british columbia – Page 5

First Nations expected a new era; instead the government has embraced colonialism and ignored UNDRIP law.

COVER.Horgans-Pipeline-Unistoten.jpg — ‘Is this a scorecard of how many First Nations say yes compared to those who say no? Is that how we measure rights and title?’ Photo by Michael Toledano.

It’s the same old story Indigenous Peoples have heard for generations.

B.C. Premier John Horgan tells the public “the rule of law” demands the Coastal GasLink pipeline go ahead. Permits are in place, and the courts have approved construction.

The opposition of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs is not important to Horgan, as he points to 20 First Nations that have signed agreements to allow the pipeline and negotiated benefits. The five clans who have not agreed don’t seem to count.

Is this a scorecard of how many First Nations say yes compared to those who say no? Is that how we measure rights and title?

Are we not in a new era of reconciliation? A new decade? The decade of the enactment of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) Act in this province?

What would I expect from the premier in this new era, in this particular situation when he needs credibility with First Nations if his commitment to UNDRIP is to be taken seriously?

I would expect the premier to look back on past decisions and ensure they were made in the spirit of UNDRIP — including approval of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. His party was making political promises to uphold UNDRIP long before the NDP were in government.

In the 2014 Supreme Court of Canada Tsilhqot’in decision, the justices stated clearly that provincial and federal governments need to be prepared to cancel already approved projects if First Nations establish title to the land and oppose them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

RCMP Planned to Use Snipers in Assault on Wet’suwet’en Protest, Guardian Reports

December 20, 2019

RCMP Planned to Use Snipers in Assault on Wet’suwet’en Protest, Guardian Reports

Newspaper cites planning documents that called for ‘lethal overwatch’ to ensure pipeline built.

Heavily armed RCMP officers sent to Indigenous checkpoint with instructions for ‘sterlizing the site,’ documents reveal. Photo by Michael Toledano.

The RCMP were prepared to use snipers with shoot-to-kill orders when they launched a raid to remove Indigenous protesters slowing pipeline construction in Wet’suwet’en territory, the Guardian reported today.

The exclusive report by Jaskiran Dhillon and Will Parrish reveals RCMP planning notes included arguments that “lethal overwatch is req’d,” a term for deploying snipers.

The Guardian reports RCMP commanders instructed officers to “use as much violence toward the gate as you want” as they planned the Jan. 7 action to remove a gated checkpoint and camp about 120 kilometres southwest of Smithers.

The RCMP sent heavily armed officers in military-style fatigues to break down a gate, arrest 14 people and enforce a “temporary exclusion zone” that barred anyone aside from police from the area. The police were enforcing an injunction obtained by Coastal GasLink, the company building a pipeline to take natural gas to a planned LNG project in Kitimat.

The Guardian reports RCMP documents note arrests would be necessary for “sterilizing the site.” Plans included arresting everyone in the injunction area, including children and elders.

They also show the RCMP conducted surveillance in advance of the raid including heavily armed police patrols, drones, heat-sensing cameras and monitoring of protesters social media postings.

And the report reveals the RCMP and pipeline company officials worked closely together on strategy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BC’s Drilling and Fracking Credits a $1.2 Billion Subsidy in Recent Years, Researcher Finds

November 13, 2019

BC’s Drilling and Fracking Credits a $1.2 Billion Subsidy in Recent Years, Researcher Finds

Credits reduce future royalties that frackers owe the public for access to the resource.

‘At almost every step of the way the government has refused to provide information on these subsidies,’ said Ben Parfitt, resource policy analyst with the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, of his investigation of the province’s deep well credit program.

“It’s been quite a battle to get to this stage,” said Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst with the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “At almost every step of the way the government has refused to provide information on these subsidies.”

In a report released Nov. 13, Parfitt found that over the last two fiscal years the government has provided $1.2 billion in credits to companies drilling deep wells and fracking horizontal wells, a process that involves injecting liquids and chemicals under high pressure to break up rock and extract gas.

