Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Maybe I'm remembering this much differently than you, but I thought the issue was the Harper government failed to consult properly. So the delays were due to the Trudeau government doing proper consultation as required by the courts, and it would have led to more court challenges if they had intervened to "speed up the process" which is why it was delayed in the first place.
Anyone care to chime in on this?
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Again, this blame falls on the federal government - the pipeline was a twin of an already existing pipeline. The pipeline was fully approved by the federal government in 2016 and approved by the BC government in 2017. But then they kept moving the goal posts and requiring Kinder Morgan to continue to jump through hoops with added consultations and assessments after the project was already approved.
This is what I meant when I said that the regulatory environment under the current federal government is unpredictable. If they just outlined a clear path to what is required to garner approval for these types of projects, companies would have a lot more certainty going into the projects, and would be more willing to commit. They didn't do that with Trans Mountain, and they still haven't done it with any large scale infrastructure process. But in my opinion, they want to keep it uncertain in order to deter these types of projects, but maintain plausible deniability that it's their fault to the public.