It’s official. ForestEthics Advocacy has formally announced it’s taking its fight with the National Energy Board all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, and three Burnaby residents are going along for the ride.
The plan, previously reported by the NOW in February, involves a constitutional challenge against the National Energy Board’s restrictions around public hearings, which the group alleges unfairly limit public participation, thereby impeding Charter rights.
At issue are the subjects the NEB defines as relevant to public hearings on major oil pipeline projects, like Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion.
“The NEB’s claim that it cannot consider scientific evidence regarding the long-term impacts of the export bitumen is simply wrong,” said the group’s lawyer David Martin, in a media release. “Instead, the NEB is making a misguided choice to adopt an unconstitutionally narrow interpretation of its jurisdiction so as to avoid having to address the real competing public interest that pipeline approval applications necessarily entail. The purpose of this application to the Supreme Court of Canada is to ask that court to direct the NEB to do its job properly.”
Besides ForestEthics Advocacy, there are eight people listed as applicants in the case, including Burnaby residents Ruth Walmsley, John Clarke and Lynne Quarmby.
The case started last year, when the group filed a motion with the NEB, which was denied. In a previous interview with the NOW, NEB spokesperson Sarah Kiley explained that the board rejected the applicants’ arguments because they did not establish that the NEB Act or the board itself were violating the Charter. Kiley also pointed out that the NEB doesn’t create legislation; politicians and parliamentarians are responsible for the NEB Act.
ForestEthics Advocacy then applied to the Federal Court of Appeal, which rejected the case on Jan. 23.