Companies including Petronas Energy Canada Ltd., Painted Pony Petroleum, Shell Canada Energy and Cutbank Dawson Gas Resources Ltd. have received hundreds of millions in credits that reduce the future royalty payments they owe to the provincial government for access to the publicly-owned resource.

“We’re out of pocket to the extent that if those credits did not exist, if the program did not exist, then the royalty revenues would be higher,” Parfitt said. Budget documents show that in total the government expects to collect about $250 million a year in natural gas royalties.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada

The deep well credit program dates back to 2003 when it was intended to help with the development of a type of drilling that has since become normal in the industry, Parfitt said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Frack Quakes: Knowledge Is Weak as BC Drilling Grows

October 29, 2019

Frack Quakes: Knowledge Is Weak as BC Drilling Grows

As an LNG boom looms, so does the mystery of related tremors, finds report.

Farmington area — Oil and gas industry drilling pads dot the landscape around Farmington, BC, one of the areas jolted by 2018 quakes. Photo via Google Earth.

Regulators know fracking has caused earthquakes in northeastern B.C. big enough to rattle homes and halt construction at the Site C dam worksite in 2018.

Those same regulators certainly are mindful of the fact that if one or more planned LNG plants are built on B.C.’s coast, fracking in the province would surge.

But a newly released report for the BC Oil and Gas Commission says researchers can’t yet answer basic questions about where fracking will trigger earthquakes or why some frack jobs set off only small earthquakes while others trigger larger ones.

The independent geological report by the Calgary firm Enlighten Geoscience found incomplete seismic data and complex geology are major obstacles to understanding the potential hazard posed by fracking-triggered earthquakes.

“The lack of consistency in type, quantity and quality of data being collected, and especially in data that has been collected in the past, makes it difficult to develop a good understanding of the induced seismicity in the region,” said the report.

The report looked at the Kiskatinaw Seismic Monitoring and Mitigation Area created by the BC Oil and Gas Commission in May 2018 after public complaints about the number of earthquakes now unsettling the formerly quiet seismic region. The study area includes Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, the two regional centres.

The earthquake risk is high, the researchers found. The underground formations are “in a near critical state, meaning only small fluid pressure increases are sufficient to cause specific sets of fractures and faults to become critically stressed.”

Hydraulic fracturing sends highly pressured blasts of large quantities of water, chemicals, and sand down wells to shatter rock formations and allow gas to flow.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BC Government Frets Over Climate Change While Heavily Subsidizing Fracking Companies

August 13, 2019

BC Government Frets Over Climate Change While Heavily Subsidizing Fracking Companies

Worse, the giveaway probably isn’t needed, with the global industry desperate for new gas fields.

Fracking does not need subsidies to be profitable. But we still hand ’em out. Photo via Shutterstock.

We’re in a climate crisis. So why did the B.C. government give oil and gas companies $663 million in subsidies last year so they would produce more fracked natural gas?

The NDP government hasn’t declared a climate emergency. But it commissioned a report that warns of more severe wildfire seasons, water shortages, heat waves, landslides and more.

Despite that, the government handed almost two-thirds of a billion dollars to fossil fuel companies — $130 per person in the province — so they’ll extract more methane, more quickly. (The numbers are all from the always-interesting Public Accounts released last month by the province’s auditor general.)

Which is perverse in a time when we’re warned of climate disaster.

British Columbians own the oil and gas under the ground. Companies pay royalties to the government for the right to extract and sell it

Since 2003, the B.C. government has been putting natural gas on sale. It has cut royalties to subsidize the industry’s road construction and reward any operators who drilled in the summer.

And most significantly, it started offering the gas at a deep discount for companies that drilled “deep wells.” The industry argument was that they were riskier and more expensive; the government had to sell the gas more cheaply to encourage companies to drill. It increased the discounts in 2009 and 2014, giving even bigger breaks to the fossil fuel companies. (Who were also big BC Liberal donors.)

