PM worried ‘foreign’ money could ‘hijack’ Gateway pipeline

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday he is worried foreign cash is being used to stall the hearing process for the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

“We have to have processes in Canada that come to our decision in a reasonable amount of time and processes that cannot be hijacked,” Harper said in Edmonton. “In particular, growing concern has been expressed to me about the use of foreign money to really overload the public consultation phase of regulatory hearings, just for the purpose of slowing down the process.

“This is something that is not good for (the) Canadian economy, and the government of Canada will be taking a close look at how we can ensure that our regulatory processes are effective and deliver decisions in a reasonable amount of time.”

Hearings for the controversial $5.5-billion pipeline, expected to move Alberta bitumen to tankers off B.C.’S west coast at Kitimat, start Tuesday and are expected to last through mid-2013.

The 18-month timeline is nearly a year longer than initially expected. As many as 4,000 people have asked to make oral presentations at community hearings across northern British Columbia and Alberta.

Last week, Ethicaloil.org, a lobby group that contrasts Canadian oil with that produced in countries with questionable human rights records such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Iran, launched a new ad campaign targeting “foreign special interest groups.” The organization charges “foreign billionaires” are spending money to back local environmental organizations such as the Albertabased Pembina Institute or B.C.based Eco-justice to sway Canadian decision-making.

New radio ads airing in northern b.c. say: “Foreign special interest groups are interfering in B.C. just like when they attacked our forestry jobs.”

Devon Page, the executive director of the environmental law group Eco-justice, said it was “completely inappropriate for the prime minister to echo the words of an oil industry lobby group.”

“You would expect more, and it’s disappointing,” Page said. “At the end of the day, I hope that the legal due process that’s been put in place will prevail.”

Ethicaloil.org’s single part-time employee and its founder, Ezra Levant, has said the organization has no ties to the oil industry. Its donors have not been made public.

Ed Whittingham, the executive director of the Pembina Institute — a think-tank focused on alternative energy, which has lined up against the Northern Gateway — said “there’s very clearly a connection” between the way Harper is framing the “foreign money” issue and the way Ethicaloil.org has.

“I’m confused to . . . hear him accuse the regulatory process around Gateway (of being) hijacked,” Whittingham said Friday.