Natasha Bulowski
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Canada’s National Observer
BC and First Nations must be consulted on possible changes to the federal ban on oil tankers off the province’s northwest coast, Liberal MPs say, as Alberta and Ottawa work towards an agreement that could reportedly involve a new bitumen pipeline.
Reporting by The Globe and Mail suggests Ottawa and Alberta are close to signing a memorandum of understanding involving a pipeline to BC’s northwest coast that could include an exemption from a federal law banning oil tanker traffic in that region.
“I have heard from my constituents on this today and for several months,” Liberal MP for Victoria Will Greaves told Canada’s National Observer in a text message. “They, like me, are decisively not in support.”
“My only comment at this time is that we have been told this morning that some details in the story are incorrect, and that any MOU with Alberta will contain the same criteria the PM has already stated publicly, including provincial support, Indigenous consent and consistent with Canada’s climate goals,” Greaves wrote.
On their way into the weekly caucus meeting in Ottawa, other Liberal MPs from BC said the province and First Nations must be consulted.
Gurbux Saini, Liberal MP for the BC riding of Fleetwood—Port Kells, said before Wednesday’s weekly caucus meeting that “there will be no pipeline” unless First Nations and the BC government give their consent.
Jonathan Wilkinson, a BC Liberal MP for North Vancouver and a former federal environment minister, said that “a number of things” would need to happen before the tanker ban could change, including discussions with the BC government and coastal First Nations.
“The prime minister was pretty clear that the projects would need the support of the jurisdictions in which they’re being built. So I think there’s got to be some conversations with the premier,” Wilkinson said.
“In terms of First Nations, I mean, there needs to be significant support. It doesn’t necessarily have to be unanimous. It wasn’t in the case of Trans Mountain. But there needs to be significant support and at present I don’t think there is.”
Ontario MP Karina Gould said the tanker ban was put in place due to public demand and predicted this will be a “contentious” national conversation.
Bloc Québécois MP and environment critic Patrick Bonin criticized the Liberals for working with Alberta to advance an oil pipeline while international climate negotiations are still underway in Brazil at COP30.
“Once again, when we scratch beneath the Liberals’ environmental veneer, we discover that their only ambition is to develop the oil and gas industries,” Bonin said in French in an emailed statement to reporters on Wednesday.
An emailed statement from Smith’s staff says they are currently “in the final stages of this negotiation and will have more to say soon.”
Eby’s staff said he was unavailable for comment but Minister of Jobs and Economic Growth Ravi Kahlon took questions on the issue at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon and said the position of the province and coastal First Nations has not changed.
“The conversation has been the same as it was last week or the week before that,” Kahlon told reporters.
“We want to focus on the billions of dollars of investments that are in front of us,” Kahlon said. “It does not make sense to be putting all those projects at risk, all that potential employment at risk when we’re talking about a hypothetical project that has no proponent.”
Kahlon said the topic of pipelines and the oil tanker ban did not come up in his recent meetings with federal Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson and Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly.
A previous statement from Smith’s office said the Alberta government agrees there needs to be a credible proponent and extensive First Nations engagement and co-ownership for a pipeline project to move forward.
“I would say that if they’ve heard our concerns, then they’ve heard our concerns and the conversation shouldn’t be happening anymore,” Kahlon said.
First Nations opposition ‘not going away’
Under Bill C-5, and in this new regulatory environment, it’s “really unclear” what it would mean to have an agreement about a pipeline “and what the federal government would actually be willing to do in terms of political capital, in terms of regulatory process, in terms of financing, in terms of consultation with Indigenous communities and with the BC government to make that happen,” Amy Janzwood, a McGill University professor and author of a new book on pipeline and energy politics, said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer.
Any “grand bargain” between the federal government and Alberta comes back to Prime Minister Carney’s desire to attract private investment to Canada’s resource sectors, Jessica Clogg, senior counsel and executive director of West Coast Environmental Law, said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer.
“That said, it is a fundamental misconception that an MOU like that is going to remove the legal uncertainty associated with a potential North Coast pipeline or the lifting of the tanker ban,” Clogg said.
For one, BC Premier David Eby and coastal First Nations have repeatedly opposed Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s calls for a new pipeline and repeal of the tanker ban — recently, Eby and coastal First Nations called on the federal government to continue to honour the 2019 Oil Tanker Moratorium Act.
“In 2010, coastal First Nations also declared, as a matter of their own laws, their own Indigenous law ban on tankers so that risk, that opposition is not going away,” Clogg added.
There is also language in Bill C-5 — the Building Canada Act — that before federal cabinet can add a project to the list that allows the federal government to exempt projects from certain laws that they must consult with the government of the province or territory in which the project will be carried out and obtain its written consent if the project falls within areas of exclusive provincial or territorial jurisdiction.
Although Bill C-5 has put us in uncharted regulatory waters, this provision “creates additional risk related to potential provincial action,” Clogg said.
“It is economically and politically short-sighted to think that an MOU with Alberta could ever remove those risks, and I certainly hope that pipeline companies and investors clearly understand that,” Clogg said.
Clogg said it’s worth remembering that the courts dealt the final blow to the Northern Gateway project by quashing the approval.
“We only need to look back to the Northern Gateway battle to get a sense of the scale of legal and social licence risk that would be faced by a project like Danielle Smith is bringing forward,” she said.
Since then, the biggest change is the introduction of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in BC and the equivalent UNDA legislation federally which, along with setting a consent standard, includes other “substantive provisions” on self-determination and environmental protection, Clogg explained.
“The legal risk has increased exponentially because of the legal requirement to align laws with the UN Declaration,” she said, adding that coastal First Nations are likely considering all legal options.
There is also significant political risk if the federal government and Alberta continue to advance this pipeline proposal (which still does not have a private sector proponent), Janzwood said.
Pipelines are a political lightning rod and Canadian elections have been won and lost, in part, due to contentious projects like pipelines, she said.
Polling suggests there is a subset of Canadians who want to see a pipeline and a subset who want to see climate action, but really, what matters “very concretely” is the communities that are directly affected, she said.
“[BC has] been very clear that they’re not supportive of another pipeline. I don’t see that changing anytime soon and I think it could have electoral consequences,” Janzwood said.
— With files from Rochelle Baker & the Canadian Press
