Ottawa needs a spine
So this is the federal government’s bold new plan to get pipelines built? Because it looks like the opposite. On Thursday, the Liberals announced their new environmental review plan for major resource projects and supporting infrastructure, including pipelines. A new agency will replace the National Energy Board, which will be scrapped. Consultations will be expanded, and deadlines redefined ( they’ll be longer, which is odd). Many of the Liberals’ favourite causes — open- ended Indigenous reconciliation efforts, “gender-impact” analyses, consideration of climate treaty obligations — will be included in the new consultation processes, because of course they will be.
The new regime, of course, is completely untested, has no track record to warrant confidence, and so will discourage investment in Canada while major industry players evaluate the likely impact of the regulations. As if what our resource sector needs now is yet more uncertainty and confusion on the regulatory side. But the real failure of the plan is that the Liberals have fundamentally misunderstood the problem facing our resource companies and our economy as a whole: the problem isn’t getting projects approved, it’s getting them built.
The energy board, regarded internationally for its expertise and technique, ultimately was doing what it was supposed to do. It evaluated projects on their merits, followed the established guidelines and approved or rejected them as warranted. It was slow and cumbersome and could have benefited from i mprovement, but it was no failure. The failures came after the approval stage, largely because Ottawa, fearful of the fanatical U. S.- funded antioil campaigns that have infiltrated every province, has been afraid to use its constitutional powers to push past provincial and local politics to ensure that projects that have been vetted and ap- proved under the legal process are not derailed by endless legal antics amounting to procedural warfare.
Take the current dispute between B. C. and Alberta, over the expansion of the operational Trans Mountain pipeline, which would ship Alberta oil to the B.C. coast for global export ( more oil, that is — roughly triple the current flow). The pipeline is approved; the Liberals, from the prime minister on down, have said they support it. But B.C. is having no trouble at all inventing new ways to bog it down. The federal government could force the issue — it has the power — but has done nothing but make soothing noises while Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has been left alone, resorting to retaliating against B. C. by barring its wines from her province.
It’s absurd, ugly and embarrassing. But it’s not the fault of the regulatory process. The process was adhered to. Trans Mountain’s expansion was approved. None of that evidently matters to those who will fight resource development at every turn, including the irresponsible activists now writing policy for B.C. And it won’t matter under the new process, either. Progressive politicians fooled too many Canadians that certain policies, taxes, rules and compromises would earn the necessary “social licence” to get projects built, despite warnings from these pages to the contrary. That’s been proven perfectly false. This new process repeats the mistake in believing that those groups dedicated to the destruction of our oil industry can be reasoned with, as if they are reasonable. They are not. Ottawa must stop reinventing the regulatory wheel and start getting projects built via existing processes and current constitutional powers. All that’s missing is political leadership and will. It’s what’s been missing all along. For the Liberals to pretend otherwise at this point looks suspiciously like wilful blindness.