The discounts — subsidies from taxpayers who have to pay more to make up for the lost revenue — have enriched fossil fuel companies for more than a decade.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘You can’t drink money’: Kootenay communities fight logging to protect their drinking water

July 28, 2019

Glade Watershed Kootenay logging Heather McIntyre Louis Bockner — Heather McIntyre and her grandson Carmi Restrick collect water samples and record the temperature of Glade Creek. This daily community monitoring program began two years ago and is an effort to provide hard evidence should the proposed logging go ahead and the community’s water is negatively affected. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

‘You can’t drink money’: Kootenay communities fight logging to protect their drinking water

In Glade, where clear-cutting could begin any day, determined residents are pulling out all the stops in an effort to protect their local creek — even though a judge ruled they have no right to clean waterSarah Cox Jul 20, 2019 17 min read

Four years ago, on a morning hike with her husband, Heather McIntyre spotted red and white flagging tape near a creek that supplies much of the drinking and irrigation water for her village of Glade in a pastoral Kootenay valley.

The tape marked logging boundaries and roads and was stamped with “KLC,” the initials of a local timber company, Kalesnikoff Lumber Co., which planned to log in the community’s watershed on the slopes of a low-lying Selkirk Mountain in the interior rainforest.

“We kind of panicked,” said McIntyre, who lives in a yellow strawbale house amidst a patchwork of fruit and vegetable gardens, in a community named Dolina Plodorodnaya by its Doukhobor founders, meaning “fertile valley.”

Glade Watershed Kootenay River Louis Bockner

The community of Glade sits on the banks of the Kootenay River near Nelson, B.C. The Glade Creek watershed has been at the centre of an ongoing dispute between community members and two logging companies — ATCO and Kalesnikoff Lumber Co — who have been given cut permits in the drainage. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

“Everybody in the lower part of Glade gets their water from the creek and the logging flagging was right above the creek,” McIntyre told The Narwhal. “We’re using a lot of water in summer for irrigating and then there’s our drinking water.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trudeau Declared a Climate Crisis, then Backed Trans Mountain Again

June 19, 2019

Trudeau Declared a Climate Crisis, then Backed Trans Mountain Again

Opponents slam approval of potentially ‘catastrophic’ pipeline expansion.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces the second approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline in Ottawa with fellow cabinet ministers. ‘We listened to community concerns and we are acting on community ideas.’ Photo by Sean Kilpatrick, Canadian Press.

A day after declaring a “climate emergency,” the federal government approved for the second time the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline that it now owns.

In announcing cabinet’s decision, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said fighting climate change and growing the economy are complementary.

“We need to create wealth today so we can invest in the future,” he said. “This project has the potential to create thousands of solid middle class jobs for Canadians.”

Opponents, including the B.C. government, slammed the decision and justification, saying the project puts the coast at risk, as well as tens of thousands of jobs that depend on a clean environment.

The existing pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia has capacity to carry 300,000 barrels of oil and petroleum products a day. The $7.4-billion expansion project would triple that.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada

The federal government approved the pipeline expansion in 2016, but a Federal Court of Appeal ruling overturned the approval, finding that the government failed to adequately consult First Nations and that the National Energy Board’s review of the project should have considered tanker traffic and the threat to southern resident killer whales.

A year ago, the federal government spent $4.5 billion to buy the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline and take over the expansion project from Texas company Kinder Morgan.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A “Cancer On Our Economy”: Report Finds Over $7 Billion Laundered Through British Columbia In 2018

May 12, 2019

A “Cancer On Our Economy”: Report Finds Over $7 Billion Laundered Through British Columbia In 2018

It may have taken a while, but now that housing prices are starting to crash in Vancouver, BC legislators are finally starting to get wise to the fact that the province has been a hot bed for money laundering. It was an easy problem to ignore with prices on the way up, but on the way down – not so much.

And so an independent report released on Thursday concluded that an astounding $7.4 billion was laundered in British Columbia in 2018, out of a total of $46.7 billion laundered across Canada throughout the same period. The report was published by an expert panel led by former B.C. deputy attorney general Maureen Maloney.

Attorney General David Eby told a news conference Thursday:

“Wealthy criminals and those attempting to evade taxes have had the run of our province for too long,to the point that they are now distorting our economy, hurting families looking for housing, and impacting those who have lost loved ones due to the opioid overdose (crisis).”

