the project does seem to present a bit of a pickle,” said Kai Nagata of Dogwood, a B.C. democracy group. “It doesn’t seem likely the NDP/Bloc/Greens could vote for a budget with pipeline construction funds, but the Conservative party probably couldn’t stomach voting for everything else.”

Nagata added: “Even the Conservatives should be philosophically uncomfortable with borrowing money, in a deficit, to spend on corporate welfare.”

4) Buh-buy single-use plastics

The Liberals promised to start phasing out single-use plastics starting around 2021. The NDP, meanwhile, wants to intensify that approach by straight-up banning single-use plastics by 2022. Any which way, single-use plastics such as bags and straws are likely going the way of the dodo.

5) Full steam ahead on conservation

The Trudeau government has made significant progress toward meeting its Aichi Biodiversity targets: it pledged to protect at least 17 per cent of terrestrial area and inland waters, and 10 per cent of its oceans, by 2020. A flurry of big new protected areas has moved that along.

The Liberals have also committed to conserving 25 per cent of Canada’s land, freshwater and ocean by 2025 and to working toward conserving 30 per cent by 2030. They also plan to advocate for countries around the world to set a 30 per cent conservation goal.

Additionally, the Liberals have identified the opportunity to reduce emissions by 30 megatonnes by 2030 using natural climate solutions that support efforts to better manage, conserve and restore forests, grasslands, agricultural lands, wetlands and coastal areas — as well ad by planting two billion trees.

The NDP and Greens have also committed to the goal of conserving 30 per cent of land, freshwater and oceans by 2030.

So, watch for more Indigenous protected areas, national parks and marine protected areas.

6) Expect more electric vehicles

The Liberals have set a target of 30 per cent of all light-duty vehicles on the road being electric by 2030. The Bloc Quebecois also support measures to require manufacturers to sell more electric vehicles. And the NDP support maintaining the $5,000 federal incentive for electric vehicle purchases while eliminating federal sales tax on them. One way or another, electric vehicle incentives are here to stay.

7) A lot of Albertans are going to be outraged

With Conservatives winning a higher percentage of the popular vote than the Liberals nationwide, and winning every seat in Alberta and Saskatchewan except for one, Westerners are rightly going to be upset about ending up with so little say in Ottawa. How that will manifest is yet to be seen, but I’d wager a bet it ain’t gonna be pretty.

8) Will electoral reform have its moment in the sun?

The NDP and Greens have long supported a move to proportional representation — an electoral system that would ensure the allocation of seats is more in line with the popular vote than our current first-past-the-post system. With the Conservatives being the latest losers under the first-past-the-post system, one has to wonder if there might be a cross-party push for a referendum on modernizing our electoral system.

Much more will become clear over the coming weeks and months, but for now what we know is that the Liberals will have to work with some combination of the NDP and Bloc Quebecois — and that means that if anything, they’ll have a stronger mandate to take bold action on the climate crisis.

Updated Oct. 22, 2019, at 10 a.m. to include updated seat counts.

Updated Oct. 22, 2019, at 2:45 p.m. to add further comment regarding the Trans Mountain pipeline and to provide further detail about conservation promises. 

Updated Oct. 24, 2019, at 11:40 a.m. to correct an error regarding the source of fossil fuel subsidies. The $3.3 billion a year in subsidies are from both the federal and provincial governments, not just the federal government.

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The Husky Energy oil spill in Newfoundland is a wake-up call for British Columbians as the National Energy Board conducts yet another review of the Trans Mountain expansion project.

The east coast spill brings into sharp focus significant questions regarding the limitations of oil spill cleanup and recovery. It’s also a reminder of the very real possibility that an oil spill in a marine environment off the coast would be treated with Corexit, a chemical dispersant that would make a real-time experiment of us all — humans and non-humans alike.

In June 2016 the federal government quietly approved the use of Corexit 9500, a substance which Trans Mountain indicated in their submission to the National Energy Board they would consider using in the event of a marine oil spill off the B.C. coast.

The intended purpose of dispersants like Corexit 9500 is to break up oil slicks on the water’s surface by increasing the rate at which oil droplets form and move into the water column.

Chemical dispersion does not reduce the amount of oil entering the marine environment; rather, it aims to change where the oil goes and how quickly it gets there.

The idea is to turn the oil into small droplets which are more easily degraded by naturally occurring microbes, but it turns out that this plan may backfire.

In research conducted following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Corexit was found not only to be toxic to naturally occurring microbes that can degrade oil, but to actually suppress their oil-degrading ability.

Efficacy of Corexit on diluted bitumen unproven

There are significant concerns about the use of Corexit on a spill of diluted bitumen (dilbit), a blend of bitumen and chemicals, which would be carried by the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline.

Corexit’s effectiveness in dispersing dilbit is unproven at best, and a growing body of research indicates that Corexit is toxic to fish, wildlife, and humans.

Past experience on the B.C. coast has taught us that the rough conditions commonly encountered can render traditional oil spill cleanup methods — booms and skimmers — not just ineffective, but unusable.

Further, in their application to the National Energy Board, Trans Mountain noted that diluted bitumen can submerge in the water column and sink, thereby “reducing the effectiveness of a conventional spill response.”

In general, chemical dispersion is much less effective on weathered oils than on fresh oils.

Because the lighter components of dilbit weather so rapidly (through processes such as evaporation), the window during which chemical dispersion may be effective is significantly smaller than it would be for conventional crude oils.

Both Trans Mountain and Environment Canada examined the efficacy of dispersants on dilbit.

Environment Canada found that in breaking wave conditions, dispersants were able to disperse less than half of the dilbit released into the water. In non-breaking waves, dilbit was not affected at all by dispersant application. The report concluded that the physical properties of dilbit “limit the effectiveness of currently-available spill treating agents.”

Trans Mountain found that Corexit 9500 was ‘marginally effective’ on 6-hour weathered dilbit and ‘not particularly effective’ on more weathered dilbit. This very short time frame during which Corexit may be ‘marginally effective’ could pose major challenges given that in some locations, a full spill response could take up to 36 hours to arrive.

The risk would be magnified in the event that weather conditions prevented the use of booms and skimmers and dispersant was the only feasible option.

Corexit and wildlife

As noted, Corexit can also be toxic to wildlife.

For some species, such as herring embryos, toxicity occurs because Corexit does what it was designed to do: increase the concentration of petroleum hydrocarbons in the water column.

However, there is also a growing body of research, much of it conducted in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, which suggests that there is something else going on.

During this catastrophic spill, BP applied almost 7 million litres of Corexit, essentially turning the Gulf of Mexico and its human and wildlife inhabitants into an experiment on the short- and long-term effects of dispersant mixed with oil.

Blue crabs exposed to Corexit as part of a laboratory study to better understand the toxicity of chemical dispersants conducted by Louisiana Sea Grant. Photo: Louisiana Sea Grant via Flickr

Even at that time, there were concerns about the toxicity of Corexit: U.S. EPA administrators instructed BP to switch to a less toxic dispersant, but the company indicated that the alternatives were unsuitable and continued to use Corexit.

