'Innovative' NEB pipeline review runs into big trouble, but government is silent

When the National Energy Board began its review of the proposed Energy East pipeline, it sent out a news release touting the process as "one of the most innovative" in the NEB's history.

There would be opportunities for members of the public to offer their input. Participants could ask questions of TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline.

And the three-member panel conducting the Energy East review would, for the first time, consider the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced upstream — meaning the pollution generated from extracting, refining and transporting the oil would all be factored into the decision.

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A month into the public hearings, innovative isn't the word anyone's using to capture what's been going on. Fiasco might be better. Or, to quote Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, a "circus."

The $15.7-billion Energy East pipeline would carry 1.1 million barrels of diluted oilsands bitumen daily from Alberta to New Brunswick. Along with the proposed Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain project through British Columbia, it's the most likely route to get Canadian oil to ports for shipment overseas.

By now most Canadians following the issue know that two of the three panel members reviewing the project stand accused of conflict of interest. They will have heard that hearings in Montreal, set to begin Aug. 29, were suspended before they really started after protesters stormed the room and were removed by police and security staff.

It's becoming increasingly clear that those hearings won't resume for some time, if at all. The fate of the two panel members is only the first of a number of challenges the NEB — and by extension the federal government — now faces.

"The process has lost all credibility," says Steven Guilbeault of the Quebec-based environmental group Equiterre. He notes farmers, First Nations and more than 80 communities along the Energy East route oppose the project. "The lack of confidence in the NEB is spreading like a disease."

And yet the response from Ottawa has been silence.

Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr says the NEB, whose nine full-time members are appointed by the federal government, must deal with the crisis itself, even as Carr's own department considers applications to expand the board by as many as four temporary members.

French speakers needed

At least part of the reason behind that search is the NEB lacks enough French speakers who have expertise in the energy sector and regulatory law.

The shortage will be acute if the two panel members under scrutiny, Lyne Mercier and Jacques Gauthier, decide to withdraw because they met privately with former Quebec premier Jean Charest, who was a paid consultant to TransCanada at the time.

Critics insist the two are irretrievably tainted by that discussion with Charest. A spokesman for the NEB says the board's request for written submissions on the conflict allegation produced about a dozen. The clear majority of them call for both to be removed.

The NEB says the decision is up to the two panellists themselves.

To critics, that's a big part of the problem. Allowing those accused of a conflict of interest to decide whether they believe they can hear the evidence impartially is hardly what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had in mind when he talked about restoring credibility to the process.

On Thursday, more than 50 groups opposed to Energy East released an open letter to Carr and the prime minister urging them to show leadership by stopping all pipeline reviews and dismantling the NEB.

"Firing a couple of conflict-of-interest-tainted appointees and rescheduling a hearing is not going to fix the broken and discredited NEB," Patrick DeRochie of Environmental Defence is quoted in the accompanying news release.

NEB overhaul promised

If critics of the NEB get their way, the hearings won't resume at all, putting the matter firmly in the hands of the government — which is promising a complete overhaul of the NEB, but only after the Energy East review is done.

Trudeau sidestepped questions about Energy East during his just-completed trip to China and the G20 summit, but he has argued repeatedly that protecting the environment and exploiting resources can go hand in hand.

Energy East and Trans Mountain are now going through the interim review process that the NEB once touted as so innovative, and that Trudeau said would provide the kind of community support, the "social licence," needed to proceed.

The government needs something, too. It needs to show that at least one of these pipelines can meet the dual test of being good for the economy without being harmful to the environment.

And for Energy East, that could very well mean starting over — for the good of the Liberals' political agenda.

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