I laughed at Jonathan Bradley’s recent article on the “clandestine” nature of the Canadian Energy Regulator (CER.).As one of the last permanent Members of the National Energy Board (NEB), it gave me a brief sense of “Told you so.”.Probably the name recognition of the NEB was not a great deal higher than that of the CER and I will bet that the five percent of Canadians who know the name of Canada’s energy regulator include those who show up at hearings to tell the commissioners that they are pond scum who make their mothers blush in embarrassment. It is a free country so that is not a bad thing..But as I think of it, perhaps I am wrong..For at least its last five years, the NEB bore the brunt of our current prime minister’s pique at not being able to appoint any of his buddies to the board when he came to power in 2015. Most of the government’s prolific and public statements about the NEB following this realization were interpreted by me, perhaps incorrectly, as, “Fine. If we can’t appoint our friends, then we will tear the whole organization apart.”.Which they proceeded to do..They wrote a letter to one of my colleagues demanding that he resign his position on the Board so that a “worthy Canadian of indigenous descent with a scientific background” could be appointed instead..Someone from somewhere in Canada other than Calgary..Unfortunately for the government narrative, my colleague was an apolitical, indigenous guy from Labrador with a PhD in animal biology and in my view, possibly the best Board member to have served Canada. But that is only my view..I suspect that the CER is flying under the radar with Canadians because the pipeline wars are now mostly over. When the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) is finally placed into service, Canadian pipeline capacity will match the oil produced for export and so talk of a new Energy East or renewal of Keystone Express (KXL) pipelines will be moot..But ironies will continue to abound..Little of the oil from the $31 billion (and possibly counting) TMX pipeline will find its way into Chinese or Indian refineries because, based on testimony from the original TMX hearing, most of it will go through the Panama Canal and end up in Texas refineries. The same refineries that would have received oil from the KXL pipeline. So here are some questions..1. Why did the Liberal government approve and then buy a pipeline that increases tanker ship traffic in the Salish Sea (Straits of Georgia) instead of opting for a more direct and less expensive link through a continental pipeline? What about the orcas and pinnipeds?.2. Why did the Jason Kenney government contribute more than $1 billion towards a pipeline that would have been mostly redundant if it had been built. Shouldn’t the citizens of Alberta have at least gotten some stock in the company that received their generosity?.Enquiring minds would like to know..As to the CER, it remains an important government agency and should be esteemed for the important work that it does..Government energy policy is based on the annual technical reports of the agency and when pipeline companies want to build infrastructure or change their fee structures, the decisions made by the CER commissioners are material to the energy costs we pay..If the governments of Western provinces decide to tie their electrical grids together or if Labrador wants to sell its energy outside its borders, the issues raised at the public hearings will be decided by CER commissioners. These are important national issues. We want the CER to have independent commissioners with the appropriate skill sets to make the right decisions..Contrary to the puerile rhetoric of the 2015 election cycle, the National Energy Board members were very skilled and independent. No doubt the current CER commissioners are equally competent and independent..And because the commissioners are independent, I doubt they had anything to do with the $158,000 Environics study reported on by Mr. Bradley..From 2015 to 2020, Murray Lytle PhD. P.Eng, was a Member of the National Energy Board.