Now, research is showing that not only is Corexit itself toxic, but that a combination of Corexit and oil can be far more toxic than either product alone.

In fact, in marine plankton, Corexit and oil together caused toxicity up to 52-fold higher than oil.

This increased toxicity is due in part to the fact that dispersants can increase the exposure of fish and wildlife to the toxic parts of oil, to the extent that toxicity to rainbow trout embryos increased up to 300 fold.

U.S. Air Force pilots fly low over the Gulf of Mexico, releasing chemical dispersants as part of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup efforts on May 6, 2010. Photo: Technical Sergeant Adrian Cadiz / U.S. Air Force

However, some of the toxicity of Corexit 9500 also appears to be due to the surfactants it contains. One of these, known as DOSS, was found to be more toxic to the cells of rainbow trout than Corexit as a whole, while others (e.g. Tween 80 and 85) were also toxic, interfering with the ability of cells to metabolize petroleum hydrocarbons.

The combination of spilled dilbit and dispersants has the potential to negatively impact B.C.’s marine mammals, including endangered killer whales.

Trans Mountain vs. killer whales: the tradeoff Canadians need to be talking about

Following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, 101 cetacean carcasses that washed up on the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico were associated with spilled oil, although estimates of the actual number of mortalities ranged up to 50 times higher.

For cetaceans, which must surface to breathe, the inhalation of evaporating toxic components of dilbit combined with airborne Corexit 9500 poses a serious risk.

Human danger

Humans are at risk too.

Workers attempting to clean up the Deepwater Horizon spill experienced coughing, wheezing, eye, skin, and lung irritation, nausea, vomiting, and rashes, with some continuing to experience symptoms over a year later.

In Coast Guard personnel who assisted with clean up, dispersant exposure was linked to acute respiratory symptoms. In addition to its own toxicity, Corexit can also increase exposure to the toxic components of oil by creating oil particles so fine that they can become airborne and enter the lungs.

Crewmembers from the vessel Braxton Perry recover a deflection boom after three days of controlled burns in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Justin Stumberg / U.S. Navy

This airborne mixture of oil and dispersant can travel up to 80 kilometres.

In Sweden and the U.K., Corexit has been banned due to the risk it poses to workers.

What stands out from this growing body of research is how poorly we understand the toxicity of dispersant combined with any type of oil.

There are a vast number of potential toxicity scenarios, depending on the chemicals present, exposure routes, weather conditions, and species, among many other variables.

Almost three decades ago, researchers warned about these complexities, stating that “rigorous toxicological comparison of untreated and dispersant-treated oil is complicated by the fact that when oil, sea water, and dispersants are mixed, a complex multiphase system results. In this complex system, aquatic organisms can be exposed to many toxicants, in many forms, which can have several modes of action.”

Why is Corexit on the table?

Why, then, would the federal government even attempt to pursue the Corexit route?

The answer may be largely a question of optics.

Undispersed oil can eventually reach shorelines, coating birds and mammals while creating a public relations nightmare for the government of Canada, the new owner and operator of the Trans Mountain pipeline and oil tanker project.

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If Canadians knew their own history, the National Energy Board hearings on the Kinder Morgan pipeline might not have been declared inadequate by the Federal Court.

The NEB failed to consider the impact on coastal waters and didn’t adequately consult Indigenous people, the court ruled.

Those errors could have been avoided if the NEB followed the model of the Berger Inquiry on the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, generally considered the gold standard for such reviews.

In the early 1970s Canadian Arctic Gas Pipelines, a consortium including the world’s big oil companies, wanted to build a natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, across the northern Yukon (near the village of Old Crow) to the Mackenzie Delta, then south along the Mackenzie River Valley and through Alberta to the United States. It was to be the longest pipeline ever built and the most expensive private construction project in the world.

A solar array in the village of Old Crow. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

The federal government, led by Pierre (not Justin) Trudeau, felt there had to be adequate consultation with the people who would be affected by the construction of this vast project.

On March 21, 1974, Justice Thomas R. Berger of the B.C. Supreme Court was appointed to head a royal commission. Berger was a former NDP MP from B.C. and had been both an MLA and led the provincial New Democrats. Perhaps more importantly, as a lawyer he had argued the famous Calder case, which led to the recognition of Indigenous rights and title to traditional territories.

As long as it takes

Berger’s mandate was to examine the social, economic and cultural impact of the vast project. He wasted no time, setting up preliminary hearings in April and May 1974.

This was a smart move: it allowed him to feel out the players, particularly the interested parties other than the pipeline companies. It also allowed him, with input from the parties, to define and even expand his terms of reference. So, the mandate (expanded) was clear and the interested parties brought into the fold.

Then Berger did a quick tour of the Western Arctic. I recall him travelling by Jet Ranger helicopter from Inuvik across the north shore of the Yukon, looking down on wolves, bears and migrating caribou, and going over the British Mountains to the village of Old Crow, still without roads to the outside world today.

When Berger landed on the Old Crow airstrip, an RCMP van came to pick him up for the short trip into town. Berger, a son of an RCMP officer, declined politely and walked into town with Chief John Joe Kaye, who invited him to his house for a caribou diner. In spite of a stomach problem, the judge immediately accepted.

The chief asked whether Berger’s inquiry would come to Old Crow and, if so, how long it would stay. Berger replied that yes, the inquiry would come to Old Crow, as it would to all the villages affected by the proposed pipeline. He would listen to all the people and stay as long as it took. Other government officials had a pattern of flying in and out the same day.

Then Berger, to the consternation of Ottawa, announced the inquiry would be delayed a year. In that year he sent University of British Columbia professor Michael Jackson, with his family, to visit the Indigenous communities and explain the inquiry to the people.

Berger Inquiry. Photo: Michael Jackson / Prince of Whales Northern Heritage Centre

This later resulted in enormously successful community hearings where people were prepared and spoke in an informal setting, in their own languages, to Berger.

The CBC reported these hearings in six languages. The north was connected. When Globe and Mail columnist Martin O’Malley joined the hearings and wrote about them, southern Canada was enthralled. Canadians think of ourselves as northern peoples but this was the first time most of us had seen the real north.

Berger did come back to consult Old Crow. I was lucky enough to witness the hearing there. Here is what I wrote at the time.

“I am Judge Berger. I am here to listen,” he said at the beginning of the hearing. And listen he does, with dogged patience. He looks at each witness and doesn’t interrupt. He is in his shirtsleeves now, his corduroy jacket on the back of the chair. An unused ashtray is there to gavel the meeting to start. “I find that I am learning a great deal from all that you have told me.” When the attention begins to wane he will take a break, but until then he is alert for each witness. There is respect, on both sides.

After almost a week in town Judge Berger thanks the interpreters and the people for the friendship they extended to him, his staff and to the members of the CBC and press and the participants in the Inquiry. “These people from the CBC and the Press come along with me to enable you to tell the people of the north and the people of Canada what you think.” He explains that he’s going on tomorrow to visit the whalers from Aklavik out on the Mackenzie Delta and then he’s going back to Yellowknife and later to Fort Liard in the southern Mackenzie to hold another community hearing. “I have to hear what all the people in the Mackenzie Valley and the Mackenzie Delta and the northern Yukon think of the pipeline, then I have to send a report and recommendations into the government, and when I am considering what I will recommend to the government, I will be thinking about what all of you have said to me over these three days about the land and about your way of life.” His comments are interpreted and then there is applause. He heard from 81 people in this village of 250. And he would visit another 30 settlements to hear people in five other languages. On adjournment the Inquiry Staff and the Judge would play baseball with the locals under the midnight sun.

