Dear Editor:
“Kinder Morgan will have to go through a new, revised process.” – Terry Beech, Liberal MP-elect, Burnaby North-Seymour, October 2015.
I heard Terry Beech make that promise more than once at all-candidates meetings during the election. In the House of Commons (Dec. 9), New Democratic Party MP Peter Julian referred to this statement when Natural Resources Minister James Carr asserted that projects currently under review by the NEB “will not have to go back to square one.”
Julian rightfully pointed out that the voters of Burnaby North-Seymour were told one thing during the election and were now being told something quite different.
As reported, Beech complained that the NDP was “playing with words” and offered this clarification: “We’re going to redo the National Energy Board process, we’re going to make sure it’s fair and based on science. There’s going to be a community component, there’s going to be a First Nations component, and for projects that are currently under way, there’s going to be a further transition process.”
If I understand him correctly, he is now saying there will be two processes: one that will apply to new projects and another that will apply to projects already in the pipe (so to speak). The first is the one he promised. What does “further transition process” even mean?
So why doesn’t Beech simply say it like it is: the KM project proposal will continue to be subjected to the current industry-biased process. Just who is playing with words here.
Janet Routledge
Burnaby
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