Along with three First Nations, the city has formally weighed in with the National Energy Board seeking protection of waterways and wetlands in the path of Enbridge’s Line 9 bitumen pipeline. It comes as the federal regulator faces a huge credibility problem over its response to a controversial pipeline expansion in southern British Columbia, as well as multiple challenges to the massive Energy East proposal to pipe tar sands products across Ontario and five other provinces for export via Atlantic ports.
The Quebec legislature has voted unanimously to impose an environmental assessment on the Energy East plans, and the NDP is calling for a similar requirement in Ontario, while major corporate players are also publicly attacking the TransCanada plan to convert an existing natural gas pipeline for its $12 billion proposal.
These battles over potential outlets for Alberta’s tar sands are playing out in the shadow of increasingly strident scientific warnings that the globe must wean itself off fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic climatic changes. A recent European study calculates that tar sands projects already have lost $17 billion because of public protests and another $13.8 billion from other factors including “transportation bottlenecks”.
Hamilton’s letter on Line 9 “ reiterate[s] the City's concerns relating to protection of provincially-significant wetlands and environmentally-significant areas, as well as placement or installation of valves to ensure that watercourses in the City of Hamilton are adequately protected.” Enbridge is arguing that NEB concerns about watercourse protection have arisen from a misunderstanding, but the company has made no mention of any plans to protect areas such as the Sheffield-Rockton provincially significant wetland complex crossed by Line 9 near Westover or other designated environmentally significant areas.
Similar interventions about waterway protection have been filed by the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, and the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. And the NEB still faces a Line 9 court challenge alleging it failed to adequately consult with the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation.
The continuation of controversy over Line 9 – a project that seemed to gain approval from the NEB nine months ago and was expected to be in operation by November 1 – suggests that Energy East also faces a much longer battle than the ‘slam-dunk’ endorsement expected by the company. That also seems likely in light of explosive developments around the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion in British Columbia where the NEB review has been deemed fraudulent by the former CEO of BC Hydro.
Economist Marc Eliesen, a former deputy energy minister in seven different federal and provincial governments, accused the NEB of being an “industry captured regulator” that is engaged in “a public deception” whose decisions “reflect a lack of respect for hearing participants, a deep erosion of the standards and practices of natural justice that previous Boards have respected, and an undemocratic restriction of participation by citizens, communities, professionals and First Nations either by rejecting them outright or failing to provide adequate funding to facilitate meaningful participation.”
His comments refer to the proposal by Texas-based Kinder Morgan to triple the capacity of its Alberta to Vancouver pipeline that has been stridently opposed by the City of Burnaby and hundreds of BC residents. A citizen occupation of a Burnaby-owned conservation area has now spurred a multi-million dollar Kinder Morgan lawsuit against several academics who the company accuses of obstruction and displaying facial expressions that could constitute assault. The latter accusation has generated a huge social media response making fun of the company with “assault faces”, including one from the mayor of Vancouver.
The NEB now officially has the Energy East proposal on its agenda – a 4600 km export route for tar sands bitumen that includes a new oil tanker port on the St Lawrence which has already drawn massive protest, resulting in a Quebec government refusal to allow the proponent to drill near Beluga whale areas. TransCanada Corporation’s proposal has also occurred along the pipeline from Kenora to Halifax, and full page newspaper ads from three gas companies (Enbridge, Union Gas and GazMetro) who claim the scheme will cost natural gas customers an extra billion dollars.
The corporate opponents are demanding that TransCanada build a brand new pipeline from North Bay to Ottawa rather than convert the existing natural gas one to bitumen shipments – a path that seems likely to substantially increase the costs and the public opposition. So far, Energy East has seemed to have wide political support, but federal NDP leader Tom Mulcair now is saying the project must obtain “social licence” from First Nations and other Canadians, and also requires “legislation to force oil companies to pay for the pollution they create, including any increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”
Multiple organizations are urging individuals to demand that the NEB include climate change and tar sands expansion in its Energy East review. The Ontario Energy Board has indicated it will hold “a series of Community, First Nations and Metis meetings” along the pipeline route, as well as a forum to receive “brief presentations that address the impacts of the proposed pipeline from a province-wide perspective.”