As well as community hearings, formal hearings were held under commission counsel Ian Scott and Stephen Goudge and a series of funded interveners cross-examined Arctic Gas experts on such topics as building in discontinuous permafrost.

Berger asked UBC law professor Andy Thompson to round up the environmentalists into one group and, for the first time, secured intervener funding for them (thanks to a young, Jean Chrétien, who was the minister responsible for Indian and Northern Affairs).

Berger fashioned a standard for intervener funding — a clear interest that ought to be represented at the inquiry, a distinct interest, a record of concern, inadequate resources to represent that interest and a plan as to how the intervener would use and account for the funds. He also ordered all the parties to release their reports, including Arctic Gas, to create a level playing field.

Southern Canadians were also consulted by means of open hearings in our largest cities. The inquiry even made a short film showing a bit of the northern community hearings and then identifying Arctic Gas and other official interveners. I was shown just before the southern hearing witnesses testified before Berger, this time in a suit. When people from Halifax complained that inquiry staff had not scheduled a hearing there on the grounds the pipeline was in the west Berger overruled the staff. “The Maritimers are Canadians too,” he said. “They too should be heard.” And they were.

The hearings had another happy result. A generation of young native leaders got to appear before the judge, as their parents were less comfortable in English. What a generation it turned out to be.

Nellie Cournoyea worked with the Committee for Original People’s Entitlement, which was the Inuit group. Later she became a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories and premier.

Dave Porter, who used to carry the equipment for the CBC crew, became a great aboriginal leader in the Yukon.

Jim Antoine, then the quiet but charismatic 26-year-old chief of the Fort Simpson Dene, also later became premier of the N.W.T. George Erasmus cut his teeth before the inquiry appearing for the Indian Brotherhood of the N.W.T. (later named Dene Nation). He later became national chief of the Assembly of First Nations and co-chair of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

A boyish Stephen Kakfwi helped organize the Dene’s presentations to Berger. Later he became president of the Dene Nation and premier of the Northwest Territories and a supporter of a future pipeline.

All told Berger held hearings in log cabins, village halls, besides rivers, and in hunting and fishing camps throughout the Western Arctic. There are 8,438 pages of transcripts in 77 volumes and 662 exhibits from these “community hearings.”

When the southern hearings concluded on Nov. 19, 1976, there were 900 pages of submissions and over 40,000 pages of transcript and more than 1,500 exhibits. The inquiry cost $5.3 million which was a remarkably modest number given the magnitude of the job.

On April 15, 1977, Berger released Volume I of his report, a mere 200 pages, beautifully written and filled with pictures of our stunning north. Volume 2 followed with more technical recommendations to be implemented if and when gas was to flow done the Mackenzie Valley. The work turned out to be among most popular commission reports ever.

Overall, Berger recommended a pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley corridor, but called for a delay of 10 years in construction to give time for the settlement of native land claims along the route. Most of them are now settled.

However Berger recommended that no energy corridor should be created in the Northern Yukon. Instead, the report said, a national park should be created in the Northern Yukon to protect the calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou herd. A wilderness park called Ivvavik was established in the northern Yukon in 1984, and one called Vuntut in 1995. They are both part of the Inuvialuit (Inuit) and Vuntut Gwich’in (First Nations) land claims settlement. That means, says Berger, both parks are constitutionally entrenched: their character and boundaries cannot be altered except by constitutional amendment. Canada has done its part to save forever the migrating caribou. (The Americans have not.)

On the trail of the Porcupine caribou herd

Indigenous peoples as partners, not bystanders

And the results today?

Land claims have been settled and a possible new pipeline has been proposed, then shelved. This time, the consortium of resource companies (Imperial Oil, Shell, Exxon) had a new partner, with a one-third interest — the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, which represented the Indigenous peoples of the N.W.T. Its website said: “We are committed to respecting the people of the North and the land and environment that sustains them.”

The market is not yet ripe for Arctic gas but if that happens, Indigenous people, properly consulted and heard, will be partners, not bystanders.

Can lessons taught by Berger many years ago be applied today to the Kinder Morgan issue? Coastal First Nations and environmentalists, if really consulted, have a lot to tell us about protecting the waters and the animals. No doubt they will mention the poor response to the 2015 oil spill from the MV Marathassa into English Bay.

Can there be a better spill cleanup system? Can there be perhaps fewer tankers than originally proposed? Can there be a new site for the terminal; say Cherry Point in Washington or another nearer to the open ocean? Can there be another way to consult and meet the concerns of First Nations?

A former Supreme Court of Canada justice, Frank Iacobucci, has been given the task of doing proper consultations. He’s a person not unlike Berger.

Berger taught us something critical about consultation. You have to listen, be patient and show respect.

Then you actually implement what you hear.

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We all need to step back from the finger-pointing and political posturing in the wake of the Federal Court’s decision to quash approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline and reflect on the lessons government, and we who elect them, should now have learned.

The former Harper government wanted pipelines so badly that it eliminated or weakened environmental protections Canadians had previously relied on. The federal Conservatives used budget omnibus bills to strip down the Fisheries Act, Canadian Environmental Protection Act and other laws meant to ensure due environmental diligence for resource projects.

The predictable result was that public interest groups became more determined to stop pipeline projects in the face of such obvious bias.

Lesson number one: if citizens don’t trust laws and regulatory processes, expect more determined resistance.

The public distrust was exacerbated by the National Energy Board, which has long been stacked with pro-industry staffers. It chose to ignore potential impacts on oceans and endangered species and bulldozed through what should have been a full and respectful consultation process with First Nations.

Lesson number two: if regulatory boards aren’t objective, diligent and clearly focused on protecting the public interest, expect the courts to rule against the resulting decisions.

We got here in large part because the Harper Conservatives opted to de-regulate and to stack the approval process in the interest of multinationals, instead of putting the public interest — in environmental protection, fair process and respectful engagement — first.

Fortunately Canada has a system of law that protects the public interest when governments fail to do so.

The fault doesn’t all lie with the Conservatives though. The Liberals, have lessons to learn from this fiasco too.

Trudeau tried to ingratiate himself with Albertans by merely tweaking the previous government’s flawed process in his hurry to approve the project.

Ironically, he insisted that the decision was based on science and fair process. It was not.

The NEB’s shortcuts had ensured that. See lessons one and two.

Then he doubled down and put Canada another $4.5 billion dollars in debt by buying the pipeline!

Shareholders are now laughing all the way to the bank and we own an aging pipeline and a lot of new pipe we can’t use.

Lesson number three: governments should stick to governing, not gamble our money in the business marketplace.

The only government looking even remotely credible now is the province of B.C. whose opposition has been partly vindicated — but meantime they are building the Site C dam that they approved by an almost identically flawed process.

