One of the party leaders in the federal election campaign kept blaming the governing party for preventing development of oil and natural gas resources.
Conservative Pierre Poilievre’s claim of a “no pipelines” law that stopped projects worth $175 billion was parroted by his candidates.
Bill C-69 is called the Impact Assessment Act. Calling it the “non-pipelines’’ act sounds dramatic but may be misleading and tends to encourage people to believe the bill stops pipeline projects.
The law requires assessment of projects taking into account cumulative environmental consequences of projects. The bill replaces a Conservative bill that was supposed to cut the time for study before approval.
Outrage by the public at that shorter timeline bill caused delay of the Trans-Mountain line that opened last year.
From a $4 billion line with not strong opposition, Trans-Mountain became a $24 billion project taking 12 years. The rush by the government to push through pipelines without adequate consultation contributed to mounting opposition.
In regards to Poilievre’s and associates’ “no pipeline” bill, Yours Truly has seen two articles — one by CTV news, one by UK-based Demog online news — that seem to debunk the claim, project by project.
Proposals for four Liquid Natural gas (LNG) facilities in British Columbia were withdrawn well before the Impact Assessment Act became law in 2019.
Why? Well, the election of a provincial NDP government likely played a role.
And no doubt federal and provincial laws restricting tanker traffic in the fragile offshore waters had a big role.
The Impact Assessment Act did not.
The Pacific Northwest LNG plan was withdrawn when the courts found the Liberals had not even considered cumulative consequences and over depressed LNG prices.
An $18 billion project on Vancouver Island was cancelled when the company did not provide impact data at all.
The Frontier oil sands mine was killed by low prices three years before Bill C-69 was law
Another oil sands mine plan was cancelled because the Alberta government had curtailed production levels. And one mine was cancelled after the NDP won in Alberta.
A New Brunswick shale oil plan was cancelled due to a provincial moratorium on fracking technology.
The much-touted Northern Gateway Pipeline was cancelled three years before Bill C-69 became law simply because there was no consultation between the government and Indigenous bands.
Both leaders of the two main parties promised to fast-track the process to approve the pipelines needed by Canada to reduce reliance on the United States.
When and if the Trump tariff affair is resolved, the new favourable attitude of Canadians to pipelines could easily change back to opposition.
The new government will be lucky if it can shave two years off the time to study and build a pipeline to offshore sites.
Meanwhile, some Canadians’ attitudes to resource projects have been skewed by political twisting of the truth.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
