On June 17th, Prime Minister Steven Harper gave the final federal approval of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline Project.

The review process leading up to this decision began in 2009 and has been largely conducted by the Joint Review Panel, a body appointed by the NEB (National Energy Board) and the federal Minister of the Environment in January of 2010.

Northern Gateway has already become, and will continue to be a polarizing issue for Canadian politics. It holds all the quintessential components of a lightning rod issue for debate: Aboriginal rights, environmental protection, economic interests, inter-provincial concerns and most importantly, an exposé of Canada’s regulatory and democratic processes on the largest of scale. This makes it a most difficult of waters to navigate for the general populace. A plethora of articles showing picturesque images of the Douglas Channel, juxtaposed against calls for Harper’s head, or expressions of Enbridge’s irresponsibility, litter the interet. In an attempt to filter the more credible evidence and reporting from the noise, I have tried outlined a brief guide. I hope this will allow people to better inform themselves about the issue and what relevant authorities think about the issue.

It seems appropriate to start at present day and piece together a few parts of the puzzle by working backwards.

Steven Harper on June 18th in the House of Commons:

“The government is acting on the advice of an independent, scientific panel that thoroughly reviewed these matters. The government has applied the conditions demanded by that panel.”

Here he is referencing the Joint Review Panel (JPR) which conducted a five year review process on the Northern Gateway project. The JPR then released two reports last year. They are fairly long but definitely worth skimming through. Engineering schematics of the Kitimat Terminal are probably among the things one could pass over the details of.

JPR Connections and Considerations Reports

I won’t attempt to summarize the reports here, but maybe I’ll do something of that nature in a different piece. Every Canadian should go through the reports.

The next important item to read is the single page statement of decision by the NEB (National Energy Board) on the project. This is the statement that Steven Harper referenced, in it’s exact words, in the House of Commons this past Tuesday.

Decision Statement of NEB

Decision Statement language:

“The Governor in Council has established the 209 conditions set out by the Panel in its report as the conditions in relation to the environmental effects referred to in subsection 53 (1) and (2) of CEAA 2012 with which the Proponent must comply.”

Harper’s language:

“It is now up to the proponent to assure the regulator, going forward, that it will indeed comply with those conditions. The government has to base its findings on the facts and on the hearings as they transpired.”

The guy is a little dry eh?

The main thing to take away from the NEB decision is that they approved the project after carefully consulting the JRP’s reports and also agreed with the 209 conditions that the JRP laid out. (You can find them in their “Considerations” report).

I wanted to include one more part of the NEB Statement because I feel it is microcosmic in its caricature of the issue:

The Governor in Council has decided, after considering the Panel’s report together with the conditions proposed in it, that the Designated Project is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects referred to in subsection 5(1) of CEAA 2012 but that it is likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects referred to in subsection 5(2) of CEAA 2012 to certain populations of woodland caribou and grizzly bear as described in the Panel’s report.

The Governor in Council has also decided that, pursuant to subsection 52(4) of CEAA 2012, the significant adverse environmental effects that the Designated Project is likely to cause to certain populations of woodland caribou and grizzly bear are justified in the circumstances.

“are justified in the circumstances,” would be the line to define the NEB, JRP and Harper’s Government’s positions on the issue. As I mentioned above, the position of knowledgable authorities is important. The NEB is the principle body responsible for a decision and thus their opinion on the matter carries weight and is worthy of all Canadian’s considerations.

The next place to visit is Enbridge’s own site, gatewayfacts.ca

The site contains a lot of information about how Enbridge plans to safeguard their process and to make sure that they meet the NEB’s 209 conditions. It’s definitely worth your time to go through and see some of their work. The project itself can be criticized on a lot of fronts, but the level of technical engineering work that is contributed to a modern oil transport project is something to behold. We’ve definitely come a long way.

Gateway Facts falls short in it;s attempt at credibility. Under the “Environmental Responsibility” tab, and then the “Marine Safety” tab, Enbridge cites three articles that they call “Expert Perspectives” about halfway down the page. The articles are all from the Vancouver Sun, and are all opinion pieces detailing how the B.C. waters of the Douglas Channel are quite safe and that criticisms of the project are groundless. It would be fruitless to debate these sorts of arguments here, and what disppoints me is not the quality of these articles. They are well sourced and provide some significant argument worthy of consideration. These articles are well sourced and provide some significant arguments worthy of consideration. However, it is dissapointing Enbridge failed to present a balanced argument. Instead of presenting actual facts about the risks involved, and many studies carried out in evaluation of those risks, they showed a slanted view from their perspective. That isn’t honesty with Canadians, and really that shouldn’t be the approach that an organization looking for tremendous concessions from this country should have.

Exxon Valdez is the oft-referenced spill in this debate, and I think it serves more as a cause of unity in the debate than of division. It’s easy to take a “with us or against us” approach here, and I think it is of disservice all sides to reduce such a complex issue to a simple binary. No one, especially not Enbridge wants to ever see an oil spill ruin the delicate environment surrounding the Douglas Channel.

That being said, the risks are real and it could be very easily argued that the risks are under-represented by the JRP, or at least under-evaluated. They have a severe lack of citation of relevant analysis that has already been done on this issue in great detail. We’ll see some of that readily available analysis below.

Read this now: Pipeline and Tanker Trouble — Pembina Institute

Read this right afterward: Flawed Analysis, Irresponsible Approval — Concerned Professional Engineers