The Fox and the Hen House - Trudeau Hands Industry the Keys

It's not unfair to say that, when the Trudeau government talks about balancing resource development and the environment you can expect a giant thumb on the scale. When the two interests clash, the environment comes away with the shit end of the stick.

Even by Ottawa standards, Tuesday’s meeting of the House environment committee was a long and rancorous affair. 

Running more than 13 hours when it finally adjourned after midnight, the marathon session was the committee’s fourth and final day to vote on hundreds of proposed amendments to Bill C-69, the Trudeau government’s effort to overhaul Canada’s environmental laws. 

Few are happy with the result, including scientists who say the bill puts too little emphasis on the scientific rigour and independence of impact assessments.

...The omnibus bill includes separate acts on impact assessment, energy regulation and navigable waters, and is intended to replace the controversial rewriting of federal environmental regulations under Stephen Harper in 2012. ...But experts say the weaknesses in the bill mean that it is unlikely to improve impact assessment or strengthen public trust.

Harper environmentalism lives on.

“When you look at the actual legislative language, there’s very little change,” said Martin Olszynski, a lawyer and University of Calgary professor who was among the more than 100 expert witnesses selected to appear before the committee. 

Given that none of those experts were research scientists, Prof. Olszynski opted to focus his ten minutes of testimony on adding language to the bill that would require decision-makers to adhere to principles of scientific integrity. An amendment to that effect was later introduced by Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and passed by the committee.

Yet even that step amounts to a half measure, said Aerin Jacob, an ecologist with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. Dr. Jacob was among those who sought, unsuccessfully, to speak to the committee in an effort to strengthen the science underpinnings of the bill. 

She said that while all persons involved in carrying out any part of an impact assessment should fall under the scientific-integrity provision, the amendment that the committee actually voted on only includes federal officials. 

“By and large that’s not the problem,” Dr. Jacob said, since the data that support an impact assessment is typically gathered and interpreted not by government scientists but by private consultants paid for by industry proponents. “The problem is that the fox is watching the hen house.” 

Petr Komers, a Calgary-based consultant, agreed that the bill does nothing to help those who are trying to provide a fair reading on the environmental impacts of proposed projects when they know that their clients are looking for a green light. “That makes our job really difficult,” he said. 

Jonathan Wilkinson, parliamentary secretary for the Environment Ministry and a non-voting member of the committee, said that the government had considered but ultimately rejected a more hands-on approach to environmental assessments.  

“The answer that we came to is it’s better for [industry proponents] to do the initial work, but of course government must have the resources and the capacity to effectively assess that work,” he said. “That’s the better way of doing it.”

Kai Chan, a scientist who specializes in environmental policy at the University of British Columbia, said experience suggests otherwise. 

In a paper published in March in Environmental Management, a research journal, Dr. Chan and colleagues examined 10 recent assessments and found that assessors typically underplayed the significance of environmental impacts and sought to rationalize why projects should proceed. Government officials were unlikely to questions their findings, even for controversial assessments such as the Northern Gateway pipeline, which was later cancelled. 

Dr. Chan added that stronger oversight and co-ordination of the assessment process by federal authorities would fix the problem. “It’s really a shame they were so quick to dismiss that,” he said.

Remember that we're talking about the Trudeau government whose own officials were caught out rigging the government assessment of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity with National Observer, [senior federal officials] say a high-ranking public servant [a Harper government holdover, Erin O'Gorman] instructed them, at least one month before the pipeline was approved, “to give cabinet a legally-sound basis to say ‘yes’” to Trans Mountain. These instructions came at a time when the government claimed it was still consulting in good faith with First Nations and had not yet come to a final decision on the pipeline. 

Legal experts interviewed by National Observer say these instructions could be a significant matter reviewed by the courts to determine if the government’s approval of Trans Mountain was valid. 

The government would neither confirm, nor deny that public servants were given these instructions to find a way to approve the project. But it described the allegation as “unsubstantiated” information.

