Open letter from BROKE about Ottawa's new process for assessing the Kinder Morgan Pipeline project

(Please forward this as widely as possible)

Sisters, Brothers, and Friends,
Attached is an open letter about Ottawa's new process for assessing the Kinder Morgan Pipeline project. It is from Burnaby Residents Opposing Kinder Morgan Expansion (BROKE) and addressed to Terry Beech, the newly elected Liberal Member of Parliament for North Burnaby-Seymour. The letter was sent to Mr. Beech, who is also the Parliamentary Secretary for Science, via e-mail shortly before it was sent to you.
As you will see from reading the letter there are many questions and concerns that are still not adequately addressed by the new process. It is not yet time for us to rest from our struggles to stop this pipeline and others like it, while pressing for a genuine transition to a post-carbon energy system.
    -- Gene McGuckin,
       on behalf of BROKE

March 1, 2016

Mr. Terry Beech, MP for Burnaby North-Seymour

& Parliamentary Secretary for Science:

We, BROKE (Burnaby Residents Opposing Kinder Morgan Expansion), are disappointed and dissatisfied with your government’s January 27 announcement of a “new” assessment process for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMEP).

As you know, BROKE is a grass roots organization, founded in 2012 and active in our community since then.

The “new” process will extend the deadline for a final Cabinet decision by only four months, until December of this year. During these nine or ten months the following five principles, established by the Trudeau government, will apply:

1. No project proponent will be asked to return to the starting line — project reviews will continue within the current legislative framework and in accordance with treaty provisions, under the auspices of relevant responsible authorities and Northern regulatory boards;

2. Decisions will be based on science, traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples and other relevant evidence;

3. The views of the public and affected communities will be sought and considered;

4. Indigenous peoples will be meaningfully consulted, and where appropriate, impacts on their rights and interests will be accommodated; and

5. Direct and upstream greenhouse gas emissions linked to the projects under review will be assessed.

BROKE’s dissatisfaction with the “new” process, in priority order, is as follows:

• the ‘old’ process is still in place, i.e. the NEB will still make a recommendation to Cabinet based on its biased and incomplete review—which contradicts clear commitments made by Prime Minister Trudeau in the 2015 election campaign;

• downstream greenhouse gas emissions, by far the most important in terms of climate change, are still not to be considered, despite the Liberal government’s commitments at the UN Climate Conference in Paris and despite the government’s recent Second Biennial Report on Climate Change, projecting a significant shortfall in meeting even the woefully inadequate emissions targets set by the Harper government;

• there has still been no meaningful consultation with First Nations in the affected territories, much less obtaining their “free, informed, and prior consent” (Article 19, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples);

• there is still no commitment to allow project opponents to cross-examine the evidence of Kinder Morgan/Trans Mountain;

• there is still no consideration of potential post-shipment maritime accidents along the British Columbia coast or elsewhere;

• there is no clarity on what bodies will be collecting and considering the information/evidence covered in the five principles, on how the members of those bodies will be chosen, and on what their mandates will be;

• there is no clarity on what funding will be available for public, First Nations, and scientific participants and what the application process to participate will be.

In addition to the assessment process itself, there are a number of related questions that the government has a large responsibility to answer clearly for Canadian citizens:

• what impacts will the Trans Pacific Partnership, which the Trudeau government recently helped advance toward possible ratification, and other trade agreements have on the decision-making process around the TMEP?

• what steps is the government taking to counter-balance the “petro-state” distortions of our domestic economy and our international trade relations caused by the impact of fluctuating oil prices?

• when will the government make clear that, contrary to corporate public relations assertions, most tar sands dilbit will continue to be destined for export and what that means for domestic supply and pricing?

• when will the government admit publicly that huge potential clean-up costs and liability damages from spills (on land or water), fires, explosions, etc. could very well exceed insurance coverage available to the private companies involved and would thus become the responsibility of taxpayers?

From recent pronouncements by government ministers (federally and provincially), it appears that a new narrative is in the making, while the “modernization” and “overhaul” of fossil fuel assessment processes are drawn out over at least two years. In this narrative are two undifferentiated aims: to get natural resources to export market and to do this through a revised approval process that most Canadians will find credible, thorough, and fair.

Opponents of the extraction, transport, and combustion of fossil fuels are clearly motivated by reasonable community safety worries and justifiable concerns about increasingly devastating climate change. Yet in the new narrative such citizens are denigrated as being ‘negative,’ indifferent to the economic crunch in ‘poor Alberta,’ and callous toward the unemployment of energy sector workers.

We reject this narrative and call on government to make responsible decisions (and statements) about the TMEP and all such projects based on foresight, unbiased processes, and the precautionary principle.

We urge the government to reconsider the inadequate plan for a new assessment process and replace it with one that is more just, comprehensive, and effective. Such a plan must include allowing sufficient time so that communities might realistically be capable of deciding whether or not to grant permission.

Finally, we sincerely thank you for listening carefully to our concerns and for doing your utmost to ensure that the new assessment process will lead to a result that is as fair, scientific, objective and impartial as possible—unlike the NEB review of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project.

Sincerely,

Karl Perrin, Elan Gibson, Gene McGuckin

on behalf of Burnaby Residents Opposing Kinder Morgan Expansion (BROKE)