LYTLE: The oil flows at last — but no thanks to the Trudeau Liberals

When the world was much younger, I worked on large, successful projects and when the project was over, when water and other stuff were gurgling their way through their respective pipes there was a big party. Everyone was very pleased, and the future looked bright. I also worked on large, unsuccessful projects that never got built and there was still a big party. Everyone drank the beer, speculated on why the project was not being built, and looked into a more bleak future. The point is, there was always a party..Today the Transmountain pipeline will be transporting very nearly twice as much oil and oil products as it transported yesterday. That is a big deal but there doesn’t seem to be a party and one wonders why not. I suppose the 400%+ cost overrun and the two- or three-year production delay has something to do with it, but I think there is something more.In the interests of full disclosure, I know several people who worked on the project, and they have my highest professional esteem. I don’t believe that the project ran into problems due to shoddy engineering or poor execution. I can’t speak to the performance at the executive level, but I suppose working for an owner (Canadian government) that expressed antagonism to oil pipelines had its particular problems. My view is that the project team was competent and motivated. They did yeoman work, and the problems of the project should not be laid at their feet. They deserve their party and I hope it is a good one.Again, in the interests of full disclosure, I was involved in the regulatory approval process for the pipeline and then was dismissed with the dissolution of the National Energy Program (NEB.) I prefer to think that the Members who were dismissed (one of whom is indigenous) were attainted rather than legitimately removed but that is mostly because I am, by nature, cranky. When the Trudeau government came to power in 2015, it was determined to dismantle the NEB as per their election platform. Mr. Trudeau was also determined to make big overtures to the First Nations community in terms of dishing out taxpayer dollars. The fact that he treated Canada’s first indigenous Attorney General with breathtaking callousness and once shamed two First Nations individuals who tried to get his attention at a Liberal Party fundraiser should never be used to cast aspersions on his dedication to First Nations causes. The Liberals new approach to dealing with First Nations, we were told, was called “obtaining social license.” I am all for obtaining social license — whatever that is. I am also happy to involve First Nations and anyone else whose property will be impacted by industrial development in the definition of the problem and the mitigation of its effects. If you dig a trench across my lawn, I want the flowers put back where they were. But generally, the terms of the mitigation are negotiated prior to the project and not when an inflated payment is required to move things along. I guess this is not how drama teachers do these things.Like many other aspects of the Liberal government, it is not clear that the cabinet understood what it was doing when it destroyed the NEB. Yes, most of the employees just moved into the new institution but with a new regulatory framework and with new commissioners who did not have a great deal of experience, problems and hence delays were guaranteed to arise. I don’t know if my thesis is correct because I was not involved in the project beyond early 2020 but here is what I think may have happened. The relatively new regulatory agency likely caused delays as expressed above. Overlaid on the problems inherent to a new regulator was the determination to involve inexperienced First Nations folks in both the regulatory processes and inspection of the project construction. Delays became compounded on delays. But how can delays drive up costs?The size of the Transmountain project was such that multiple, large contractors were required to meet the project schedule. When the project was delayed for environmental or regulatory reasons, a decision had to be made whether to de-mobilize the construction crews to save costs. However, if the crews were sent home the chance of getting them back when construction was ready to restart was slim to none. So, they stayed and idled at a cost of tens of millions of dollars per month per crew. This is how you blow the schedule and cost estimate one delay at a time. A badger hole found here, a bat den found there, a creek with fish in it to cross, a need to negotiate passage through First Nations land, a once in a hundred-year flood, a need to get a quick answer from the regulator, a need to have a construction inspection when no one trained in such inspection is available. There are millions of reasons for delays and when the owner is not cost-conscious, there is only so much screaming the project team can do. But why focus on the Transmountain project when we are giving auto manufactures billions of dollars for EV and battery plants to produce products that no one seems to want. What is a few extra billion dollars for a pipeline? Chump change really. I think we should be thanking the Transmountain project team for toughing out a politically grinding project. Rather we should be pointing the finger at ourselves, asking for how long we intend to put up with the incompetence of a government that spends our money as foolishly and haphazardly as the current Liberals. There was once a time when such profligacy would have been treated with shame and the demand for resignations. But accountability is so yesterday. Today we are about shoddy and incompetence.Murray Lytle P. Eng. is a former Commissioner on the National Energy Board

LYTLE: The oil flows at last — but no thanks to the Trudeau Liberals

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