Elizabeth May contends it's not just the National Energy Board that's in the bag for the fossil fuelers. National Resources Canada and Environment Canada are also aboard the petro-train.

“I think NRCAN has become the Department of Oil and Gas and I think Environment Canada was converted under Harper from a public service agency to a corporate concierge service to speed along the approval of oil sands projects,” says [Elizabeth] May.

Nothing quite says "regulatory capture" better than letting the regulated industries provide government with the research and analysis on matters being regulated, especially when the government has its own internal fixers telling senior public servants what they need to report to their bosses.

If this skulduggery was Harper's doing, we'd be tearing him to shreds. But Stepford wife Liberals seem to prefer to look the other way when it's their boy doing the very same thing.

Great. Now Notley Imagines She's Speaking for All Canadians. You Too?

Rachel Notley is taking to the interwebs in her war with British Columbia. If it's war B.C. wants, it's war she'll get.

Now the Alberta premier, speaking for Alberta and all Canadians (including you, I guess) is going to expose the recalcitrant coastal curmudgeons, damned hippies and geriatric draft dodgers,  as never before.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Notley explained that this would drive home Alberta's message in the “ongoing dispute that British Columbia has triggered with Alberta and with all Canadians.”

“Albertans (will) be able to engage with people in other parts of the country to help make our point around why this is so important for Canada, for the Canadian economy, for Canada’s environmental progress, for all these issues,” Notley told a press conference in Edmonton, Alta.

But B.C.'s goal of improving scientific research into spills was actually supported by the federal government's Environment Department in 2016.

In January of that year, Environment and Climate Change Canada told the federal pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board, that there were significant "knowledge gaps and uncertainties with respect to hydrocarbon product behaviours in the marine environment," and that the company should commit to funding more research to strengthen spill response planning and risk assessment.

"Significant knowledge gaps." Now there's an understatement. 

As renowned Alberta ecologist, the University of Alberta's professor David Schindler wrote in a recent op-ed in the Edmonton Journal, we know essentially nothing about what a dilbit spill in British Columbia's coastal waters would mean. This admits of but two possibilities. Either the federal government hasn't researched the threat, which would make Justin Trudeau a despicable liar. Or it has done the research and, for some reason, has chosen not to share it with the public, especially coastal British Columbians. 

Me? I'm going to assume Ottawa has done the research and knows what a generational, environmental catastrophe awaits British Columbia's coast when, (not if but when and how often*) a wallowing, fully loaded supertanker has a mishap. And I'm going to make that assumption based on the decision of Dame Cathy McKenna's environment minister to quietly approve the use of the lethal chemical stew, Corexit, as an oil spill dispersant.

Before that other Albertan asshat, Shifty Steve Harper, rescinded it, our federal government imposed a tanker exclusion zone, that kept U.S. supertankers carrying Alaska crude oil to the lower 48 well out of British Columbia coastal waters. That wasn't dilbit. It was the far more benign conventional crude oil. Canada didn't implement that exclusion zone for shits and giggles. We knew the hazards even a conventional oil spill would pose to our coastal waters.

So, let's recap. Justin Trudeau's own environment ministry has said all along that the essential research into dilbit spills hasn't been done, directly contradicting this prime minister's empty assurances. The eminent science body, the Royal Society of Canada, says the research hasn't been done, not a lick of it. Alberta's most renowned ecologist, professor Dave Schindler says the British Columbia government's argument isn't intransigent. In fact it's pretty much unassailable. Trudeau lies to our faces and says his government has the science but won't produce it. Possibly his dog ate it. McKenna's environment ministry has green-lighted a vicious chemical compound that sinks oil spills straight to the bottom where the toxic sludge will contaminate the marine ecosystem for generations. And those uppity British Columbians should just shut up and keep their damned questions to themselves.

* during National Energy Board hearings, many experienced mariners from the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Navy and the merchant marine testified that a tanker spill isn't a matter of if but of when and how often.