Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Why Is Trudeau Still Playing With Harper's Stacked Deck?


When it comes to Canada's energy policy keeps dealing with marked cards, a.k.a. the National Energy Board. Trudeau has openly acknowledged that the NEB succumbed to regulatory capture during the Harper era when Sideshow Steve stacked it with energy industry shills. The predictable outcome has been a series of questionable but industry-friendly decisions ever since.

Which raises the question of why, if the NEB is rigged, a stacked deck, is this prime minister, more than a year and a half after coming to power, still upholding its dodgy rulings?

[I]n May, 2016, a panel of experts appointed by the Trudeau government recommended dismantling the NEB to establish a “modern Canadian Energy Transmission Commission” that would “radically increase the scale and scope of its stakeholder engagement to build trust and driver better outcomes for all Canadians.” The panel said this was in response to the “crisis of confidence” it had observed following public consultations across the country.

“We heard that Canadians have serious concerns that the NEB has been ‘captured’ by the oil and gas industry, with many Board members who come from the industry that the NEB regulates, and who — at the very least appear to — have an innate bias toward that industry,” noted the panel in its final report.

2 comments:

Lorne said...

I could offer an explanation that some might find invidious, Mound: Trudeau wants an NEB that will be pro-pipeline. But then again, that suggestion wouldn't pass your aptly named Liberal Purity Test.

The Mound of Sound said...


Lorne, I'm shocked you would even suggest such a thing. And, yes, that's a big fail on the LPT.