The reports come after the government commissioned them to try and shed light on laundering by organized crime in BC’s real estate market. This follows last June’s report on dirty money in casinos, which we also wrote about just days ago.

RCMP commissioner Peter German was commissioned to write the report on real estate, and he concluded that illicit money is what led to “a frenzy of buying” that caused housing prices to spike around Metro Vancouver. The report concludes that there are thousands of properties worth billions at high risk for money laundering.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will BC’s Budding LNG Industry Spark More Quakes and Shake Northeast Housing Prices?

February 2, 2019

Will BC’s Budding LNG Industry Spark More Quakes and Shake Northeast Housing Prices?

Look at Oklahoma as a possible preview of things to come.

House damage in central Oklahoma from a magnitude 5.6 earthquake on Nov. 6, 2011. The cause was wastewater disposal in the oil and gas industry. Photo by Brian Sherrod, USGS.

B.C. Premier John Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could barely contain their glee last year when LNG Canada declared its $40-billion Kitimat export terminal and related pipeline were going ahead.

But neither leader mentioned the dramatic surge in horizontal drilling and fracking in northeastern B.C. that will be required to extract the natural gas (or methane) needed by LNG Canada. The plant will take methane, process it into liquefied natural gas and then export it overseas.

What Trudeau called the largest capital project in the nation’s history will initially process two billion cubic feet of methane a day — almost half B.C.’s current production. It has the capacity to scale up and gobble four billion cubic feet a day. That’s more than one-third of Canada’s total demand.

According to energy analyst David Hughes, the project will require the drilling of an additional 400 gas wells a year for 40 years, in addition to the almost 500 wells now being drilled annually.

If you want a preview of what that kind of rapid industry expansion brings, look at Oklahoma.

In that state, America’s fifth largest oil producer, earthquakes caused by industry wastewater injection have damaged homes, sparked lawsuits and a regulatory scramble, and even depressed housing prices.

The state and northern B.C. share a well-studied geological phenomenon: unprecedented earthquake activity caused by fluid injection into the ground — mostly wastewater injection in Oklahoma and massive fracking operations in B.C.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta Is Playing a Dangerous Game with Pipeline Ad Campaign

January 27, 2019

Alberta Is Playing a Dangerous Game with Pipeline Ad Campaign

The anti-BC PR blitz fuels the anger of right-wing groups like the ‘yellow vests.’

Alberta’s ad campaign, with its complaint of being ‘held hostage,’ risks unleashing destructive forces.

A Tyee investigation revealed the expensive details of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s national public relations effort to scapegoat British Columbia, including dubious claims of pipeline benefits translated into Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Filipino and Punjabi.

Not merely cynical and inaccurate, the campaign to portray Albertans as victims also risks emboldening a growing number of extremist elements hijacking “yellow vest” protests.

Alberta government spin doctors apparently decided on a simplistic strategy of framing any opposition to Trans Mountain as “B.C. against Canada.”

The behind-the-scenes brain trust also arrived at two other Orwellian platitudes: “It’s senseless to pit the environment against the economy,” and, “This is a good thing” — a slogan that might be dreamed up if Martha Stewart worked for Burson-Marsteller.

It’s not often that the roof is lifted off the sausage-making factory to reveal the political abattoir in operation. Such as they are, the arguments advanced in the national misinformation onslaught include such untruths as mythicalAsian markets, how expanding exports of unprocessed bitumen are somehow good for meeting our climate goals, and the biggest nose-stretcher of all: how much the absence of a pipeline is costing Canadians. Alberta first claimed it was losing $4 million a day in revenue. That became $40 million a day for all Canadians. Wait! Now it’s $80 million. Isn’t all mathematics really just a matter of opinion?

Government-funded ad campaigns are conveniently unencumbered by the same standards of advertising accuracy required by the private sector — a loophole used to great effect by the authors behind this effort.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mortgage Stress Test Blamed For 25% Collapse In British Columbia Home Sales

January 20, 2019

Mortgage Stress Test Blamed For 25% Collapse In British Columbia Home Sales

Home sales in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province, collapsed in 2018 is mostly correlated to the mortgage stress test that started in January 2018, which decreased buyers’ purchasing power.

