BURNABY, B.C. C The federal government is vulnerable to lawsuits regardless of any recommendation the National Energy Board makes on Kinder Morgan Inc.’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, Green Party leader Elizabeth May said Thursday.
“It’s almost inevitable you will see lawsuits using this process,” May told reporters on the sidelines of the third day of NEB final hearings on the Trans Mountain project, which would carry oilsands crude from Alberta towards the metro Vancouver position for export.
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She addressed the NEB’s panel Thursday morning and known as the board’s process for hearing and weighing evidence on the project “broken” and “outrageous.”
The federal government’s legal vulnerability, May said, is the consequence of both changes towards the NEB’s process under the previous federal government led by then-prime minister Stephen Harper and coming changes, as a result of the promise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau designed to update and reform the energy regulator.
“There is really a significant frailty to the evidence that would not have access to been in place had cross-examination occurred,” she said.
May, like other interveners who summarized their oral arguments here this week, criticized the NEB process because of not allowing interveners’ lawyers to cross-examine the evidence Kinder Morgan presented in support of their pipeline project, which would expand an existing pipeline system’s ability to carry oil by 590,000 barrels per day in an estimated cost of $5.4 billion.
She said Kinder Morgan would have the legal capability to sue the government of Canada underneath the North American Free Trade Agreement, in the same way that Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. has initiated a suit against the U.S. government over its rejection of Keystone XL pipeline.
On the other hand, the interveners in opposition to the project would have a cause of legal action as a result of insufficient “procedural fairness” along the way.
“The denial of our opportunities to cross-examine witnesses and to fully take part in a National Energy Board process is a significant future potential lawsuit too,” May said.
Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr has said the NEB’s process for reviewing and approving pipeline projects is going to be updated, though no business that’s currently in the middle of an agreement process will have to begin anew, from scratch.
For its part, NEB spokespeople noted now that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion application is made in 2013.
gmorgan@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/geoffreymorgan
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