The Northern Gateway pipeline panel has recommended in favour of the project. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. If it had come out against the pipeline, the damage to Canada’s oil industry doesn’t bear thinking about.
But the review process, as it unfolded, was profoundly disturbing. Among the lesser indictments we might bring, the panel showed an aversion to meeting critics face-to-face that bordered on faint-hearted.
In Bella Bella, a meeting was cancelled after a large and restive crowd showed up. Here in Victoria, members of the public were barred from what should have been an open hearing, again out of concern for the panel’s safety. Even the local member of Parliament was excluded.
If you don’t have the stomach for controversy, don’t take on a job that is guaranteed to invite it.
But the larger issue is the role and structure of the panel itself. This was a three-person tribunal, two of them members of the National Energy Board, and the third with a background in aboriginal community development.
Think about that. Just three people, none of them elected or accountable to the public, get to make one of the most important decisions in our country’s history.
You wouldn’t try a common thief in front a three-person jury, far less a murder case. And yet, in terms of the ramifications at stake, this was far more important than any criminal proceeding. But three people get to issue the finding.
Even the ancient Romans, whose political instincts were iffy at best, couldn’t face the prospect of a ruling triumvirate. We all remember what happened to Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. None of them died in their beds.
An important distinction must be made here. There is nothing wrong with empanelling a group of experts and asking them to issue a factual, scientific report. In part, the Northern Gateway panel did that, and performed a useful public service.
But why on earth would we permit such a group to go a step further, and pronounce a verdict? What stature do they possess that enables them to reach a conclusion on such complex issues?
How do you balance economic progress with environmental damage? How do you weigh benefits that the country as a whole will enjoy, against harm, or risk of harm, that will fall almost entirely on one region?
I don’t suggest this cannot be done. It is the essence of public policy formation that such difficulties continually arise and must be met.
But dealing with them is a political exercise, not a technical or scientific task.
We have a parliament for resolving matters of this kind, and that is where this issue should have rested.
It’s true the federal government has the final word on whether to proceed with the project or let it drop. But politically speaking, Ottawa’s options would have been constrained, if not extinguished altogether, had the panel said no.
As it is, the government is stuck with 209 conditions imposed by the tribunal. Those would be difficult to set aside, and therefore in reality must be lived with.
This is one of those occasions when a panel with unavoidably limited standing was asked to perform a task far beyond its scope. I’m sure its members did the best they could. There is no suggestion they exceeded their authority or acted improperly in issuing a finding.
But we need to revisit the process for deciding matters of this magnitude. Our economic future should rest with parliament, not some group of experts or technicians.
And it certainly should not be left to a panel so undersized its members couldn’t even play a hand of bridge.
