Skepticism reigns as pipeline forum starts
Ever since requesting to participate last year, Denis Leclerc had been preparing what he was going to say when his turn finally came at the National Energy Board’s public hearings into TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline project.
The hearings starting in Montreal on Monday — the third of 10 to be held along the pipeline route this year — are presented as a chance for stakeholders to ask questions directly to TransCanada about the $15.7-million pipeline project.
Leclerc was representing a group of farmers from Ste-Anne-desPlaines who were unhappy with the proposed pipeline route cutting directly across their lands.
But then something changed. Over the course of meetings with TransCanada the last 18 months, he said the group went from being completely against the project to 90 per cent satisfied with the new route.
Last week, Leclerc retracted his request to present on Monday.
“To our surprise, it went well,” Leclerc said. “We would have still liked it to pass a little more to the north. But compared to what it was originally and what it is now, we’re satisfied.”
Leclerc’s recent satisfaction is far from widely shared.
Before the hearings could even get underway on Monday, they were already being met with skepticism from participants after recent reports called the NEB’s impartiality into question.
“With what I see now, we need to suspend the process and look into it closely,” Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said at a news conference Thursday.
Coderre was referring to a report from the National Observer, a Vancouver-based website on energy news, that two of the commissioners on the NEB’s panel for the hearings discussed the pipeline project with former Quebec premier Jean Charest while he was acting as a consultant for TransCanada.
Two environmental groups have since submitted requests to require the commissioners to recuse themselves from the panel. Thirty-six environmental groups from across the country came together to ask that the hearings be postponed until the issue is sorted out.
Coderre, who will present the city’s position and speak for the Montreal Metropolitan Community on Monday, said the recent controversy is taking away from the conversation that really needs to be taking place: about the pros and cons of the proposed pipeline.
“Now there will be an elephant in the room,” Coderre said of the hearings. “Are those people fit to serve as commissioners?”
In response to the requests, the NEB is asking all participants in the hearings to send in their written recommendations on how to move forward before Sept. 7.
But the board is not considering postponing the hearings, said NEB spokesperson Marc Drolet.
“Once the committee has analyzed those comments, we will give more details on the next steps that will be taken to analyze the requests (to replace the commissioners),” he said.
But, Drolet added, the goal of the hearings remains the same: to allow participants to get answers to their questions, and allow the committee to get a better understanding of the major issues different communities consider priorities.
In sessions scheduled for Monday, Tuesday and Friday, each presenter will be given 20 minutes to voice his or her opinions before the NEB’s three-member panel. The first half is reserved for questions, with the last 10 minutes given to TransCanada to answer them.
Twenty-five stakeholders — from environmentalists to mayors and citizen groups — are scheduled to give presentations throughout the week. Similar sessions have already taken place in New Brunswick, and will happen in Quebec City in October.
Coderre had announced this year that he and 81 other mayors from the Montreal Metropolitan Community oppose the proposed pipeline. The environmental risks outweigh the meagre economic benefits the pipeline would bring to Quebec, Coderre had said, and that’s the message he plans to reiterate on Monday.
Serge Simon, Grand Chief of the Kanesatake Mohawk Council, who is another vocal opponent of the project, is also participating in the hearings.
“My speech won’t be anything surprising,” Simon said in an interview. “I’ve been saying the same thing about Energy East for well over two years now.”
In short, Simon said, if TransCanada moves forward with the project as proposed, without the community ’s consent, it will be violating aboriginal and treaty rights.
“Where the pipeline is passing is exactly through our hunting grounds,” Simon said. “Not only on our hunting grounds, but also under the Outaouais River. And it’s going to be upstream from us. If that thing ever were to leak, it could be catastrophic for us.”
Green Party deputy leader Daniel Green, who will be presenting on behalf of the Société pour vaincre la pollution, questioned the point of presenting to a panel of three commissioners when two of them could, and should, be recused.
Regardless, Green said, he’ll be ready on Monday with two questions in hand — one about Bakken oil spills in urban environments and the other about the project being installed near high-voltage power lines, which he says has been proven to cause corrosion in pipelines.
“They’re very specific questions, and I’m worried they aren’t going to be answered,” Green said, noting that he felt TransCanada wasn’t forthcoming with answers during the Saint John hearings.
According to TransCanada spokesperson Tim Duboyce, the company has made roughly 700 changes to the proposed pipeline route since it was first announced in 2013. More changes could come as a result of the hearings, he said.
As for the company not answering questions in full during previous hearings, Duboyce said that not all questions have clear answers yet.
The one question that hasn’t been answered, to the frustration of many, is the company’s emergency response plan if were in the pipeline to develop a break or leak.
Duboyce said the plan will be established with first responders along the route, and therefore can’t be completed until the final version of the project is established — “around the start of construction, but well before the pipeline will go into operation.”
As for the questions over the NEB commissioners, Duboyce said it’s not TransCanada’s job to judge the NEB’s process.
“It’s our job to demonstrate that Energy East is in the public interest.”