Federal ministers cut break short in effort to save Trans Mountain pipeline project

OTTAWA (NEWS 1130) – Technically, they’re still on a break but dozens of Liberal MPs are heading back to Ottawa today. They’re convening for a special cabinet meeting to discuss the deteriorating situation around the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Kinder Morgan has set a deadline of May 31st to find a political solution and assure the project goes ahead.

“If they (MPs) don’t get this one through, they will really have put on a lot on the line and have nothing to show for it,” says Brian Lee Crowley with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank, calling it a “no-win” situation.

“They (politicians) will have alienated their environmental supporters by supporting a pipeline but they won’t have been able to deliver it to the people they were taking the environmental heat for.”

The meeting comes as tensions between Alberta and BC mount.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley promised legislation this week that would, once passed, give Alberta the ability to reduce domestic oil supplies into BC. Such a move would cause already high gas prices in BC to spike, ramping up the pressure from pipeline proponents on the province to back down.

BC Premier John Horgan, heading a minority NDP government that clings to power only with the support of three Green party members under an agreement to fight the pipeline, has so far shown no sign of giving in.

The pipeline is within federal jurisdiction, but Horgan is trying to use provincial powers to limit how much oil – ultimately destined for export markets overseas – can flow through it, effectively killing any reason for expansion.

Notley said yesterday that she expects the federal government to follow Alberta’s lead and put economic and fiscal pressure on BC to back off. She also wants Ottawa to use the courts or legislation to assert its jurisdictional authority over the pipeline, and to put its money where its mouth is – either as insurance for worried investors or even as a stakeholder in the project.

Melanee Thomas, a politics professor at the University of Calgary, said provinces have very little legal ability to force other provinces to take action. She said Notley’s plan to give Alberta the ability to restrict BC’s oil supply may not be constitutional, but likely can’t be challenged unless and until she actually goes through with it.

“There isn’t really a court challenge there until they pull the trigger, but it’s still ratcheting up the fight,” says Thomas.

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The expansion project is meant to triple the capacity of the pipeline that already runs between Edmonton and Burnaby. Opponents to the project in BC say the pipeline can’t go ahead if Canada is to meet its climate change targets, and also fear the expanded risk of oil spills and heightened oil tanker traffic off the coast of BC.

Liberal MP Ken Hardie, who represents Fleetwood-Port Kells, says even though he’s had concerns about the project, he points out that it has already been approved and that its construction is inevitable.

“Think of this (pipeline expansion) as in the national interest. There’s only one entity who actually has legal authority I guess to determine what is in the national interest, and that is the federal government. In that respect, we have made that decision,” says Hardie.

He admits some of the concerns raised by critics are valid, but the existing pipeline’s track record has been good.

“And we have not had any spills. There’s more oil in the freighters in the harbour at any one time than we’d ever be shipping out of here from the Kinder Morgan facility. Even without billion-dollars-plus investment in the oceans protection program, we have been able to deal with anything that has come our way.”

This is the second of a two-week break for the MPs. The meeting is scheduled for 12 p.m. PT in Ottawa.