Joe Oliver pledges regulatory overhaul this year
Applause rang out at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce as federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver yesterday denounced Canada’s regulatory apparatus as “unpredictable” and “needlessly complex.” “Bad processes do not produce good environmental outcomes,” he told a roomful of oilmen at an industry-sponsored cocktail event.
Away from the podium and his prepared remarks, Oliver promised broad changes to the system – both legislative and regulatory – before the year is out. He envisions a process with “enforceable” time lines, so that project reviews don’t go on “forever.” “The Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline project took nine years to be approved. Josyln North took six years. This is excessive.”
Oliver’s unvarnished enthusiasm for Alberta’s oil sands is nothing new. Yet Stephen Ewart at the Calgary Herald wonders whether all the bluster and anxiety about “champagne socialists,” as Oliver described opponents to Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway project at one point yesterday, is for the best. Canadians are divided over the project, Ewart cautions, and opponents cannot be easily lumped under the same umbrella.
Oliver suggested major reforms lie ahead, promising “system-wide legislative changes, and lots of it.”
He insisted that any reforms introduced to Canada’s regulatory system are not directly tied to ongoing reviews of the West Coast pipeline proposed by Enbridge. But the two appear intimately linked. There was no mention, for instance, of the need for sweeping changes in a December 2011 report compiled by consultancy IHS CERA – along with the industry biggies, NRCan was surveyed for its views – that compared regulatory processes in Alaska, South Australia and Alberta. “I’m not commenting on Gateway,” the Minister said yesterday, “but we’re going to be looking at this before the Gateway project is completed.”
Environmentalists are wary of such talk, Jeff Jones reports at Reuters. ”We certainly want to see our government support the process that the National Energy Board allows, a process that allows all members of the public to have a say on a project that’s of concern to them,” Jennifer Grant, director of the oil sands program at the Pembina Institute, told the news wire.
Oliver is more sanguine, rattling off oil sands statistics and dismissing outright the suggestion that his government might undermine results of the Gateway review by tinkering with the process at its mid-point. “There are reviews ongoing all the time,” he told reporters yesterday. “If we waited for all the reviews to be completed we would never act.”
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