B.C. NDP utterly failed in pricey fight to stop pipeline that has started pumping
The B.C. NDP has never revealed how many millions it spent in its fight to stop a pipeline, a battle it knew it could not win
VICTORIA — When crude oil finally started flowing through the much delayed and wildly overbudget Trans Mountain pipeline expansion this week, it confirmed a final defeat for the B.C. New Democrats.
They campaigned against it in 2017, vowing to “use every tool in the tool box to stop the project from going ahead.”
The promise was reinforced in the power-sharing agreement with the Green party that brought them into office: “Immediately employ every tool available to the new government to stop the expansion of the pipeline.”
Yet from Day 1 as premier, John Horgan was advised that the province could not stop construction of a pipeline that had already been approved by the federal cabinet and the Canada Energy Regulator.
Horgan disclosed the advice when he appointed George Heyman, the former director of the Sierra Club, as minister of the environment in the new government.
“The premier had been given the legal advice that stopping the project was beyond the jurisdiction of B.C. and frame our actions around doing it would be inappropriate and unlawful,” said Heyman. “He advised me not to do that.”
The new attorney general, David Eby, further confirmed that the province could not unreasonably stall or reject any permits on the project.
To do so would invite a lawsuit of ruinous proportions from Kinder Morgan, builder of the expansion project.
“We’ll end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars to an oil company that should be going to schools and hospitals,” said Eby. He may have known that limitation before his party began making election promises it couldn’t keep.
Still the promises had been made. So Horgan and his government carried on with an effort that was to be as expensive as it was futile.
