Raise your hand if you actually thought the National Energy Board would go against the Trans Mountain project.
Hmmm, not seeing any hands raised.
Now is it because you think the pipeline expansion project is such an obvious slam dunk that the NEB would have no choice but to support it, or because the energy agency is just a puppet for the federal government and was going through the motions?
I choose to believe the latter. I don’t think the NEB ever truly considered not supporting the project during the court-mandated “reconsideration” process during the past few months. You can read the full story here.
That seemed pretty clear based on the last NEB assessment of Trans Mountain. The Federal Court of Appeal had harsh words for the NEB over its handling of the review.
The court ruling savaged the NEB, saying a “critical error” was made in regards to the lack of consideration of tanker traffic in waters around Burnaby and Vancouver, and beyond.
“The unjustified exclusion of marine shipping from the scope of the project led to successive, unacceptable deficiencies in the [NEB’s] report and recommendations,” said the court.
The NEB has long been viewed as an organization heavily biased towards the energy sector and its reconsideration does nothing to dissuade anyone from that view.
Take the NEB’s statement that the project was in the “Canadian public interest.”
What they really mean is in the “business interest” because they ignored the environmental impacts and highlighted only economic benefits.
“The Reconsideration report concludes that Project-related marine shipping is likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects on the Southern resident killer whale and on Indigenous cultural use associated with the Southern resident killer whale,” read the NEB’s statement. “The NEB also found that greenhouse gas emissions from Project-related marine vessels would likely be significant.”
Gee, those things sound pretty serious. Isn’t Canada trying to fight climate change?
“While these effects weighed heavily in the NEB’s consideration of Project-related marine shipping, the NEB recommends that the Government of Canada find that they can be justified in the circumstances, in light of the considerable benefits of the Project and measures to minimize the effects,” said the NEB’s statement.
And by benefits, they mean financial benefits, such as access to “diverse markets” for Canadian oil and jobs. OF course, not everyone agrees that the potential benefits are as big for Canada as predicted.
And financial benefits don’t mean much if the planet continues on its downward environmental slide, or if there’s a ginormous oil spill.
So, basically, the NEB chose money over the environment, which is the kind of thinking that got our planet into this mess in the first place.
I don’t really believe that the admitted environmental impacts ever actually “weighed heavily” on the folks at the NEB.
I think money trumps common sense every time.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44
