Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[Yoho]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1603154957443944448

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

Fair question, I would assume it's the Maritime Link with Churchill Falls in Labrador.

According to this - https://www.nspower.ca/cleanandgreen/clean-energy#how

They are transitioning some coal plants to natural gas but also batteries for storage and connecting to New Brunswick/Quebec to get their clean energy when needed.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

According to this - https://www.nspower.ca/cleanandgreen/clean-energy#how

They are transitioning some coal plants to natural gas but also batteries for storage and connecting to New Brunswick/Quebec to get their clean energy when needed.

I didn't see that. So they might switch some coal plants to natural gas.

I would have assumed Lingan would be one, as it's the largest plant and with 2 turbines coming offline I (who is not an engineer) would think there'd be capacity to make one of those turbines natural gas (like replace a goal one).

I'm curious about those plans now, and if they'll come to fruition or if the Maritime Link will suffice?

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by Yoho

https://twitter.com/user/status/1603154957443944448

Nice you’ll finally get your Russian payments Yoho! Hopefully they backpay?

[ThePrince]

Originally Posted by stone hands

U keep posting this as if canada has any say whatsoever in what other countries do or consume (and who they get the products from), and can control anything except for what happens inside canada. That's great that china sucks, but we dont live there, so who cares what they're doing. You can only control your own actions, no matter how trivial they might seem compared to things you have no control over

How can you possibly say this given what we're seeing in the world right now, with Germany, France, Austria and others going back to coal because they don't have adequate access to gas?

The demand will be there, it's a matter of if Canada wants to be there and take some of that market share with its ethically produced, emissions conscious resources, or whether Canada wants to forego a significant source of funding for future infrastructure, health care, etc.

You can't just focus on the supply side of the equation and completely ignore the demand curve. And if there's one thing we've learned over COVID and beyond, it's that energy demand is very inelastic.

[TheIronMaiden]

Other than B.C which is a different kettle of fish because of its Treaty status, has the Federal Government tried to throttle natural gas production?

[Geraldsh]

They throttled it by failing to promote it. They promote green projects such as wind, solar, hydrogen, etc. but nothing for natural gas which should be recognized as a green alternative.

[ThePrince]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Other than B.C which is a different kettle of fish because of its Treaty status, has the Federal Government tried to throttle natural gas production?

The Federal government, with its increasingly strict and unpredictable regulatory environment, has made it much more difficult for projects like LNG to secure the adequate attention and funding necessary to get off the ground.

These projects are massive and require lots of planning and early stage funding, and given the uncertainty with the federal government intervening and changing regulations on the fly, there are very few companies willing to put forth that time, effort, and money when it could get kiboshed at any moment.

Trans Mountain is a great example of this at work. You had a private entity (Kinder Morgan) that had invested considerable time, effort, and money into the project, and the Feds pulled the rug under them in the middle of the project with all of the regulatory delays. Not to mention the legal delays from the Government of BC that were obviously illegal (eminent domain supersedes when crossing provincial boundaries), but the Feds never intervened to speed up the process or provide any assurances that the project would get done, causing Kinder Morgan to pull out. And to avoid extreme embarrassment and backlash, the Feds had to purchase the pipeline, and now it's going to end up costing taxpayers money because costs have ballooned so much.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by ThePrince

The Federal government, with its increasingly strict and unpredictable regulatory environment, has made it much more difficult for projects like LNG to secure the adequate attention and funding necessary to get off the ground.

How many years was Stephen Harper in power and how many pipelines / LNG terminals did he get built or is it just Liberal Federal Governments we don't like?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by ThePrince

The Federal government, with its increasingly strict and unpredictable regulatory environment, has made it much more difficult for projects like LNG to secure the adequate attention and funding necessary to get off the ground.

These projects are massive and require lots of planning and early stage funding, and given the uncertainty with the federal government intervening and changing regulations on the fly, there are very few companies willing to put forth that time, effort, and money when it could get kiboshed at any moment.

Trans Mountain is a great example of this at work. You had a private entity (Kinder Morgan) that had invested considerable time, effort, and money into the project, and the Feds pulled the rug under them in the middle of the project with all of the regulatory delays. Not to mention the legal delays from the Government of BC that were obviously illegal (eminent domain supersedes when crossing provincial boundaries), but the Feds never intervened to speed up the process or provide any assurances that the project would get done, causing Kinder Morgan to pull out. And to avoid extreme embarrassment and backlash, the Feds had to purchase the pipeline, and now it's going to end up costing taxpayers money because costs have ballooned so much.

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?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Torture

How many years was Stephen Harper in power and how many pipelines / LNG terminals did he get built or is it just Liberal Federal Governments we don't like?

"But Harper tho?"

Justin...is that you?

[ThePrince]

Originally Posted by Torture

How many years was Stephen Harper in power and how many pipelines / LNG terminals did he get built or is it just Liberal Federal Governments we don't like?

Why do people bring this up as if it's some sort of silver bullet that because the Conservatives didn't do it, it absolves the Liberals of any blame.

But to actually answer your question, I'll share exactly what I stated in a different post - that yes, the Liberal government shares much of the blame for this (I won't be so pompous as to say that the blame falls squarely on the Liberals, there's many factors at play)


Liberals have been in power since 2015. Shale gas started being a thing in the US around 2007, and Canada's most prominent shale gas resources (Montney/Duvernay) are a bit more difficult to extract than the US stuff, and a lot more difficult to get to market, given the geographic proximity to existing infrastructure. The large fracs required for adequate exploitation of these resources didn't really start being a thing until 2016/2017 (after the Liberals were in power). It took time for technology to catch up to how best to develop the resource.

