Where does the process go wrong?

Two pipeline projects, Trans Mountain and Northern Gateway, were denied approval for the same reason: “inadequate consultation with Indigenous communities.” Northern Gateway’s approval was rescinded by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016, and now an ironic twist: Trudeau’s pipeline, Trans Mountain, was rejected by the Federal Court of Appeal.

Adequate consultation is obviously difficult to achieve. Engineers, community relations professionals, other professions in pipeline companies, and now politicians, bureaucrats and even the prime minister can’t meet the bar of adequate consultation. An adequate consultation protocol surely must be available for project proponents, including the federal government, to follow.

Then why is it so difficult to follow an “objective” process that would be supported by the affected communities? We, the general population and owners of Trans Mountain, need to know the specifics of where “our” consultation process broke down.

We need specifics about each community so we can hold our prime minister and his project team accountable for their past performance, and to help ensure a repeat does not occur. Or maybe the consultation process is “subjective,” and can never be met by project proponents in all cases for all communities? Brian McConaghy, Heritage Pointe