Meantime, Alberta’s NDP are left wearing unearned blame for federal errors. Fortunately their pipeline cheerleading was accompanied by a Climate Action Plan that at least offers some hope that Alberta won’t be left flailing with nowhere to go.

Lesson number four: it’s clearly time to stop putting all Alberta’s economic eggs into the bitumen basket.

The question now is this: will governments learn those lessons and take the necessary steps to ensure that regulatory boards are no longer captive to industry, that citizens can trust environmental laws and the agencies meant to enforce them, that Aboriginal rights are honoured, and that our economic plan will be based on something more than nostalgia for the 1970s?

We’re reaping the consequences of political cynicism and ineptitude at the federal level.

We’d be wise to take a good hard look at the political philosophies of those who want our votes, either federally or provincially, and ask who is most likely to repeat Harper’s and Trudeau’s fatal errors — and who might actually ensure Canada profits from these lessons rather than having to learn them all over again.

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If you ask biologist Misty MacDuffee what is responsible for the plight of the West Coast’s iconic southern resident killer whale populations, she’ll narrow it down to two major factors: not enough salmon and too much noise.

The one-two punch of declining Chinook stocks and loud, bustling ports and shipping routes in the Salish Sea are the crux issues for the endangered species, MacDuffee told The Narwhal. And that’s without even mentioning toxic contamination that bioaccumulates in the blubber of orcas, which starving orcas metabolize, leaving them invisibly poisoned.

It’s also before introducing the issue of the embattled Trans Mountain pipeline that would introduce the further risks of oil spills and increased ship strikes into the mix as well as the additional underwater racket — known as “acoustic smog” — that would result from the project’s seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic.

The Trans Mountain pipeline project would triple the amount of oil shipped from Alberta to export terminals in Burnaby, B.C., and result in a jump from five to 34 tankers traversing the Burrard Inlet and Salish Sea each month.

Lummi Nation vessel (top) releases live fish ahead of J50 during feeding trials near San Juan Island on Aug. 12, 2018. Biologists in an orange NOAA Fisheries vessel follow. Photo: John Gussman / NOAA Fisheries, under permit 18786 via Flickr

The fatal exclusion

“We’ve done a population viability analysis that found the conditions in the Salish Sea cannot get any worse if we hope to recover these whales,” said MacDuffee, a scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, one of the organizations that successfully challenged the National Energy Board’s review of, and the federal government’s subsequent approval of, the Trans Mountain pipeline.

“That’s exactly what Trans Mountain would do: it would make the conditions in the Salish Sea worse.”

Only 75 individuals remain in the southern resident population. Low birth rates and calf mortality became a subject of renewed attention this summer after a newborn died and was carried by her mother for 17 days in what experts have described as a display of grief.

During the review stage of Trans Mountain the National Energy Board (NEB) excluded the marine shipping element from consideration of the project’s environmental impacts.

The exclusion was a fatal one: alongside the federal government’s failure to adequately consult First Nations it ultimately led Canada’s Federal Appeals Court to rule the project’s review was irredeemably flawed.

The court declared the project quashed in an unforgiving decision, delivered by Justice Eleanor Dawson:

“This finding — that the Project was not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects — was central to its report. The unjustified failure to assess the effects of Project-related shipping under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012 and the resulting flawed conclusion about the environmental effects of the Project was critical to the decision of the Governor in Council [cabinet]. With such a flawed report before it, the Governor in Council could not legally make the kind of assessment of the Project’s environmental effects and the public interest that the legislation requires.”

“The NEB made one fatal error which they compounded over time as they deliberated and as this went to cabinet,” Chris Tollefson, lawyer with the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation, said.

“It undermined the whole exercise because that was a fundamental question they were bound to assess, they were bound to make a recommendation on,” he said.

Had the NEB considered that question, Tollefson said, they would certainly have found Trans Mountain would have significant, adverse effects on this population.

“Then we would have had a clear answer.”

The death of Trans Mountain pipeline signals future of Indigenous rights: Chiefs

Excluding marine shipping impacts from the project’s review limited what experts, scientists and conservation groups could raise as evidence during the Trans Mountain hearings. And simultaneously allowed government and industry to avoid the responsibility of articulating their plans for how they would mitigate the impacts of increased tanker traffic on an endangered marine species.

“They canned the part of the review that would have dealt with the terminal and tanker traffic,” MacDuffee said.

Research conducted by MacDuffee and her colleagues at Raincoast found the noise from tanker traffic alone would result in a 24 per cent chance of the southern resident killer whale population becoming functionally extinct over the next 100 years.

If you add in the risk of oil spills and ship strikes, the probability of extinction within 100 years jumps to 50 per cent.

“This is the piece of Trans Mountain that nobody was getting,” MacDuffee told The Narwhal.

A likely trade-off of the pipeline and tanker project is a loss of this unique population, she said.

“This is a dialogue Canadians have not had,” MacDuffee said.

“They not being told they’re making a choice between a population of iconic killer whales or pushing through this pipeline. The cost of this project has not been a part of the dialogue.”

Ignoring Canada’s protection for at risk species

Dyna Tuytel, lawyer with Ecojustice, the law firm that represented Raincoast and co-applicant, the Living Oceans Society, told The Narwhal that the recent Federal Court of Appeal ruling means new hearings will have to take place on the subject of marine shipping and impacts to marine life.

“We know the National Energy Board identified noise from shipping as a significant, adverse environmental effect,” Tuytel explained, “and they also identified the risk of oil spills.”

“But the board didn’t think it was its responsibility to deal with those things and didn’t deal with whether or how those impacts could be mitigated.”

Impacts on the southern resident killer whale population was considered under the National Energy Board Act but not under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, “where special considerations have to be taken into account,” she said.

If any significant, adverse environmental effects of a project are found under the Environmental Assessment Act, those effects must be justified by the final decision-makers on the project — federal cabinet.

“They would have to explain why those significant effects are worth it,” Tuytel said, adding under the act government would also be required to ensure measures are being taken to lessen or avoid the impacts on endangered species.

However MacDuffee argues there are no measures that can be taken to lessen the impacts of a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic in the habitat of the southern resident population.

“Oil spills and ship strikes are probabilities…noise is a certainty. Noise is the product of moving tankers — it’s inherent in moving tankers through the Salish Sea.”

Raincoast modelling found that the increase in tanker traffic would mean a “near-continuous presence” of vessel traffic in the whale’s habitat.

“They’ll be in the presence of a vessel — everything from a large ship to small whale watching vessels — more than 90 per cent of the time,” MacDuffee said.

“There are no scenarios under existing technology where Trans Mountain goes ahead where we hope to recover killer whales.”

She added Canada’s Species At Risk Act has all but been ignored in this case.

“We would argue that the Species At Risk Act deems that if you can’t mitigate then your project can’t go ahead.”

Facing down current threats

Just days after the Federal Court of Appeals ruling, Ecojustice launched a new court challenge in an attempt to force emergency measures from Canada’s ministers responsible for the southern resident killer whale population — Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna and Fisheries and Oceans Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

“Under the Species At Risk Act if a species is found to be facing an imminent threat there’s an automatic trigger — it’s mandatory the ministers must act,” Megan Leslie, executive director of WWF Canada, litigant in the new case, told The Narwhal.

