RENEWED ENERGY

The federal panel looking at ways to update the National Energy Board (NEB) faces a task as onerous as evaluating any contentious pipeline project. Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr appointed the team of independent experts in 2016 to fulfil a Liberal campaign promise to scrutinize the country’s environmental laws and resource-development oversight. Its five members are visiting 10 cities between January and the end of March to hear about issues such as environmental assessment, ways to improve participation of the public and indigenous peoples in regulatory reviews and emergency response. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the panel stopped in Edmonton.

The panel members have heard there’s a lot that needs fixing at the NEB. That’s not surprising given that the National Energy Board Act, the legislation mandating the board, was passed in 1959, with few changes since then.

“It’s been nearly 60 years and a lot has changed in Canada in that time,” panel co-chair Gary Merasty told the Edmonton Journal editorial board. There are calls for greater involvement of aboriginals and respect for their rights, more expectations for public transparency and increased concern for environmental impacts.

The panel has heard the NEB needs to restore trust among Canadians to ensure the regulator isn’t beholden to industry and rubber-stamping projects.

One popular and simple suggestion is to scrap the requirement that the NEB’s permanent members must live in Calgary, where the regulator has been headquartered since 1991 when the then-Progressive Conservative government moved it to be closer to expertise in the oilpatch.

Public access to the NEB’s quasi-judicial hearings can also be improved. Currently, interveners are restricted to those who are directly affected by a development. Even written submissions are not allowed without first filling out reams of forms.

But as Carr said in a January news release: industry has a right to extract resources and get them to market in an environmentally responsible way, while creating jobs for Canadians.

The panel is supposed to report back by May 15. It’s a tight time frame on a difficult topic.

In modernizing its framework and restoring public trust, an overhauled National Energy Board still needs a way for industry to win approvals for projects that pass environmental muster and in the economic interests of Canadians.

The panel must be careful not to make it impossible for companies to get to a “yes” on energy projects that cross provincial borders.