Author(s): James Wilt
Media Outlet: Desmog Canada
The National Energy Board (NEB) is a “captured regulator” that has “lost touch with what it means to protect the public interest.”
That’s what Marc Eliesen — former head of BC Hydro, Ontario Hydro and Manitoba Hydro, and former deputy minister of energy in Ontario and Manitoba — told the NEB Modernization Expert Panel on Wednesday morning in Vancouver.
“The bottom line is that the board’s behaviour during the Trans Mountain review not only exposed the process as a farce, it exposed the board as a captured regulator,” he said to the five-member panel.
“Regulatory capture exists when a regulator ceases to be independent and objective.”
The Trans Mountain pipeline was reviewed with what many consider a heavily politicized NEB process, one that Trudeau had committed to changing prior to issuing a federal verdict on the project.
That process included what Eliesen describes as gutted environmental legislation, the removal of “essential features of a quasi-judicial inquiry” including the cross-examination of evidence and the limiting of participation of intervenors in such a way it “predetermined the outcome in favour of the pipeline proponent.”
Eugene Kung, staff counsel at West Coast Environmental Law, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that the hearings for the project were the worst he’s seen in almost 10 years of practising regulatory law.
But that doesn’t seem to be an accident...
[To read more, view the original article.]