Additional applicants in the case are Raincoast, the David Suzuki Foundation, the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council and the Georgia Strait Alliance.

There is no disagreement between government and the scientific and conservation community that this population is facing an imminent threat, Leslie said.

In early 2018 the groups filed a petition with the federal government, asking for an emergency order to protect the whales.

Since then, the federal government has introduced new measures aimed at protecting the species. But the efforts — including announcing the Oceans’ Protection Plan, small fisheries closures and identifying new critical habitat protections — have been roundly criticized as inadequate.

“Most of what we’ve seen has been announcements around funding and research,” Tuytel said. “Very little has been concrete, enforceable and timely.”

A new rule to keep whale watching vessels 200 metres from the endangered population took 10 years to implement, Tuytel said.

How Canada is Driving Its Endangered Species to the Brink of Extinction

In the court’s decision on the Trans Mountain review, Ottawa’s proposed action plan for the southern resident population and the Oceans’ Protection Plan were called “inchoate initiatives” that by themselves are “insufficient” in the face of the project’s inadequate review.

“If the government was serious there would be a Chinook fishery closure,” Leslie said. “We don’t see government taking that legislation seriously or helping these whales in a timely and critical manner.”

“This didn’t happen this weekend. This didn’t happen this summer. These whales were listed under the Species At Risk Act in 2003,” she said.

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Hans Matthews spent much of 2012 criss-crossing Alberta and B.C. as a member of the federal-provincial panel conducting hearings on the contentious Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

Those emotional hearings eventually overshadowed the proposal itself, leading then-natural resources minister Joe Oliver to accuse “environmental and other radical groups” of hijacking the process to “stop any major project, no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth.”

Central to the controversy was opposition from First Nations along the route, many of whom felt they hadn’t been properly consulted during the development of the proposal. It was a social and political mess, all for a project that eventually died anyway. But Matthews, now the president of the Canadian Aboriginal Minerals Association, says it didn’t need to be that way.

“By embracing aboriginal knowledge, communities’ knowledge, it would have been a more balanced and fair process,” Matthews told The Narwhal.

Indigenous ways of life not contemplated by current system

That idea has come to the fore yet again with the Federal Court of Appeal’s rejection of the permits that allowed Kinder Morgan to proceed with its expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. In its decision, the court cited a lack of meaningful two-way consultation with First Nations in the planning process, along with other factors.

“Canada was required to do more than receive and understand the concerns of the Indigenous applicants,” wrote judge Eleanor Dawson in the court’s written decision. “Canada was required to engage in a considered, meaningful two-way dialogue.”

In other words, Canada pushed ahead with its own process, pausing only now and then to collect some feedback from First Nations. For the sake of those affected, the governments in charge, and even the project itself, it is now clear that that was not the right approach. But it didn’t have to be that way.

A new concept is emerging in the world of environmental decision-making: that it’s not enough for governments to loop Indigenous groups into their environmental assessments, and that instead Indigenous peoples should be able to conduct their own processes that run parallel to the non-Indigenous-led assessments.

A recent report by the Firelight Group, a consultancy founded to support the rights and interests of Indigenous communities, found Indigenous environmental assessments “rely on and protect Indigenous culture, language, and way of life in ways existing government legislated systems have either never contemplated or are still not accommodating.”

How is Indigenous assessment different?

In a traditional assessment, Indigenous peoples have some opportunity to contribute to the process and to be heard. But the decision is ultimately up to a government that may not share the worldview of the affected Indigenous communities.

“That means that people are engaged, but if they are busy on another file, or not meaningfully engaged or unable to get their point heard, then they are not able to be equal decision-makers or use their own set of values, worldview and Indigenous law to drive the process forward,” author of the Firelight report, Ginger Gibson, told The Narwhal.

“Indigenous EA [environmental assessment] means Indigenous governments are setting the terms, they’re conducting the review with their worldview and their Indigenous laws — they’re making decisions about the project themselves.”

“It’s a fundamental difference,” Gibson added.

The result is an assessment that from the get-go is steeped in the ideas that are not as well recognized in Eurocentric processes.

“You’re probably going to get a more realistic, pragmatic approach,” Matthews said.

“It would be a community-driven process from the very beginning.”

Indigenous assessment isn’t brand new

The report, which includes three case studies, highlights one example of a fully independent Indigenous impact assessment of a proposed LNG plant that was conducted by the Squamish First Nation in B.C.

The First Nation conducted the assessment after determining the scope themselves.

As opposed to the British Columbia government process, which only allowed submission of archaeological evidence, Indigenous law was incorporated throughout the Squamish-led assessment, as well as the First Nation’s knowledge and culture.

Eventually the First Nation-led process ruled in favour of the project, attaching 25 conditions including some that would mitigate the impacts on cultural practices such as hunting and fishing.

“This more holistic approach is much more conducive to — and reflective of — the type of communal decision-making of many Indigenous people,” the report concluded.

Matthews says this approach allows Indigenous communities to feel their values are being respected by potential developments.

“It’s also a matter of showing respect for the people that have occupied and used the land since time immemorial,” he said.

Gibson says no matter what the outcome of the assessments, the result is a more robust look at the proposed project.

“They are sometimes reaching similar decisions, sometimes reaching different decisions,” she says. For example, both the Tłı̨chǫ government, in the Northwest Territories, and federal government reached the same conclusion, to approve a proposed cobalt-gold-bismuth mine in the First Nation’s territory.

“Our finding from our research is that each process is always better because of the parallel review. There’s more information, there’s more known about the project, there’s more unearthed about the impact on Indigenous people — and there’s a stronger buy-in to the outcome of the process.”

What would this mean for Indigenous-Canada relations?

The history of Canada and its dealings with Indigenous communities on resource issues is fraught with missed opportunities for fulsome conversations.

The Gwich’in of the Northwest Territories and Yukon are a prime example of this lack of engagement.

“There was a lot of oil and gas development and we really didn’t have a say in what was happening,” said Jordan Peterson, deputy Grand Chief of the Gwich’in Tribal Council, which commissioned the report from the Firelight Group.

“We haven’t always been fully consulted or engaged or involved in these processes.”

The Gwich’in Tribal Council is particularly concerned about the Porcupine caribou herd, a vital cultural and economic resource that, like all caribou, is sensitive to the kind of habitat fragmentation and disturbance oil and gas development can create on the landscape.

Peterson and Matthews agree that Indigenous-led environmental assessments would be one way to bring Canada and First Nations, Métis and Inuit closer together, and undo some of the impacts of colonial processes.

“By engaging communities in the assessment process, you’re meeting the goals of free, prior and informed consent,” Matthews says, contributing to the federal government’s stated goal of complying with UNDRIP and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action.

