Failing to pipe up

Critics of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline have been speaking up loudly against the $6-billion plan to ship bitumen from Alberta to Kitimat, B.C. The project’s supporters, well, they’re keeping quiet. So quiet, in fact, that the National Energy Board cancelled a session of the joint review panel that was scheduled for last Wednesday in Calgary after scrubbing an earlier meeting in Edmonton because no one came forward. The NEB requires at least 15 participants to proceed with a session.

The fact there was no demand for the meetings isn’t unexpected. Many Albertans, after all, understand the economic benefits of the project and are perhaps less likely than British Columbians to be as concerned about a greater number of oil tankers plying the waters off the West Coast. It’s also human nature to speak up in opposition and remain silent when in agreement.

Regardless of the vigorous debate — much of it now being voiced by a Liberal government in danger of losing the upcoming B.C. election — everyone expects the NEB to make a fact-based decision.

The ruling, expected to be released at the end of 2013, may not draw the curtain on political theatre, but it will at least let everyone evaluate the environmental integrity of the pipeline — something Prime Minister Stephen Harper observed earlier this week.