With the federal government’s recent statements in NY at the United Nations to fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) she is hoping the government will stand by their word.
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The NEB said the project was in the national interest, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government will have to make a hard decision on the project. The Trans Mountain Expansion Project team is building long-term relationships with Aboriginal communities along the proposed pipeline corridor to create new opportunities and shared prosperity.
Conditions attached to the board’s recommendation could range from addressing the timing of construction to requiring the submission of emergency management plans.
Trudeau’s government, swept to power in October, added more requirements for major project assessments, including a greenhouse gas emissions report and additional consultation with aboriginal communities.
Rueben George, left, Project Manager for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation Sacred Trust Initiative, and lawyer Eugene Kung, of West Coast Environmental Law, respond to the National Energy Board decision regarding the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, in Vancouver on Thursday, May 19, 2016.
A tanker near Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, British Columbia.
The review did not consider the downstream effect on climate change from burning oil overseas and also concedes there will be significant increased greenhouse gas emissions from tanker traffic, which can’t be offset.
Kinder Morgan, North America’s biggest oil pipeline operator, plans to expand Trans Mountain to carry as much as 890,000 barrels a day, from about 300,000.
“Now it goes up to the federal government and they can approve, deny or send back their own conditions”, he said.
Following a process that has lasted four years, the NEB said its three-member panel “considered all the evidence and arguments made for and against Trans Mountain’s application to construct and operate the Project, including information regarding the consultation undertaken with Indigenous groups, the potential impacts, and proposed mitigation measures”.
“The scope that the board reviewed is so limited it doesn’t look at risk or cost for our society from this pipeline system”, she said. However, as part of our assessment, we must be satisfied that Kinder Morgan has met its constitutional duty to adequately consult First Nations.
“Now, only Prime Minister Trudeau can stop Kinder Morgan when it goes to cabinet for final approval”.
Kinder Morgan has said the pipeline expansion would be done in a way that minimizes impact on the environment, addresses social impacts and provides many economic benefits.
The five conditions are: Successful completion of the environmental review process (including the NEB), world-leading marine oil spill response and prevention, world-leading land oil spill response and prevention, agreements with First Nations and ensuring B.C. gets a fair share of economic benefits from the project.
“We have set the bar high for a reason”, Polak, the B.C. environment minister, said.
With files from Rob Shaw and Matt Robinson.
So it came as no surprise that the environmentalists who oppose Trans Mountain immediately dismissed the NEB’s decision out of hand. “This project will bring construction, operations and other indirect jobs to B.C., while enabling our national oil resources to reach Asian markets”. “Certainly it will be great to see the short-term jobs and investment out of here for construction”.
“This was Stephen Harper’s broken and unfair approval process, and Christy Clark hid behind it. British Columbians can’t help seeing this as a rubber-stamp approval that fails to meet the concerns we all have with this proposal”. – Larissa Stendie of the Sierra Club said in a statement.
But the project has faced fierce opposition from environmental groups and tribes in the USA and Canada as well as the British Columbia government.
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“It’s never really over in political events when people haven’t been able to speak …”
