Parliament: Will the government reconsider pipelines approved through the deeply flawed NEB process?

Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, the National Energy Board expert panel that reported this week included prominent industry people, such as Brenda Kenny of the Canadian Pipeline Association and Hélène Lauzon of the Quebec Business Council on the Environment. The report was damning.

This is an agency that has no credibility whatsoever, and needs to be massively overhauled. Coupled with the expert panel on environmental assessment, it is clear that the bogus process upon which Kinder Morgan was subjected to a sham of a review does not have any credibility.

Will the government reconsider approving a pipeline that should never have been approved?

 

Jim Carr – Minister of Natural Resources

Mr. Speaker, the member knows that when we took office, there were a number of major infrastructure projects under review. We established a set of principles that would govern how they would be reviewed, and one of the important ones was that no proponent would be asked to go back to square one, which I am sure members of the House would agree is fair.

We knew and announced at the time that this would be an interim step leading to a longer term reform of environmental assessment in Canada, a reform and a process that is now well under way.