Environmentalists hit back over pipeline hearings

OTTAWA—Environmentalists accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government of taking the side of big oil over ordinary citizens after the Conservatives said foreign-funded “radicals” were distorting a pipeline approval process.

“It’s definitely very troubling that the government would poison this process,” Greenpeace Canada climate and energy campaigner Mike Hudema said.

He was referring to the government’s complaints about the role of green activists in public hearings that start Tuesday on a proposed pipeline to carry tarsands-derived crude oil from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia for export on supertankers.

More than 4,000 people have signed up to speak on the proposed $5.5 billion Northern Gateway pipeline at hearings being held by a three-person federal review panel.

The Harper government stepped up its messaging about the pipeline hearings Monday. In an open letter to Canadians, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said foreign-financed radicals opposed to any energy development have hijacked the regulatory approval process by overloading the witness lists. Oliver said the regulatory system “is broken.”

Hudema responded, “This government doesn’t want to have a public discussion on the industry’s disastrous safety record, or the toxic effects that spills from a 1,170-kilometre tarsands pipeline would have on indigenous rights, the Rocky Mountains, the B.C. coast, or the more than 1,000 rivers and streams this pipeline would cross. Instead, they try to change the channel by inventing scapegoats and bogeymen.

“We’re supposed to have a democracy of the people, not a democracy of the oil corporations,” he added.

MP Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader, said the government “is trying to demonize the environmental opposition and scare Canadians by saying foreigners are trying to hurt our economy. It’s very disturbing,” she said in an interview.

Oliver said that, with a host of major energy projects coming up in the near future, the government wants to see objective, in-depth regulatory reviews. “But we don’t think it should go on forever and certainly not be done in a way which is designed to have the projects derailed,” he said in an interview.

The government will look at ways to limit public participation in regulatory hearings, possibly by accepting only one presentation from each interested group, Oliver said.

He declined to say if the government would abide by the final recommendation of the joint review panel, which will decide in late 2013 if Northern Gateway is environmentally safe and in the national interest according to National Energy Board guidelines. The federal cabinet has the final say on whether to accept or reject the review panel’s recommendation, although no government in memory has rejected a National Energy Board decision, according to NEB officials.

Original Article
Source: Star