If TransCanada Corp. thought piping its oil eastward would be easier than muscling it past the Rocky mountains and tree-huggers, it clearly didn’t anticipate the Quebec factor.
The National Energy Board (NEB) announced it’s suspending its hearings into Energy East pipeline indefinitely “in light of a violent disruption” that interrupted proceedings in Montreal August 29 after a handful of protestors chanting anti-NEB slogans rushed the front of the hearing room.
But the real reason for suspending the hearings may have more to do with revelations that two NEB staff members as well as chair and CEO Peter Watson and panel members Jacques Gauthier and Lyne Mercier met with then TransCanada consultant and former Quebec Premier Jean Charest back in January of 2015.
NEB panelists met with groups opposed to the pipeline as well, including representatives of environment group Equiterre.
But the “Charest affair” got messy when the NEB first denied the panelists ever discussed Energy East at the meeting with Charest. Or that they were aware Charest was acting on behalf of TransCanada. Notes and emails made public by the NEB under Access to Information proved otherwise.
As Mike DeSouza, who broke the story for the National Observer, put it:
“… whether the bias exists or not, the mere appearance of this type of conflict can delegitimize formal hearings of a tribunal, opening it up to a legal challenge that could quash any decisions made.”
The revelations soon triggered calls to suspend the hearings from some three dozen environmental groups, and then from Montreal mayor Denis Coderre, who also met privately with NEB members late last year.
“I’m not sure of the impartiality of the process,” Coderre told reporters last week.
By then, environmental lawyers from Ecojustice had filed a formal motion with NEB to have the commissioners in question removed.
In a press release, the NEB acknowledged that the scandal was enough reason to suspend the hearings, at least for a while, “given that two motions have been filed asking for the recusal of panel members and given that the Board has invited written comments by September 7, 2106.”
Some among the conservative press have attempted to revive the old Harper narrative that “eco extremists,” like those that stopped the hearings, are sabotaging TransCanada’s great nation-building pipeline. A column in the National Post suggests the NEB’s meeting with Charest “was part of a well-intended national effort of self-improvement by the national regulator to rebuild public trust by being more transparent and engaged with Canadians.”
In reality, Quebecers have already told pollsters they don’t want the pipeline.
Coderre and other Montreal-area mayors came out against it back in January. Coderre has done the math and says the pipeline would only deliver about $2 million in economic benefits to the Montreal area, while a major spill could cost billions to clean up.
Quebec’s Assembly of First Nations declared its opposition in July, saying the project to pump more than one million barrels a day from the oils sands would “fuel catastrophic climate change.”
Now Quebec’s main farmers organization, Union des producteurs agricoles, don’t want it either. “We did consult farmers in every region where [the pipeline] would go, and the vast majority of comments were against the project,” says union spokesperson Patrice Juneau.
While Energy East’s pipeline would run mostly through Ontario’s spottily populated north, its route would cut right through the heart of the most densely populated parts of Quebec, through Montreal and Quebec City, crossing several major rivers along the way.
The province is keenly aware of voter hostility toward the project and has already pushed TransCanada into cancelling its planned Quebec-based terminal for Energy East.
There are, of course, plenty of pro-pipeline Quebecers, including the union members that demonstrated in support of Energy East outside the Montreal hearings.
The NEB will likely be forced to turf the commissioners at the centre of the storm but it may not be enough to placate the majority of Quebecers who see the pipeline as all risk and little reward.
The banner unfurled by protesters at the Montreal hearing echoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sentiments on the future of pipeline projects in Canada says it all: “Only communities can grant permission.”
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
