It wasn’t the news Premier Rachel Notley wanted or needed to hear with a provincial election less than 12 months away.
Notley and her NDP government received a stunning blow on Thursday when the Federal Court of Appeal overturned Ottawa’s approval of Kinder Morgan’s estimated $7.4-billion Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion.
The move is shocking, given that 17 previous legal challenges were unsuccessful.
The panel of three judges cited two main reasons for its decision: lack of consultation with Indigenous groups and that the regulator, the National Energy Board, failed to address the impact of increased tanker traffic on marine life on the West Coast.
The 1,150-kilometre project, approved by the federal Liberal government in November 2016, would have doubled the line from Edmonton to the B.C. coast and tripled the amount of diluted bitumen shipped to fetch a better price on overseas markets.
In response to the court decision, an angry Notley has demanded the Trudeau government, which has purchased the pipeline, immediately appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada and call an emergency session of Parliament to fix the process so the multi-billion-dollar Trans Mountain project can move ahead. On Friday, Kinder Morgan announced the $4.5-billion offer to buy the pipeline has been approved.
The premier also announced during a news conference at the legislature Thursday evening that she is pulling the province out of the federal climate change plan, a move that took many Albertans by surprise.
Notley said Alberta could not continue to adhere to the national climate plan without the approval of the pipeline project. As a result, plans to raise the province’s carbon tax, now at $30 a tonne, to $40 in 2021 and $50 in 2022 will be scrapped.
“Alberta has done everything right and we have been let down,” the premier said. “It’s a crisis.”
The Federal Court of Appeal’s ruling creates another crisis for Notley, who guaranteed in July 2017 that “the pipeline will be built.”
She has staked the future of her government on showing significant progress on the Trans Mountain project by the time Albertans head to the polls in 2019.
If the pipeline expansion remains stalled when the election campaign kicks off, Albertans can be sure the United Conservative Party and leader Jason Kenney will use Notley’s words against her. The political fallout may not be something she can overcome on election day.
Given the premier’s tough tone during Thursday’s news conference, though, she is not going down without a fight. She is sending a strong message to all Albertans that she is determined to get the pipeline built.
Whether it’s enough to win votes, time will tell.
