Newly sworn-in Environment Minister Mary Polak was less than impressed Tuesday with Enbridge’s explanation about why it should be allowed to pipe heavy oil across B.C. and ship it off the coast.
The B.C. government came down against the current proposal earlier. Enbridge tried to rebut the concerns this week in closing oral arguments before the federal panel reviewing the project.
But if Polak was moved by their answers, she wasn’t showing it. She said B.C. isn’t looking for commitments, it’s looking for hard facts.
“It’s all well and good to make promises,” she said in an interview. “But we are looking for evidence.
“We don’t think it’s appropriate to approve this as it stands.”
Polak said the government wants to scrutinize all the testimony carefully, but in evaluating Enbridge’s position, there still isn’t enough evidence to establish if the company is capable of backing up its positions.
As the government lawyer told the panel this week: “We don’t want to be in a situation where Northern Gateway’s plans look good on paper but are not effective under real conditions.”
Polak said the company seems to be questioning the seriousness of the risks that various parties have outlined, she said. “But at the same time they are making commitments that they could respond to all of them.
“I’m not sure how seriously we should take those commitments, when at the same time they are discounting the nature of those risks.”
Enbridge stressed the potential for economic catastrophe if Alberta oil were to get stranded. That would arise if the U.S. turned the taps off for Canadian imports and there was no port access to ship it offshore.
Polak said the economic impact does have to be considered, but “it’s strange to me” they would include that in their final argument, given the purpose of the hearings, which was to hear local concerns about whether it is in the public interest.
“On the one hand they are willing to analyze economic risk, but they should be willing to engage on concerns about environmental catastrophes. It’s an interesting contradiction.”
Polak is free and clear at this point to take a hard-line position, as the government — after being hands-off in the initial going — has progressively toughened its stance on Northern Gateway as it stands.
But she is still the environment minister in a government that stands for huge job creation based on major resource development and just won a big mandate.
Her letter of instruction from Premier Christy Clark after being sworn in earlier this month tells her to continue working — independent of the federal review process — on marine and terrestrial heavy-oil spill-response studies, with regard to the five conditions B.C. has imposed before it would consider pipelines. (Regulatory approval, best safety practices on land and sea, First Nations buy-in and a fair share of revenue to the province.)
But she is required to be a lot more enthusiastic about liquefied natural gas. Her letter contains the same point all ministers got: “We have a generational opportunity to develop liquefied natural gas. This will demand determination and purposeful work.”
She is quick to point out the rest of the letter. It says Polak will play a key role in seizing the opportunity and tells her to work on making LNG facilities “the cleanest in the world.”
B.C. Liberals are now devoted to resource development in general and LNG in particular. The NDP was weak on the topic and it contributed to them blowing the election. So although the B.C. Liberals are still in a holding pattern on oil pipelines (against the current Northern Gateway, but willing to consider others conditionally), don’t expect Polak to blow too many whistles when it comes to big projects. Her job is to make sure they’re as clean as possible, not stop them.
Just So You Know: Another instruction from the premier’s office has to do with revamping the age-old debate about where the limits are when it comes to heavy industry in B.C. She is under orders to “create a round table (from community, labour, industry, First Nations and environmentalists) to provide guidance on how to balance environmental protection with economic development.”
That balance point is unlikely to move in the green direction any time soon.
