Effectively what the Federal Court of Appeal did on Thursday was kill Trans Mountain and all future pipelines.
Oh, it could say it hasn’t raised an impossible bar to pipeline construction. And it might argue it hasn’t handed the most militant First Nations and environmentalists a veto over future projects. But that is effectively what the justices did.
The only real hope is that the federal government (which is now the proud owner of the non-pipeline after Kinder Morgan shareholders voted over 99 percent in favor of getting out of town as fast as they could) will appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court will somehow decide next year or in 2020 (or 2021), that the Federal Court was wrong.
But until then (and I don’t hold out much hope of the Supremes injecting sanity into the issue), Trans Mountain is in limbo — and along with it, Alberta’s economy.
On Thursday morning, the first oil and gas story was “Construction officially underway on Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion.” Contractor Midwest Pipelines had begun clearing brush and rocks from the Trans Mountain right-of-way between Edmonton and Jasper.
So? I suppose at some point in the future the right-of-way might make a nice hiking and biking trail to the Rockies.
Of course, Kinder Morgan (KM) shareholders overwhelmingly approved the sale of Trans Mountain and KM’s other Canadian operations to the federal government. Why wouldn’t they take Justin Trudeau’s offer of $4.5 billion for assets that are worth, at most, $3.5 billion?
Grab that money and run, especially because the Federal Court of Appeal — the same court that killed the Northern Gateway pipeline in 2016 — quashed the National Energy Board’s construction permits for Trans Mountain. The justices ruled that the regulator had failed to consult adequately with First Nations.
That’s a ridiculous claim.
In 2016, the NEB spent nine months focused primarily on First Nations’ concerns/demands over Trans Mountain. It heard from scores of Indigenous governments and individuals and incorporated most of their concerns in the final conditions it placed on Kinder Morgan.
But the court, as it had when it ended Northern Gateway, said that holding hearings and accepting submissions from February to November 2016 wasn’t good enough.
Basically, the court decided that because the NEB hadn’t accepted every First Nations concern, it hadn’t listened enough. That’s an old fallacy: If you don’t agree with me, you obviously haven’t heard me.
Practically, what the court has done is create an Indigenous veto on all future energy projects — a veto that extends to the rich (and often foreign) environmental groups that back a lot of the anti-pipeline First Nations.
There is no way any company or government can meet all the demands of all the groups or people along a pipeline’s route or near an oilsands development. But the Federal Court of Appeal has now said, in effect, if you can’t please everyone, you can’t go ahead.
It’s a little more complicated than that — but only a little.
The Federal appeals court said the NEB’s “consultation framework” was “reasonable and adequate” if “properly executed” It’s just that the NEB failed to follow its own consultation guidelines, the justices ruled.
In theory, I guess, that offers a ray of hope. The NEB could choose to go back and redo its First Nations’ consultations. And, maybe, there is some way that would please the judges.
However, the only way the court would seem to be satisfiable is if the NEB rejects every project. If the NEB doesn’t give in to every opponent, then the court seems to think the NEB hasn’t done its job properly.
It will be interesting to see whether the Liberals — Trans Mountain’s new owners — will launch a vigorous appeal to the Supreme Court.
Read more at Toronto Sun
Unlike Quebec , that holds Canada to ransom every decade or so , Albertans are growing tired of subsiding other provinces that don’t pull their weight .
Albertans are proud Canadians .
Just curious and I don
t know anything about politics in Canada, but In the long term - I wonder if it would encourage Alberta to become independent from Canada? Maybe its constitutionally not possible?I used to get junk mail from the Sierra Club lying like Barron Munchasen about the Polar Bears and Robert Redford who opposes oil drilling while narrating commercials for United Airlines opposing his neighbors want to build around his property while selling land to developers
Here is exactly what is going to happen . Bank on it .
Prime Minister Dress Up will tent up with the remaining hurt feeling bands
, smoke some shit , and hand out cheques . The lawyers are likely already buying yacht’s.
Trans mountain reached out to these same whiners and got little or no response, the Burnaby mayor using tax payer funds as a piggy bank to fight one of the
highest tax payers , despite most people believing the project should move forward .
Mr . Dress Up is adamantly opposed to the fossil fuel industry and was played for the fucking dope he is .
If the shippers walk on these losers tax payers will be eating billions and if it goes ahead with a fixed toll price tax payers will take all the risk and again will be on the hook for $billions.
I wonder how the approx. 40 bands who have signed on and are expecting a great big fat payday for doing basically SFA are going to feel when the money vanishes ?
In the silver spoon world of Mr. Dress Up where budgets balance themselves
the only way he can top this cluster fuck is screw up NAFTA . They played the Trump is going to get impeached strategy and lost .
On a more upbeat note BUY CANADIAN .
Funny how no one needs to build a wall between Canada and the USA .
America – run away from investing in Canada until we can throw J. Trudeau and his disgusting Liberals in the trash. Foreign investors stand a good chance of losing their money if invested in any natural resource or any aspect of the economy that is remotely related to natural resources. Thursday’s Court decision effectively gave every single Indian the authority to stop progress in Canada by claiming he or she wasn’t consulted adequately ( whatever the hell that means ).
USA’s northern neighbour has become a Trojan horse, an offering from the United Nations.
We maybe a republic but our decisions are still made by a bunch of unelected Imperial Judges most norious is the 9th Circut Court Its time jobs were placed over the whims of a bunch of Back to Nature freakos