Federal Court - Thumbs Down on Trudeau Memorial Pipeline

"Sold Out" Liberal - Indeed

The Federal Court of Appeal has rejected the Trudeau government's sham approval of the TransMountain pipeline project.

In a written decision, the court says the energy board’s review was so flawed that the federal government could not rely on it as a basis for its decision to approve the expansion.

"So flawed" to be sure. Rigged would be a more apt description. Yet that didn't stop the Trudeau government from declaring the process legitimate, not when it came to steamrollering dissent and protests from First Nations groups, environmentalists, the province of British Columbia and several of its most heavily populated municipalities.

Rigged.

There's a word that will be heard a lot in next year's federal election campaign.

Rigged.

More from the National Observer:

The decision, announced Aug. 30, is the first major court defeat for the project, requiring the government to ask the federal energy regulator or its successor to redo a federal environmental evaluation and correct a “critical” mistake it made to ignore the consequences of increased oil tanker traffic off the coast of British Columbia.

The decision will also require the Trudeau government to restart its consultations with First Nations about the project, before construction can proceed. 

Finance Minister Bill Morneau said Thursday he had received the ruling and was "taking the appropriate time to review the decision." The minister said he would make further comments later in the day.

...The unanimous ruling criticized the Trudeau government for making a decision based on inadequate evidence from the report prepared by the National Energy Board after it held hearings to review the project. 

It also said the government’s consultation process with First Nations wasn’t meaningful or adequate. 

“Indeed, a review of the record of the consultation process discloses that Canada displayed a closed-mindedness when concerns were expressed about the Board’s report and was reluctant to depart from the findings and recommendations of the Board,” said the ruling, drafted by Justice Eleanor Dawson. 

“With rare exceptions, Canada did not dialogue meaningfully with the Indigenous applicants about their concerns about the Board’s review. Instead, Canada’s representatives were focused on transmitting concerns of the Indigenous applicants to the decision-makers and nothing more. Canada was obliged to do more than passively hear and receive the real concerns of the Indigenous applicants.”

Tankers, Tankers, Tankers.

The Trudeau government tried to keep the hazards of an armada of bitumen laden supertankers and the associated risk to British Columbia's coastal waters out of the review process. The court jumped all over that nonsense.

“The unjustified failure to assess the effects of marine shipping under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012, and the resulting flawed conclusion about the effects of the Project was so critical that the Governor in Council could not functionally make the kind of assessment of the Project’s environmental effects and the public interest that the legislation requires.”

That's why Justin chose Dame Cathy McKenna as his environment minister. She'll do whatever she's told.

UPDATE:

Here's a shocker. Kinder Morgan shareholders just voted overwhelmingly to confirm the sale of the pipeline to the federal government for the laughable (for them) sum of $4.5 billion.

Asked if Canada could walk away from the deal if the ruling quashes the permit, a finance department spokesman said the agreement has been signed and there's no backing out.

Reacting to the unanimous rejection of the TransMountain process, Trudeau finmin, 'Job Churn' Morneau, this morning confirmed that the purchase of the pipeline will complete "as early as tomorrow."

And so Kinder Morgan reaps a 700+ per cent profit on a derelict pipeline it has owned for just over a decade. Wouldn't you like to get a 70% annual return on your money?

One thing that is clear. If the pipeline project has to go back for an honest environmental review, that can't be entrusted to the federal government. They knew the approval process was rigged and said so repeatedly during the 2015 election campaign only to embrace it once elected.

The Trudeau government ensured that its own pipeline review was rigged. The Trudeau government has repeatedly and persistently lied to Canadians and, especially, to British Columbians about matters such as safety and spills. Now that this same government will have 4.5 Billion reasons to keep rigging and lying, they are not to be trusted.

Why not allow a body whose credibility does not lie in smoking tatters do an honest review? A body such as the Royal Society of Canada should fit the bill. Of course if Trudeau wanted an honest assessment he would have done it himself, just as he promised in the 2015 campaign. Curiously, he didn't.