“Ninety-nine per cent of the time it’s an aboriginal community that will have some impact from a resource project.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pipeline debate taps into deeper challenges

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

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

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

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

What is the ‘national interest’ anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lack of justification for decisions sows discontent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how do we avoid this situation in the future?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 19, 2018

No guaranteed access to Asian markets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Price discount results from lack of capacity, not location

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TransCanada spill in South Dakota responsible for current discount

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most expanded capacity will end up in California, not Asia

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

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

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

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

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

U.S. Gulf Coast remains most lucrative location

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Kinder Morgan’s decision to suspend work on its controversial $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline looks like a another corporate attempt to blackmail Canadian governments.

On Sunday the Texas-based company, which emerged from the ashes of scandal-ridden Enron, abruptly announced it was suspending all “non-essential” work on the export pipeline.

Steve Kean, CEO of Kinder Morgan Canada, blamed the B.C. government for the suspension — even though the National Energy Board has not approved construction for any portion of the project but the Westridge marine terminal in Burnaby.

Even Kinder Morgan has repeatedly acknowledged the reality of setbacks in presentations to investors, citing “a potential unmitigated project delay to December 2020” as recently as last month.

Still, Kean blamed B.C. “What we have is a government that is openly in opposition and has reaffirmed that opposition very recently,” he said.

But aren’t democracies supposed to challenge projects that impose unprecedented economic and environment risks on their citizens?

Wouldn’t a tanker spill of diluted bitumen in the Salish Sea, where one-third of western Canada’s population lives, be an economic and environmental catastrophe, devastating tourism, property values and marine life?

Wouldn’t the doubling of tolls on the expanded pipeline, as approved by the National Energy Board, raise gas prices for British Columbian motorists by $100 million a year? The pipeline now supplies southern B.C. with most of its petroleum.

Won’t Alberta, by exporting diluted bitumen to Asian refineries, repeat the original Canadian sin of failing to add value to resources at home, giving up thousands of jobs and billions in revenue?

How can exporting one of the world’s most carbon intensive fuels help fight climate change?

And can’t corporations with viable projects accommodate citizens, courts, First Nations and economists who think such costs and liabilities should be properly accounted for?

But Kinder Morgan prefers bluster and blackmail instead of the reality that the project was never a sound venture because it was about privatizing gains and socializing costs.

Economist Robyn Allan has repeatedly argued that Kinder Morgan is no ordinary company and the Trans Mountain expansion project has been uneconomic since day one.

She told The Tyee that “Kinder Morgan is looking for an exit strategy, but it likely includes a need to demonize Ottawa in order to set the stage for a suit under NAFTA.”

The drama begins with the biased workings of the National Energy Board, which refused to look at downstream and upstream climate impacts of the project and even failed to scrutinize its commercial viability during public hearings.

The best evidence from experts shows that Kinder Morgan, the Canadian government and Notley have misrepresented the pipeline’s illusory benefits.

A pipeline to the coast will not raise bitumen prices, because all global markets discount junk crude due to its poor quality.

The ill-conceived project will export refining jobs and great clouds of climate-changing emissions to China. In addition tanker traffic place southern resident orcas at risk.

The Houston-based firm that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley now salute as a defender of Canada’s national interest is the spawn of Enron, found guilty of accounting fraud and corruption. The energy trader’s collapse cost shareholders $74 billion and killed 20,000 jobs.

Kinder Morgan, a dirty and unsexy mover of gas and oil, began as Enron Liquids Pipeline in 1997. Enron alumni continue to populate the senior ranks of Kinder Morgan.

They include Richard Kinder, a Texas billionaire and Kinder Morgan’s chair. He worked at Enron for 16 years. Jordan Mintz, the chief tax officer, served as the vice-president of Enron’s tax division from 1996-2000.

Kean, the man now baiting Canadian governments, worked as Enron’s senior vice-president of government affairs. And so on.

These Enron alumni probably think Canadian politicians are the ultimate pushovers and dimwits.

During the 2014 NEB Trans Mountain hearings the U.S. parent firm vowed to provide 100 per cent of the debt and equity for the pipeline.

But after a Wall Street analyst suggested the third largest energy company in North America wasn’t spending enough to maintain its pipelines or returning value to investors, the company’s share price fell. Kinder Morgan’s stock value plummeted in 2015 and continues to languish. Lower oil prices and rising debt put its largest capital project on shaky ground.

Allan says investors recognized a year ago that the Trans Mountain project didn’t make commercial sense. As investor interest waned, Allan said, Kinder Morgan couldn’t raise debt or equity in the U.S. markets or find a joint-venture partner.

The job of raising money for the project then fell to Kinder Morgan Canada. But $1.6 billion it raised in 2017 went to pay off debts of its parent company.

Richard Kinder explained the move in a conference call with investors: “So we were able to strengthen KMI’S balance sheet using the IPO proceeds to pay down debt… ”

Kinder Morgan Canada has arranged $5.5 billion in construction facility loans from Canadian banks — but only if Kinder Morgan raises $2 billion in equity for the project.

“And now we learn from Premier Notley and Kinder Morgan Canada CEO Steven Kean that conversations with Alberta for financial support have taken place,” says Allan.

Rachel Notley, Canada’s leading petro politician, apparently can’t wait to pour taxpayers’ money into a project that the market views as high risk and that British Columbians regard as a threat to their best interests.

“Alberta is prepared to do whatever it takes to get this pipeline built — including taking a public position in the pipeline,” Notley said Sunday.

So corporate blackmail works like a charm in Canada.

Allan says Kinder Morgan is looking for a way out.

“The project is not commercially viable and, even before it’s built, Kinder Morgan is looking for a bailout,” she said. “If Kinder Morgan’s long-term contracts for moving 700,000 barrels of bitumen and oil on a controversial pipeline were solid, would Kinder Morgan now be blaming the government of B.C. for its problems?”

In a normal world governments concerned about fiscal prudence and the public interest would let Kinder Morgan abandon a non-viable project. (Some analysts have already said cancelling the project would be a “significant blow,” but not “the end of the world for Kinder Morgan.”)

In a moral world Canadian governments would admit that pipelines and tankers export refinery jobs and greenhouse gas emissions on a disastrous scale.

In a just world Alberta would have to admit it has allowed industry to overproduce bitumen due to low royalties and bad governance. The province has no strategic plan for bitumen other than screaming for pipelines.

But Canada, like its southern neighbour, is having trouble behaving normally, morally or justly these days.

But Trudeau and Notley think it’s OK to embrace a debt-ridden U.S. company so it can export, via tankers, unrefined bitumen to Chinese refineries where the upgraded resource can enrich the authoritarian Communist party.

Canadians should be more than ashamed.

They should be alarmed.

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Last week gasoline prices soared in southern B.C., with the price at the pump in Vancouver hitting over $1.55 per litre. This was not due to a restriction of supply, although Alberta Premier Rachel Notley jumped on the opportunity to once again misrepresent reality in order to draw erroneous conclusions supporting the need for Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion.

“There are a lot of ways in which the province of B.C. can assure an adequate supply of gasoline in order to combat the ridiculous prices that they pay,” Notley said in Calgary last week.

If B.C. wanted to keep gasoline prices low, she said, it should stop opposing the Kinder Morgan oil pipeline expansion as it would increase “the ability of Alberta to ship more product to the West.”

