Former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall has compared the government’s environmental assessment bill to kindling, fuelling the flames of Western alienation, and its oil tanker ban to lighter fluid.
If he’s right, the Prairie sun is about to be obscured by more smoke — this time emanating from Parliament Hill.
The Trudeau government is planning an incendiary end to the parliamentary session by passing the environmental impact bill, C-69, and the tanker ban off the B.C. coast, C-48, — to the chagrin of the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan — before attempting to quell Western anger by announcing its support for the Trans-Mountain pipeline on June 18.
“The government calculus is bad news, bad news, good news and then get out of town,” said one senior Conservative.
One man’s disappointment is, of course, another’s delight.
The Trudeau government and its progressive supporters will cheer the passage of the massive environmental impact legislation, dubbed by its critics “the No-More Pipelines bill.”
Bill C-69 is the subject of more amendments than any bill in Canadian history — ostensibly 187, but because many are multi-part, in reality upwards of 250.
Western premiers and the oil industry argued that the legislation, if passed as originally envisaged, would create greater regulatory uncertainty and hit investor confidence. They pointed to the section that obliged proponents to consider not only the environmental, but also the health and social impacts, the implications for Indigenous groups and the extent to which the project contributes toward sustainability. They objected in particular to requirements that alternatives to the proposed project be considered.
“There is no value in requiring a proponent to complete an assessment of theoretical project alternatives they have no intention of investing in,” said the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in its submission.
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