Top court will not hear TMX appeals from B.C. groups

OTTAWA The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project has cleared another legal hurdle.

The Supreme Court of Canada has decided not to hear five challenges from environment and Indigenous groups from British Columbia.

Some wanted the top court to consider whether the Liberal cabinet violated the Species at Risk Act when it decided to approve the pipeline expansion a second time in June 2019, arguing the project would harm highly endangered southern resident killer whales.

The Federal Court of Appeal had overturned cabinet’s first approval of the pipeline in 2018, citing insufficient consultation with Indigenous Peoples and a failure to take the impacts on marine animals into account.

After another round of Indigenous consultations and a second look at marine impacts, cabinet gave a second green light, but the same Indigenous communities and environment groups that successfully challenged the approval in 2018 filed new appeals in 2019.

The Federal Court of Appeal heard — and dismissed last month — appeals from Indigenous communities over whether there had been enough consultation, but declined to hear arguments from the environment groups.

B.C. Nature, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation and the Living Oceans Society, the Tsleil-waututh First Nation, the Squamish First Nation and a group of four young people then asked the highest court for a review. These are the cases the Supreme Court chose not to hear. As usual, the Supreme Court did not give any reasons for its decision released Thursday.

Alberta’s Energy Minister Sonya Savage said the top court’s decision further clears the way for the Trans Mountain project, or TMX, to be completed. She expressed concern, however, over the protests and barricades that blocked rail and road traffic in many parts of the country through most of February in opposition to a separate natural-gas pipeline in northern British Columbia.

Savage charged that “well-funded and organized groups” that joined the protests in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs could “stand in opposition to future major infrastructure projects, especially oil and gas.”

“This type of unrest has serious ramifications on not just Alberta’s economy, but all of Canada’s,” she said.

ED KAISER/FILES Pipe sits on the ground for The Trans Mountain Expansion Project, or TMX, just west of Edmonton, last December. The Supreme Court of Canada rejected attempts by some environment and Indigenous groups in B.C. to challenge the controversial pipeline project.