Notley assumes B.C. needs more crude oil to supply the Parkland refinery in Burnaby and more refined petroleum product to supply the retail outlets that Parkland’s refinery does not. She also assumes that building Trans Mountain’s expansion means Alberta’s oil producers and refiners will ship more product to B.C. Neither assumption is correct.

Let’s review the facts.

High gas prices are not due to a shortage of supply.

Gas prices are not high because of a lack of supply. There is plenty of supply to serve the B.C. market.

High gas prices are the result of a decades old strategy in Alberta to charge what the market will bear, not charge based on the costs of production and delivery (including a reasonable return on investment) as would be the case in a well-functioning market. This unfair or predatory pricing is sometimes referred to as price gouging. This reality exists to varying degrees all across Canada, although it is more prevalent in Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island markets.

Every time the pain at the pumps from this inappropriate pricing practice becomes obvious, it appears industry apologists are standing at the ready to trot out phoney “reasons” for the increase in gas prices.

The facts show B.C. exports more gasoline than it imports. Port of Vancouver statistics reveal that during 2017, exports to the U.S. exceeded imports by almost 70 per cent, giving rise to net gasoline exports of 6,000 barrels a day. There is no supply shortage in B.C. — chronic or otherwise.

Kinder Morgan’s new pipeline will not increase the shipment of product to B.C.

Trans Mountain’s expansion is intended to ship 540,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen — heavy oil — to the Westridge dock for offshore export. None of this crude is destined for B.C.

The Parkland refinery already receives all the light crude oil it can refine from the existing pipeline so there is no shortage there. Further, the refinery is not configured to use heavy oil like diluted bitumen from the oilsands. This is why a heavy oil pipeline through B.C. is of no benefit to B.C.

As far as refined product is concerned, Kinder Morgan’s business case for the Trans Mountain pipeline is explicitly based on no increase in crude oil or refined product supply to B.C.

Kinder Morgan told the National Energy Board (NEB) that “refined product shipments will not increase as a result of [the Trans Mountain Expansion Project].”

Unfair pricing at the pump will not change no matter what happens with the Trans Mountain expansion because it is not due to a scarcity of supply. Addressing the failure of the market to fairly determine gasoline prices requires policy direction from government and meaningful regulation.

If the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is built, B.C.’s gas prices will increase. https://t.co/htqlwYcGeC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 28, 2018

If the Trans Mountain expansion is built, B.C.’s gas prices will increase.

We know regional gas prices will rise if Trans Mountain’s expansion proceeds because the NEB approved an increase in toll rates on the existing pipeline that guarantees it. The board gave Kinder Morgan permission to more than double the cost of delivering a barrel of gasoline or diesel to B.C. motorists on the existing pipeline in order to help pay for the new one.

Higher transportation costs on the existing line will ratchet up pump prices. Producers and refiners consider increased transportation costs a cost of doing business and they get passed onto end-users.

Trans Mountain’s expansion — a heavy oil pipeline Notley maintains is for the benefit of offshore markets in Asia — is not commercially viable unless B.C. consumers and businesses subsidize it through higher gas prices here at home.

Big Oil needs B.C.’s market demand more than B.C. needs Alberta’s refined product.

Notley has threatened B.C. with an ultimatum — stop resisting the expansion or face serious supply restriction. But her threat to “turn off the taps” is idle.

Kinder Morgan and Alberta’s oil producers and refiners will not allow this kind of behaviour. It would send shock waves through the international business community and will fundamentally cost Alberta’s oil sector more than it will cost B.C.

B.C. is an important market for Alberta’s refiners and light oil producers.

If supply from Trans Mountain is shut off, the Parkland refinery can turn to offshore crude while other retail distribution systems can seek imported refined product — likely at lower prices if existing supply agreements are rendered invalid through Alberta legislated restrictions. A marine terminal to deliver jet fuel to the Vancouver International Airport is in the process of being constructed with the expressed purpose of being able to access jet fuel supply at lower cost from numerous markets.

Turning off the taps in B.C. would flood the Prairies and end up costing Alberta’s refinery sector.

Since the Trans Mountain pipeline delivers gas from Edmonton refineries to B.C., if supply were to be curtailed, downward pressure on retail prices in Prairie markets would mount because of a corresponding over-supply there.

That would mean every barrel supplied in Alberta would take some hit — not just the barrels diverted from B.C.

In order to limit supply in one market without a corresponding loss, there needs to be demand in another. The demand is not there.

Which companies are poised to take the hit in Alberta? Suncor, Imperial and Shell.

Suncor is poised for a double whammy. Suncor is the major shipper of refined gasoline and diesel product to B.C. along Trans Mountain for sale in Petro-Canada stations, but also under agreement with other retail outlets.

There is little likelihood Suncor will break contracts and destroy long-term business relationships with others in B.C. undermining not only its short-term, but long-term profitability in order to support Notley’s political posturing.

Kinder Morgan has too much to lose if shipments along its pipeline are curtailed — including the ability to finance its project.

Notley has not connected the dots between Kinder Morgan Canada Limited’s (KML) revenue stream and the company’s ability to proceed with the Trans Mountain expansion, either.

Current toll rates charged on the existing pipeline provide a significant portion of the company’s cash flow. It is not trivial.

Interrupting Kinder Morgan Canada’s revenue stream by limiting supply impedes the company’s ability to pay dividends to its shareholders. This not only hurts Canadian investors, it particularly hurts Kinder Morgan’s ’s Texas-based parent Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI) in Houston.

Kinder Morgan senior still owns 70 per cent of the Canadian company. KMI needs dividends from the Canadian operations to support its ongoing financial challenges. An interruption of Trans Mountain’s existing revenue stream would get in the way of KMI’s cash flow needs .

Interruption of Trans Mountain’s existing revenue stream, by limiting pipeline shipments, would also impede Kinder Morgan Canada’s ability to pay dividends on its $550 million in outstanding preferred shares.

As well, Kinder Morgan Canada still needs to raise more than $2 billion in equity capital to help finance its expansion. Try going to financial markets to raise risk capital while revenues are impaired because of a legislated election ploy.

Finally, if reduced cash flow from “turning off the taps” — even just a little bit — causes a credit rating downgrade for the Canadian operations, Canada’s big banks could pull their $5.5 billion construction loan facility. Without the credit facility keeping the expansion afloat, the Trans Mountain expansion sinks.

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It all started with the Asti Trattoria Italiana restaurant in Fort McMurray, whose slogan is “Live, Love, Eat.”

But there was no love lost for restaurant owner Karen Collins two weeks ago when the B.C. government announced it will set up an independent scientific advisory panel to examine how diluted bitumen can be safely transported and cleaned up, if spilled.

Pending the review, B.C. said it would restrict increases in the transport of the substance — a mixture of thick unrefined oil from the oilsands and highly flammable gas condensate — through the province, a move widely seen as an attempt to stall the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Calling the review “just crazy,” Collins pulled eight B.C. wines off her menu, which includes coastal delicacies such as seafood strozzapreti and croccanti di salmone (pan seared salmon filet).

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley thought that was such a great idea that she announced a B.C. wine boycott.