The B.C. Real Estate Association (BCREA) reported Tuesday that a total of 78,345 homes were sold on B.C.’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS) in 2018, a massive drop of 24.5% from the 103,758 units sold in 2017.

“B.C. home sales fell below the 10-year average of 84,800 units in 2018,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA’s chief economist. “The sharp decline in affordability caused by the B20 mortgage stress test is largely to blame for decline in consumer demand last year.”

The slowdown in home sales is a government measure to cool the Greater Vancouver’s bubbly housing market that will take full effect in 2019, setting the stage for further declines.

Numerous provincial policies, combined with the federal stress test have clamped down on the buying power of borrowers, leading to a possible near-term top in the housing market.

Despite this rapid slowdown, the average sale price of all homes in the province was the same price versus the previous year, edging up +.40% to $712,508 – an increase of roughly $3,000.

The slight upward trajectory in prices masks the topping activity that was spotted in early 2018. Sales prices continued rising to record levels until late spring, and since, have been declining gradually, as fewer luxury homes sold.

The province experienced the most significant slowdown in sales activity in Greater Vancouver (-30.4%) followed by the Fraser Valley (-26.3%). The only region within the province to see an annual jump in home sales was the Northern region, which saw a rise of 10.2% over 2017. All areas saw a slight year-over-year increase in the average home sale price, but momentum is undoubtedly waning.

The BCREA also reported on December 2018’s housing stats. A total of 3,497 were sold on the province’s MLS in December, down 39.1% from December 2017.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta Has Spent $23 Million Calling BC an Enemy of Canada

January 17, 2019

Alberta Has Spent $23 Million Calling BC an Enemy of Canada

Tyee FOI reveals pro-pipeline PR strategy, spiraling costs.

Billboard on a Kelowna roadway, paid for by Albertans as part of a national campaign with the underlying theme: ‘This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada.’ Source: KeepCanadaWorking website.

The Alberta government has spent more than $23 million — twice as much as previously revealed — in a campaign designed to turn the rest of Canada against B.C., The Tyee has learned.

The “KeepCanadaWorking” ad and PR campaign’s top “principle” states, “This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada,” according to documents obtained under a Freedom of Information request.

The documents show how an “ethnic campaign” targeted residents of the Lower Mainland, Toronto suburbs and Ottawa who speak “Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Filipino, Punjabi.”

Work first began in January, 2018 to create the campaign that promotes expanding the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which would triple the volume of Alberta bitumen sent through the port of Vancouver.

As recently as Nov. 14, 2018, Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP government stated it had spent $10 million on the campaign.

On Jan. 7, 2019, the Alberta government told The Tyee the amount had reached $23,040,463.90.

The province’s self-described “full-service” public relations arm, the Communications and Public Engagement (CPE) department, named that figure in an email responding to Freedom of Information requests filed by The Tyee.

In the past two months, Alberta has dumped more than $13 million into its pro-pipeline public relations push, a provincial government spokesperson confirmed to The Tyee.

What did $23 million in taxpayer money buy?

Internal Alberta government documents obtained by The Tyee reveal the top “principle” of the so-called “KeepCanadaWorking” campaign: “This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BC Energy Minister on Her Site C Reversal: No Regrets

January 14, 2019

BC Energy Minister on Her Site C Reversal: No Regrets

Michelle Mungall once firmly opposed the mega-dam. Now she’s a powerful figure in a ‘complicated’ party.

Critics criticize. But once you’re in government, says Energy Minister Michelle Mungall, ‘It’s not so easy to put your mark in the sand and say it’s never going to change.’ Photo by Christopher Cheung.

Michelle Mungall says she’s not generally a fan of hockey metaphors.

But she uses one to explain what it was like to join British Columbia Premier John Horgan to announce the government would continue building the Site C dam, a project she had fiercely opposed in Opposition.

It was like taking the ice in a Stanley Cup championship game against a much stronger team, knowing you can only lose, said Mungall, the energy, mines and petroleum resources minister.

