Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, on April 27, I rose in the House to convey the concerns B.C. coastal communities had about the foregone conclusion made by the government on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.
The former parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources said that the review “was the most exhaustive in the history of pipelines in Canada” and that the “additional steps...made the process more rigorous.” One of the problems I have with this government is that its representatives can keep standing in this place and make such preposterous claims.
First, the ministerial review panel in question admitted that it lacked the time, the technical expertise and the resources to fill the gaps in the National Energy Board process. lt ended up with little more than questions that remained unanswered. It kept no public records of hearings, admitted that the meetings were hastily organized and confirmed that it had a serious lack of public confidence in the National Energy Board and its recommendations. I attended one of those meetings when it came to Victoria in 2016, so I witnessed how bad it was first-hand.
Next, we have the internal memo from the office of the former natural resources minister, which described the negotiations with first nations as “paternalistic”, “unrealistic” and “inadequate”. We now have evidence that the government had made up its mind to allow Texas-based Kinder Morgan to build a major pipeline and that it regarded consultations with first nations as simply an item to check off a grocery list.
The government maintains that it fulfilled its legal duty to consult first nations about the project before it announced that it was approving the pipeline on Nov. 29, 2016. However, it has been revealed that at a meeting in late October 2016, a group of about two dozen senior staff were invited to Vancouver and were told by a senior government official at that meeting that their job was to find a way to get the pipeline approved.
The NDP, and our leader Jagmeet Singh, have repeatedly told the Liberal government that its consultation process for the Trans Mountain pipeline was completely inadequate and destined for failure. Unfortunately, our enquiries were repeatedly met with the same old Liberal arrogance. However, we found vindication last month as the unanimous Federal Court of Appeal ruling on Trans Mountain found that the National Energy Board's review of the project was so flawed that the federal government could not rely on it as a basis for its decision to approve the expansion. The court also concluded that the federal government failed in its duty to engage in meaningful consultations with first nations before giving the green light to the project. ln their consultations with indigenous communities, the government's representatives limited their mandate to listening to and recording the concerns of the indigenous applicants and then simply transmitting those concerns to decision-makers. There was no meaningful two-way dialogue.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly stated that no relationship is more important than that with indigenous people, but the government's approval process for Trans Mountain exposed a calculated and predetermined strategy to get to a yes decision on this project.
lndigenous people are entitled to a dialogue that demonstrates that the government gives serious consideration to the specific and very real concerns they have. Is the parliamentary secretary prepared to still say that this project is going to be built in spite of these concerns?