This week the wine-pipeline fracas intensified, with new twists that included childcare, a natural gas pipeline from B.C. to Alberta and a “B.C. Wine Smuggling Escape for Albertans” arranged by a luxury tour company, complete with a private jet to fly people to the Okanagan and Cowichan valleys and home again with 50 hand-picked bottles of B.C.’s finest (#PinotNotPipelines).

The B.C. Liberals, with new leader Andrew Wilkinson at the helm, sallied forth with a news release and peppy speeches in the legislature, accusing the NDP of destroying thousands of jobs and demanding that Premier John Horgan “swallow his pride” and fly to Edmonton immediately to sort out the squabble.

In the midst of all the brouhaha, political spin took the front seat while some salient facts were left at the side of the inter-provincial road faster than you can say, “bring me the B.C. bubbly.”

Let’s take a look at some of the developments this week in the War of the Rosés. Spoiler: it’s not really about wine.

The wine and pipelines week in review

The week began with the NDP government taking out a full-page ad, featuring three giant corkscrews, in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail.

The ad, which also appeared in The Province, urged people to buy B.C. wine “and raise a glass to protecting B.C.’s coast” (#toastthecoast).

(Presumably, if things go sideways for the NDP, the hashtag could always be reordered to say #thecoastistoast.)

On Tuesday — the same day the B.C. government proclaimed April as B.C. Wine Month — it was revealed that the federal government had suddenly cancelled a joint announcement with B.C. about an early learning and childcare funding agreement.

Ottawa claimed a scheduling conflict, and there was much speculation that the move had far more to do with B.C.’s new tactics to stall a pipeline pushed by Ottawa than any calendar alignment.

“The media are reporting that the child care transfers from Ottawa to British Columbia are in danger of drying up,” Wilkinson told the legislature.

But the Trudeau government denied that the rescheduling had anything to do with B.C.’s plans to restrict the transport of diluted bitumen. Ottawa said a child care deal will be announced soon, adding that the amount of federal money won’t be affected by B.C.’s stand against the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

Then, on Wednesday, the B.C. Liberals issued a press release saying that “Horgan’s trade war” has “imperiled” a $2 billion private sector gas pipeline investment in British Columbia that would create 2,500 jobs.

“This trade war is about to escalate beyond a $70 million wine industry loss into a $2 billion loss, with thousands of jobs at stake,” Wilkinson told the legislature.

As proof, the Liberals circulated Alberta’s February 8 submission to the National Energy Board about the North Montney Mainline Extension, a $1.4 billion natural gas pipeline linking B.C. natural gas operations with eastern markets.

The Alberta government filed the NEB submission, in support of a tariff on the B.C. gas, after Alberta producers complained that TransCanada’s project would flood a glutted gas market and drive down prices for their own product.

“This is not a coincidence, the Alberta government has never expressed opposition to the proposed pipeline until last week,” Peace River South Liberal MLA Mike Bernier said in the news release. “The trade war is expanding and the job losses are mounting.”

Whoa Nellie.

Back in reality, the Alberta government immediately debunked the Liberals’ press release. Mike McKinnon, press secretary for Alberta energy minister Margaret McCuaig-Boyd, told DeSmog Canada that “our filing has nothing to do with the recent dispute with the government of B.C.”

“This is about standing up for Albertans and our energy industry,” McKinnon said in an emailed statement. “The filing is consistent with Alberta’s past positions relating to fair and just toll principles as well as consistent, well-established and accepted pipeline tolling principles.”

In the midst of all the brouhaha, political spin took the front seat while some salient facts were left at the side of the inter-provincial road faster than you can say, “bring me the B.C. bubbly.” https://t.co/aeXbKWxDGJ @sarahcox_bc #oilsands #toastthecoast #bcpoli #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/9XTirAheEe

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 17, 2018

What about those “mounting” job losses?

We asked Unifor, the union that represents about 12,000 workers in Canada’s energy sector, about the Trans Mountain pipeline and jobs.

And whaddya know? Unifor told us that if the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion goes ahead, up to 600 workers in Burnaby stand to lose their long-term jobs —- “good, family supporting jobs, the kind of jobs that help build our economy,” according to Joie Warnock, Unifor’s western regional director.

The jobs are at the Burnaby refinery on the Burrard Inlet, formerly owned by Chevron and purchased in April by Alberta’s Parkland Fuel Corp. The facility, which refines crude and synthetic oil into products such as jet fuel, gasoline, diesel and heating fuels, relies on the existing Kinder Morgan pipeline for its raw product.

But the pipeline expansion is targeted at the lucrative Asian export market, and Warnock said that likely means there will no longer be sufficient supply for the refinery — one of only two oil refineries left in B.C. — to bid on.

“That’s what makes us very concerned.”

Unifor is opposed to the export of raw bitumen, Warnock said, and wants to see raw bitumen exports prohibited because they are “not a good jobs strategy.”

“It doesn’t create jobs in Canada. We want to see more Canadian content, more Canadian value, added at every stage in the energy sector.”

The union also pointed to a piece published in The Province last August by B.C. economist Robyn Allan, titled “The search for Trans Mountain’s mythical 15,000 construction jobs.”

Allan took aim at statements by former B.C. Premier Christy Clark, Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who all asserted the pipeline expansion would create 15,000 new construction jobs.

Kinder Morgan itself told the National Energy Board that the project would employ about 2,500 construction workers, for two years, Allan pointed out.

“Trans Mountain’s 15,000 construction workforce jobs are a scam,” wrote Allan. “The more realistic figure is less than 20 per cent that size.”

So what’s really going on here?

Any delay in expanding the Trans Mountain pipeline “puts a lot on the line” for Notley, according to UBC political science professor Kathryn Harrison, whose research focuses primarily on environmental policy.

Notley, who is facing a re-election campaign next year and formidable opposition from the new United Conservative Party, has tried to strike a careful balance between continued support of Alberta’s oil industry and taking action to reduce the province’s sizeable carbon footprint.

“She really needs to show Alberta voters that she is strongly committed to doing everything in her power to get pipelines through,” Harrison said in an interview. “At the same time she is making a commitment to address climate change through phasing out coal-fired power plants and introducing a carbon tax.”

“Those are two things that are very hard to reconcile,” Harrison said, especially given that the problematic growth in Canada’s carbon emissions comes from increased production in Alberta’s oilsands.

Trudeau, for his part, has been “much more candid” in pointing out that support for the Kinder Morgan pipeline is pretty much a quid pro quo for Alberta backing a national carbon pricing plan, said Harrison.

“It’s quite an extraordinary compromise to say we need to expand the production of fossil fuels and build national infrastructure [for their export] — and that is the condition of a national climate action plan.”

Time for a pairing?

Perhaps the calmest head in the wine-and-pipelines mêlée goes to the B.C. Wine Institute, which issued a press release last week saying “oil and wine don’t mix,” and expressing disappointment that Alberta is “aggressively boycotting B.C. wineries over a yet-to-be-determined British Columbia government policy in a different sector.”

The wine institute is now promoting a “grazing” event in Vancouver that will pair B.C. wine with Alberta beef.

The motto for the evening?

The Only Beef is on the Table.

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