At the heart of the Canadian Federal Governments announcement today about fixing the process that determines if a large scale project is in the best interest of Canada or not, is a desire to limit ability Provincial, Municipal and interest groups (like ‘First Nations’) to stall approved projects. The idea is to:
These are clearly admirable goals. To achieve those goals there are now going to be three structures that industry must pass through to get Federal Government support:
So now the questions are, will these changes allow:
There has been much debate over the process and all agree something big had to change:
Dennis McConaghy, a former senior executive at Trans Canada Pipelines thinks these changes will not achieve the desired goals:
CBC’s Peter Armstrong’s program “On The Money” provides coverage of the details in the Environment Minister Katherine McKenna announcements and points out that the local stakeholders are generally acting within the law but still block projects of Canadian National interest. These changes, while positive, do not appear to resolve the issues.
Large scale projects like damns, highways and pipelines are never going to make everyone happy so we need an arbitrator to objectively look at the facts, decide if there is a net positive or not and then enforce the decision (either way). Without such a situation, industry and jobs will go away and citizens will be left in a stagnant world.
It is possible to read between the lines of the Environment Ministers statements and believe that she is really saying that the Canadian Federal Government will assert its full weight and control to override localized protests should a project clear all three of the new review stages. I understand why she does want to come out directly and say that, but I think that is what industry needs to hear and what Canadians deserve.
I think it is clear and non-partisan to say the what spurred this change was the Kinder-Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline twinning and that this project will have very little impact on those which touch it. The logic being that Trans Mountain is simply a twinning of an existing pipeline and so nearly all of the opposition to it is rooted in the “Keep It In The Ground” mentality that will drive an environmental disaster. In case you doubt that last statement or are just generally hostile to the notion of oil & gas, please (seriously and with an open mind) read our small article “Why ‘Keep It In The Ground’ Is A Formula For Environmental Disaster“.
The next time a hydro electric dam, a national corridor like the Trans-Canada highway, a pipeline carrying fresh water, … is proposed, we (both citizens and industry) need a clear path forward.
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