Thank you, Minister, for being here this morning.
Because we have limited time, I'm going to jump right in, and my comments are going to be around the new NEB process, contrasting it with the old. It's a process that you have said many times in the House—I've lost track of how many times—should be engendering the confidence of Canadians in the energy industry.
I want to talk about the interim processes that you brought out in January and that were used for the Kinder Morgan decision. Many have criticized these interim measures, or at least the panel that went around British Columbia in the summer discussing the Kinder Morgan decision. Communities, including indigenous communities, were given next to no notice to take part in the meetings. No transcripts or records were made of the testimony, and the report itself stated, in the words of the panel, “We understood that our process would not be a redo of the NEB review”, which is what your party promised during the election. They also said:
...about the important issues they felt had been missed in the NEB process, our panel hadn’t the time, technical expertise or the resources to fill those gaps. Our role was not to propose solutions, but to identify important questions that, in the circumstances, remain unanswered.
The report made no recommendations. It only gave the government six questions, all of which the government failed to address in the approval of Kinder Morgan.
My question is, what was the point of this interim process? If it was meant to give the government advice, if it was meant to engender confidence, it has clearly failed on all those grounds. To engender confidence you have to give people the feeling that they have been listened to. Your government met with Ian Anderson, the head of Kinder Morgan, 36 times in the last year, in private meetings, and yet you give the other concerned communities very little time and very little credibility.
I just want to know how this is going to engender confidence.