The National Energy Board’s review of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was up for debate at the Legislative Assembly of B.C. on Monday.
MLAs debated a motion calling on the provincial government to withdraw from the NEB’s review process and establish its own environmental assessment process in an effort to get answers to their intervener questions.
“I’ve moved this motion because it’s time,” said Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert. “It’s well past time, indeed, for us to finally assert our right as a province, assert our power as a province and get the answers that we deserve for a project like Kinder Morgan is proposing.”
Burnaby-Lougheed MLA Jane Shin said anyone “with sound logic and unadulterated intentions” would oppose the NEB’s review process. The NDP has criticized the process for not addressing all of the public’s questions and for a lack of clarity on many of the responses.
“As we know, Kinder Morgan is a foreign multinational corporation based out of Texas proposing to build this new heavy oil pipeline carrying diluted bitumen from Alberta to Burnaby, unrefined and for non-local use, tripling the current capacity to 890,000 barrels per day,” she said.
“So what's in it for us? What's in it for us in Burnaby, where this new route will drill through the Simon Fraser Mountain to the Burrard Inlet, the northern border of my constituency?”
Shin argued that the estimated $13.2 million municipal tax revenue from the proposed expansion is peanuts compared to revenue generated from other sectors, such as the local film industry.
On the Liberals’ side of the debate, Burnaby North MLA Richard T. Lee brought up the provincial government’s five conditions for the Trans Mountain pipeline, emphasizing the need to facilitate dialogue between Kinder Morgan and First Nations. He argued that withdrawing from the review process would damage the ability for the two groups to communicate.
“British Columbia has intervener status at review, and we will continue to stand up for all British Columbians on Kinder Morgan’s application, including our First Nations,” he said. “It makes absolutely no sense for B.C. to withdraw from the review, lose our ability to question the company and not be a full-fledged participant.”
In response, Burnaby-Deer Lake MLA Kathy Corrigan grilled the province for handing control of the review process to the federal government, among a laundry list of other criticisms.
“It concerns me that the province not only handed over assessment to the federal government, but for this project — as opposed to the Northern Gateway project — it did not even ask questions about the economics of the project, including revenue estimates, financial risks to the province, insurance costs and coverage,” she said. “If there is a major spill in our harbour or on our waterways, the financial and environmental implications will be multigenerational.
“We need to withdraw from the NEB process in order to protect the future of our province.”