So to answer your question, a lot of these projects did try and get off the ground in the early 2010s under a conservative government, but the well results weren't quite good enough to support the billions of dollars of investment needed. That's changed over the last 5-6 years, but the current policies of the Federal government have made it too difficult and onerous to get a terminal built in a reasonable amount of time.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by ThePrince

The Federal government, with its increasingly strict and unpredictable regulatory environment, has made it much more difficult for projects like LNG to secure the adequate attention and funding necessary to get off the ground.

These projects are massive and require lots of planning and early stage funding, and given the uncertainty with the federal government intervening and changing regulations on the fly, there are very few companies willing to put forth that time, effort, and money when it could get kiboshed at any moment.

Trans Mountain is a great example of this at work. You had a private entity (Kinder Morgan) that had invested considerable time, effort, and money into the project, and the Feds pulled the rug under them in the middle of the project with all of the regulatory delays. Not to mention the legal delays from the Government of BC that were obviously illegal (eminent domain supersedes when crossing provincial boundaries), but the Feds never intervened to speed up the process or provide any assurances that the project would get done, causing Kinder Morgan to pull out. And to avoid extreme embarrassment and backlash, the Feds had to purchase the pipeline, and now it's going to end up costing taxpayers money because costs have ballooned so much.

Thanks for the answer.

I still think that B.C is an exceptional case, because there are no treaties. Thus there is a real and expensive fear that comes along with negotiating access to supersede Indigenous land title and mineral rights. My sense is that there will be a very large retroactive expense for the historic developments that could come to light if this is brought to the supreme court of Canada, who are more generous than ever in treaty related rulings.

As an aside, to give light to how important treaty and extinguishing Indigenous land title and mineral rights are. Northern alberta ( treaty 8) has some of the most comprehensive treaty's with respect to this. in 1899 the crown acquiring land and mineral rights from both metis and First nations. no doubt this has enabled development with out much legal resistance.

[ThePrince]

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?

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.

[Torture]

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?

Exactly. My wife works at the Canada Energy Regulator (Formerly the National Energy Board) and they all knew at the time that Harper trying to ram them through was going to wind up in court challenges and delays.

Those court challenges came, the pipeline companies/NEB lost, and Trudeau increased regulations to increase the legal certainty that if the CER/NEB passed something that it would actually get through.

I am not arguing that Trudeau or the overhaul of the regulations is perfect, but there's more to the story about why we can't build pipelines/LNG export/etc. That certainty in the regulatory environment that ThePrince is looking for is exactly what the Libs were aiming for by increasing the bar.

[GGG]

With Trans-Mountain didn’t the court overturn the federal approval for not meeting the governments own requirements on consultation?

The Harper era approval did not meet their own standards.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by ThePrince

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.

I had also thought part of this process was to do exactly what you say. Clear it up and give straightforward answers.

It also wasn't an exact twinning, there are areas with new ROW. which I think contributed to the issues.

Spoiler!

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/applica...ct-review.html

[ThePrince]

Originally Posted by Torture

Exactly. My wife works at the Canada Energy Regulator (Formerly the National Energy Board) and they all knew at the time that Harper trying to ram them through was going to wind up in court challenges and delays.

Those court challenges came, the pipeline companies/NEB lost, and Trudeau increased regulations to increase the legal certainty that if the CER/NEB passed something that it would actually get through.

I am not arguing that Trudeau or the overhaul of the regulations is perfect, but there's more to the story about why we can't build pipelines/LNG export/etc. That certainty in the regulatory environment that ThePrince is looking for is exactly what the Libs were aiming for by increasing the bar.

The court challenges and delays were going to happen no matter what. The BC government kept challenging the project in court, when they were fully aware that pipeline projects crossing provincial boundaries were the federal government's jurisdiction. They kept wasting taxpayer money on challenges they knew they would lose, hoping that Kinder Morgan would back out of the project.

And all the while the federal government knew they could put an end to this by fast-tracking the case to the Supreme Court, but they refused to do so because of optics. So no, they weren't clearing anything up or giving straightforward answers because they knew what BC was doing was illegal and refused to do anything about it. Which again from the point of view of investors and companies looking at future projects, why would you invest in Canada when this type of stuff happens?

[Torture]

The court challenges and delays were going to happen no matter what. The BC government kept challenging the project in court, when they were fully aware that pipeline projects crossing provincial boundaries were the federal government's jurisdiction. They kept wasting taxpayer money on challenges they knew they would lose, hoping that Kinder Morgan would back out of the project.

Agreed.

And all the while the federal government knew they could put an end to this by fast-tracking the case to the Supreme Court, but they refused to do so because of optics. So no, they weren't clearing anything up or giving straightforward answers because they knew what BC was doing was illegal and refused to do anything about it. Which again from the point of view of investors and companies looking at future projects, why would you invest in Canada when this type of stuff happens?

Except if they fast tracked it to the Supreme Court it would have lost on the basis of not doing enough Indigenous consultation or environmental review.....like it did in 2018.

Aug. 30, 2018: The Federal Court of Appeal overturns the Trudeau government’s approval of the pipeline expansion, ruling neither Indigenous consultation nor the environmental review were properly completed.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7131724/t...ne-timeline-2/

[CaptainCrunch]

https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/...rm-ottawa.html

Its not intimidation, its a business decision. PR - "We want you to spend $100 million or more on this." Facebook - "Nah we're good, we'll just end news". PR - "Quit intimidating us"