The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA) claims that federal Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment Act, introduced in February, ensures no major pipeline project will be built in Canada.
“Currently there is profound uncertainty in advancing new major pipeline projects. We now have a significant problem as a sector and as a country in accessing new markets for our products around the world. The development of new projects is grinding to a halt. CEPA member companies that have material assets in other countries are actively pursuing those opportunities because of the uncertainty and potential implications of further potentially seismic regulatory changes that will directly impact the pipeline sector.
“Our sector is suffocating because of it,” CEPA said in a written statement.
CEPA complains that on top of the tanker ban off the B.C. coast, proposed methane emissions regulations, provincial greenhouse gas emissions regulations, B.C.’s restrictions on transporting bitumen, and lack of clarity on Indigenous rights, the federal regulatory reforms “double down on the factors that created the toxic regulatory environment process [it] was intended to fix.”
CEPA said Bill C-69 expands reviews to reflect climate change, gender-based analysis, Indigenous reconciliation and sustainability tests, making them more about politics than energy infrastructure.
“It is difficult to imagine that a new major pipeline could be built in Canada under the Impact Assessment Act,” CEPA concluded.