“You have to go out there and you have to do your best all the same,” she said. “It was a tough day for sure.”

But that’s the reality of being in government, not Opposition, says Mungall, first elected to the B.C. legislature in 2009 as the 31-year-old MLA for Nelson-Creston.

The Site C decision was one of the defining moments of the NDP government’s first year. While it pleased some supporters, including the unions whose members would help build and operate the publicly owned project, it was deeply disappointing to others.

A year later, Mungall does not regret the decision.

An NDP government wouldn’t have started the project, she said during an interview in her office, much of it conducted with her five-month-old son Zavier on her lap. But that didn’t make it easy to stop.

“That’s the nature of being responsible for decisions, is that you have to weigh out everybody’s interests,” she said. In Opposition, the NDP’s Power BCplan emphasized conservation and other alternatives to building the dam.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Another Crucial Canadian Pipeline Runs Into Trouble

January 13, 2019

Another Crucial Canadian Pipeline Runs Into Trouble

Late last year, Royal Dutch Shell gave the greenlight to a massive LNG export terminal on Canada’s Pacific Coast, one of the largest investments in LNG in years. But like other fossil fuel projects in Canada, the plans have run into some trouble.

Shell’s LNG Canada project hinges on a crucial pipeline that will connect gas fields along the border of British Columbia and Alberta to the Pacific coast at Kitimat. The Coastal GasLink pipeline is to be constructed by TransCanada (or, rather TC Energy, as the company now wants to be known).

The Coastal GasLink pipeline was supposed to mark a departure from previous long distance pipelines in Canada – a project that would, from the start, adequately consult with First Nations. Prior pipeline projects – Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and Line 3; TransCanada’s Energy East; as well as Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion – ran into stiff resistance from various First Nations.

TransCanada hoped that Coastal GasLink would be different. But, it too is now meeting resistance. Members of the Wet’suwet’en nation threw up makeshift barricades to stop construction on their land in recent weeks. On January 7, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke through those barricades and arrested at least 14 people. RCMP said it was enforcing a court order, but the clash made national and international headlines.

The situation is complex because the Wet’suwet’en nation never signed a treaty with Canada, so their territory is neither ceded nor even formally acknowledged by Canada. “What I see is a long history of the Canadian government doing its best to avoid acknowledging the existence of other systems of government,” Gordon Christie, a scholar of indigenous law at the University of British Columbia, told The Guardian.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Coastal GasLink an Illegal Pipeline?

January 11, 2019

Is Coastal GasLink an Illegal Pipeline?

Challenge to energy project’s approval brings threats to Smithers activist.

Smithers resident Michael Sawyer claims the Coastal GasLink project lacks the required federal approvals and wants the National Energy Board to review it. Photo by Dan Mesec.

The $6.2-billion Coastal GasLink pipeline may face a bigger threat than the opposition of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and protests across Canada.

Smithers resident Michael Sawyer says the project lacks the required federal approvals. He has filed a formal application to require a full National Energy Board (NEB) review.

Last fall the board agreed to consider Sawyer’s challenge.

In April it will hear final arguments on the question of whether the pipeline falls under provincial jurisdiction, or if it is subject to NEB rules and assessments.

That would bring delays and “put real, tangible benefits to people in B.C., including First Nations, at risk,” said pipeline owner TransCanada Corp., rebranded this week as TC Energy.

The B.C. government’s Environmental Assessment Office approved the contentious 670-kilometre pipeline in 2014.

The project would move fracked methane from northeastern B.C. and northwestern Alberta to the $40-billion LNG Canada export terminal in Kitimat.

Sawyer, a 61-year-old environmental consultant, said the prospect of a NEB regulatory review should have been considered by the B.C. Supreme Court before it issued an injunction that led to RCMP action against two Indigenous checkpoints this week.

“I wonder if TransCanada disclosed information to the judge about this jurisdictional challenge before it asked him to grant the injunction against the blockade,” he said. “The fact is that the RCMP enforced the injunction in an over-the-top manner for a pipeline that may be deemed illegal and whose permits could be quashed.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: british columbia

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts