TC Energy lobbyist called B.C. premier’s office one day after scathing pipeline inspection report

The phone call to the B.C. premier’s office came on a Saturday in May 2023, one day after a scathing inspection report detailed multiple environmental infractions along the route of a major gas pipeline under construction in the province.

The report, issued by the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office, outlined damage to sensitive wetlands and other ecosystems on Wet’suwet’en territory in northwest B.C. It detailed howTC Energy allegedly failed to protect areas around its Coastal GasLink pipeline project from environmental impacts associated with construction and spring snowmelt.

As a result, the assessment office said in its report that it would keep stop-work orders on pipeline construction in place, potentially triggering delays and driving up costs on a multibillion dollar project already facing significant cost overruns. 

B.C. Premier David Eby’s office told The Narwhal it believes this report triggered the Saturday phone call it accepted from TC Energy executive Liam Illife, who recently resigned over comments he made during an internal call in March about the company’s outsized influence over governments.

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Eby’s office said it didn’t keep records of what was discussed and declined to explain exactly what happened during that weekend phone call.

“The premier’s office would not discuss the enforcement activities or approach of the [B.C. Environmental Assessment Office], but companies will sometimes flag to government what their intended public response may be to such an event,” Eby’s spokesperson Bhinder Sajan told The Narwhal in an email.

“To be clear, we don’t have a specific record of the call, but given the timing you provided, we believe it may have been related to this event,” Sajan said, referring to the release of the report outlining Coastal GasLink’s environmental infractions and the assessment office’s decision to maintain stop-work orders on pipeline construction.

‘Call up the premier’s office on a Saturday’

Illife, a former BC NDP staffer, worked for various ministries in former B.C. premier John Horgan’s government between July 2017 and June 2022. Iliffe began lobbying the Eby government in April 2023, less than a year after leaving his government job.

The provincial lobbyist registry indicates Illife lobbied Don Bain, Eby’s deputy chief of staff, five times over 13 months. The filings also indicate Illife lobbied Eby’s office on the weekend immediately following the release of the inspection report about various pipeline infrastructure, including the Coastal GasLink project — considered by the oil and gas industry to be an important part of a plan to ramp up exports of fossil fuels and grow the Canadian economy.

The Coastal GasLink pipeline will supply natural gas for the new LNG Canada and Cedar LNG export projects on B.C.’s coast. Natural gas is a fossil fuel mostly composed of methane, which is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period in terms of heating the planet. It is extracted mainly by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process that uses massive amounts of fresh water. Fracking activity in northeast B.C. is poised to escalate as the export projects get underway.

Calgary-based TC Energy described the phone call as lobbying activity, according to filings in a provincial registry.  

The B.C. government’s vague description of Illife’s weekend lobbying of the premier’s office leaves several stakeholders questioning whether fossil fuel executives have privileged access to government, including possible influence on the outcome of environmental inspections and enforcement activity.

“The fact that the company could call up the premier’s office on a Saturday and have a discussion about it is rather infuriating,” Shannon McPhail, executive director of Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, told The Narwhal. “I wish I had [had] that kind of access when I filed concerns with the various regulators, managers, agencies [and] ministries at both the provincial government and federal government level.”

Iliffe lobbied the government 12 times in total from the spring of 2023 to the spring of 2024 when he left his job, according to the provincial lobbyist registry. This includes lobbying Eby’s office five times.

The filing in the registry indicates one of the intended outcomes of Iliffe’s lobbying was the “development, establishment, amendment or termination of any program, policy, directive or guideline of the government of British Columbia or a provincial entity.”

While the registry doesn’t require lobbyists to disclose exactly what they discuss during their interactions with government officials, Iliffe and other TC Energy officials suggested on their internal call they succeeded in persuading different government officials to weaken some environmental policies and loosen regulations that may cut into the company’s profits.

Iliffe, the company and the B.C. government have all said some of the former TC Energy executive’s claims on the internal company call were not true, but they did not elaborate or specify which claims were unfounded. 

The Narwhal first approached the B.C. government in June with questions about Iliffe’s claims on the company recording. The premier’s office subsequently said it conducted an internal review of Iliffe’s claims about how the company had influenced the province and concluded they were false. The province’s attorney general subsequently asked a provincial watchdog to conduct its own review of lobbying activity by TC Energy.

Companies are allowed to lobby governments about public policy and decisions in Canada and governments generally keep track of the activity by requiring companies to report each interaction on public registries. In B.C., the registrar of lobbying is a watchdog empowered to enforce a lobbying transparency law and ensure lobbyists and public servants comply with the legislation.

Environmental assessment office inspections and regulatory orders are normally carried out and implemented without any involvement of elected officials. However, B.C. regulatory agencies charged with enforcement activities, including the environmental assessment office, are accountable to cabinet ministers who have some decision-making powers on regulatory matters.

Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’moks said he doesn’t see why TC Energy would talk to the premier’s office about an inspection conducted by compliance and enforcement officers with the environmental assessment office.

“Absolutely it’s improper … because that is an independent enforcement arm,” he said in an interview.

The premier’s office noted that Bain’s job required him to engage with representatives from industry, environmental groups, local governments and First Nations. Based on the deputy chief of staff’s “recollection, Mr. Iliffe would at times relay his company’s commitment to fully respond to issues raised by regulatory agencies,” Eby’s office said.

In an emailed response to questions, the B.C. Environment Ministry also said it is not uncommon for industry to update government officials about how companies are responding to inspections.

Eby’s office did not respond to questions about why it didn’t keep records of Bain’s weekend discussion with Illife. Bain declined an interview request about the lobbying, but the premier’s office emailed a statement on Bain’s behalf.

“I make recommendations about further engagement and all other recommendations based on the priorities of Premier Eby which are focused on the best interest of British Columbians,” Bain said in response to The Narwhal’s questions about his conversations with Iliffe.

In 2018, Bain was among at least five B.C. government staffers who allegedly engaged in the improper deletion of government records under former premier Horgan. The story came to light when requests made under freedom of information legislation revealed Bain and other senior staff had been deleting their sent emails for months, according to a report in Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper.

At the time, the government said new staffers had been learning their roles and responsibilities, and had subsequently received training and would take a “more cautious approach to the management of email,” the newspaper reported.

Bain did not directly comment about his weekend phone call with Iliffe, which followed the inspection report.

“Throughout his time at TC Energy, I did not have any private meetings with Mr. Iliffe,” Bain said in the statement sent by the premier’s office. “On a few occasions, Mr. Iliffe and I spoke on the phone on issues relevant to TC Energy and my role as lead on various energy-related files including the sale of the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line from TC [Energy] to the Nisga’a Nation.”

In March, TC Energy announced it was selling the transmission project, an approved gas pipeline, to the Nisga’a Nation. Construction of the pipeline, which will supply the proposed Ksi Lisims LNG project co-owned by the Nisga’a, is set to start in August.

‘A small class of political insiders who move back and forth between industry and government’

The absence of any records about Illife’s communications with the premier’s office leaves some stakeholders questioning whether the company was trying to circumvent the regulator.

“That could have been an email,” McPhail said. “And why would you need to keep the premier’s office updated when you have all these regulatory and management agencies whose responsibility it is to do that? We’re supposed to have this system in place to deal with this stuff — but what was very clear with Coastal GasLink is the system was broken at every single level.”

McPhail said she still hasn’t received answers to questions she put to officials with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the BC Energy Regulator and the BC Environmental Assessment Office in 2022 regarding potential impacts of pipeline construction on fish habitat.

B.C. Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman and the environmental assessment office both declined interview requests from The Narwhal about TC Energy’s lobbying activity.

In a statement, the ministry said the office operates independently from government and neither the office nor Heyman were aware of any of Illife’s phone calls to the premier’s office.

The environmental assessment office said it has conducted nearly 100 inspections along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route by air and ground since construction began in 2019, leading to multiple fines, more than 50 warnings and 30 orders, including 13 stop-work orders.

Drew Yewchuk, a former staff lawyer at the University of Calgary’s Public Interest Law Clinic, said he was not surprised TC Energy was able to access the B.C. premier’s office so readily. 

“Is having a lobbyist contact the executive branch to have an unrecorded discussion probably asking for special treatment good governance? No — but you don’t need a legal expert to tell you that,” he told The Narwhal. “It reflects the Canadian tradition of a powerful and secretive executive branch, and decision-making involving a small class of political insiders who move back and forth between industry and government.”

TC Energy did not directly respond to The Narwhal’s questions about the lobbying activity. Previously, the company told The Narwhal its role is to advocate for the changes needed to ensure energy security, job creation, affordability and sustainability and that the leaked calls included comments that portrayed a “false impression” of how it does business.

“We continue to engage policy makers and the public in an ethical and compliant manner while meeting our regulatory obligations, including lobbying registrations across various jurisdictions in Canada and the U.S.,” TC Energy senior vice-president of external relations Patrick Muttart said in a statement on June 26.

“We are proud of our company and the work that thousands of employees do each day to safely move, generate and store the energy that our families, neighbours and businesses rely on. We are driven by our purpose: delivering the energy people need, every day.”

When pressed for more details, the company said it had nothing further to add to its previous response.