The federal government is advancing the process to designate a proposed oil pipeline to the West Coast as a “national interest” project.
Naming a project in the national interest under the Building Canada Act allows the government to fast-track approvals and skirt some environmental laws.
A notice published in the Canada Gazette on Aug. 1 sets a Sept. 18 deadline to submit comments on the national interest designation.
The proposed pipeline has been referred already to the government’s major projects office, with the Alberta government listed as the proponent. The pipeline would be owned by Trans Mountain, the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission and Pembina Pipeline Corporation.
Pembina has a 10 per cent ownership stake in the construction, with the option to purchase an additional 10 per cent once the pipeline is operational.
The government’s notice says Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc will work with the Alberta and B.C. governments on the project while consultations with Indigenous communities are underway.
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Julia Levin, an associate director at Environmental Defence, criticized the government for quietly beginning this process during a long weekend.
“Over the weekend, while Canadians across the country are dealing with raging wildfires and the aftermath of severe flooding and heat waves, Prime Minister (Mark)
Carney quietly moved forward with his oil pipeline plans,” Levin said in a statement.
“It’s no wonder he didn’t want to draw attention to this environmentally and economically risky project, and the breakneck speed at which he wants to get it approved without due oversight.”
The proposed pipeline is a central component of an energy agreement between the federal and Alberta governments.
The roughly 1,250-kilometre pipeline would carry upwards of one million barrels of crude oil from Bruderheim, Alta. to a port near Delta, B.C. for shipment to international markets.
The Conservatives helped the government pass the Building Canada Act more than a year ago and the government has so far moved three projects toward the national interest designation.
Those projects are the Grays Bay road and port project in Nunavut, the Mackenzie Valley Highway in the Northwest Territories and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s deep geological repository in northern Ontario.
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Great news. Of course the Poilievre conservatives who block everything in parliament will find fault with this as they always do.
How about lookin at what she is doing to the disabled and seniors in Alberta,this position is not what holds this country together. But oil is!?
Annyone believing Carney when it comes to the resource sector should get their head checked. He devoted an entire chapter on pro carbon tax in his 2021 book Value(s): Building a Better World for All. He advised Trudeau just 4 years ago to say no to request from Germany and Japan to buy our LNG, saying that there was no business case for it. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars has he spent the last year traveling trying to sell those same exact deals? During the Liberal party process to replace Trudeau he stole credit from Jim Flaherty for the work that was done in the 2008 subprime market slowdown.
He cannot be trusted.
lots of talk, no action, thats the liberals for you
Folks here carrying on as if acquiring infrastructure can be done by just picking it up at a store. Tell everyone that your clueless about how the world works without telling everyone that your clueless.
Why should anyone else listen to you if you are that uninformed? It was better when ignorant people did not have platforms to share whatever defiant thought came into their head.
A year later still nothing has been started. Carney still “thinking” about it. I thought this was an existential crisis. What a joke.
I find it odd that we have to have a Russian style Gosplan, or a central planning office. This and the Carbon tax (industrial) needs to end.
I’ll believe it when I see shovels in the ground, but doubtful.