Harper gov’t appoints Kinder Morgan consultant to NEB ( National Energy Board)

Sauce


Democratic Capitalism at it's finest.

he Harper government chose the Friday afternoon of a long weekend, just before an expected federal election, to controversially appoint a paid Kinder Morgan consultant to the National Energy Board (NEB) in a timed press release that critics say was an attempt to bury the news. Conservative Minister of Natural Resources Greg Rickford issued a Friday 12:30pm EST news release announcing that Calgary-based petroleum executive Steven Kelly will become a full-time board member of the federal agency that helps cabinet decide if oil and gas pipelines go forward. Controversially, Mr. Kelly's consulting firm was hired by Kinder Morgan two years ago to prepare an economic analysis justifying the $5.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Mr. Kelly himself, in his capacity of vice president of IHS Global Canada, authored and submitted the 203-page Kinder Morgan report to the National Energy Board. Now, Mr. Kelly will soon sit in a position of power at the NEB —close to those who will rule if that very same Kinder Morgan oil pipeline is in Canada’s economic and environmental interest. A decision is expected in January 2016.

'Incredible conflict of interest'

“It’s utterly incredible the Government of Canada would appoint such an industry consultant to a regulatory agency that presumably is interested in the public interest, and not in the interest of multinational oil corporations,” reacted former CEO of BC Hydro, Marc Eliesen on Saturday from Squamish, B.C. "The NEB have totally become a captured industry regulator,” he added.

A board spokesperson said Mr. Kelly will not be a part of the the three-member NEB panel that will judge the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. But Eliesen says Mr. Kelly's proximity to the regulator's decision makers, plus any future Kinder Morgan rulings that he may be a part of, still put him in a "significant and incredible conflict of interest." He added, the long-weekend timing of the announcement, plus the election call craze, suggest the government wanted this appointment to be disclosed quietly.

Minister Greg Rickford has yet to respond to this story. But his Friday press statement said Mr. Kelly has 19 years of experience providing his Canadian and international clients —presumed oil company clients —with "technical, commercial, regulatory and strategic" advice for accessing oil markets. A valuable background, he said, that will enable the National Energy Board to "fulfill its mandate to ensure the safety and security of Canadians and the environment."

Both Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau have promised to overhaul the environmental review of pipelines if elected. Mulcair's press handler, who was reached Saturday, declined to provide a NDP member to comment. Liberals likewise said they were busy preparing for the election call, expected Sunday, and have promised to respond.

Green leader Elizabeth May, campaigning in North Vancouver, reacted to the NEB appointment with amazement:

"Wow. Clearly there's a flurry of appointments that Stephen Harper wants to get in place before he goes down in defeat in the election. He's picked people who are of his ideological bent, and are unlikely to provide dispassionate and neutral work on behalf of the people of Canada."

Marc Eliesen quit the NEB review of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline last fall in protest, calling the hearing a sham. He suggested that Mr. Kelly’s economic report, in appendix two of the company’s formal evidence, should be immediately revoked. Other high profile departees from the Kinder Morgan hearing, such as ex-public-auto-insurance CEO Robyn Allan, have similarly criticized the NEB reviews as "rigged" to speed pipeline approvals. The addition of Mr. Kelly follows years of Harper government appointments to the energy regulator of several oil and gas executives — the most recent one in early July was roundly criticized by the NDP, Liberals and the Greens.

NEB now weighted with oil and gas professionals More than half of the NEB board members are now petroleum industry professionals. The agency is not only tasked with reviewing the economics of pipelines —but also their environmental impacts.

Seriously? Lets have some democratic capitalists run the National energy board of Canada! Lord knows that if you vote for conservative. Your voting for a democratic capitalist regime. Where government and economic capitalists have no seperation! Lets just let the multinational corperations run our lives. Manage our vital resources and plunder our economy! Because private interests running the nation have been doing so well for us here in Canada recently. (Sarcasm)

That latter task was given to the NEB, following a Harper government omnibus budget bill in 2012 that stripped that responsibility from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA). Kinder Morgan's $5.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposes to triple the flow of Alberta bitumen to B.C.’s coast, which would increase the number of oil tankers in the Port of Vancouver from 60 to 400 annually. Mr. Kelly’s own Kinder Morgan consulting report argued that the pipeline would enable a better price for Alberta oil in California and Asia. He concluded the pipeline would be "utilized at a high rate" resulting in $37 billion in extra revenues for oil companies until the year 2037.

This is exactly why i hate the society we live in today. The world is fine, Its the greedy self-intitled feudal capitalists that piss me off.

Requests for comment from Mr. Kelly over the civic August long weekend were not responded. But Kinder Morgan said: "It isn't appropriate for Trans Mountain to comment on the workings of the NEB such as an appointment to their Board,” wrote spokesperson Ali Hounsell on Saturday. Public participants are expected to make presentations at the NEB hearing in September in Burnaby. That's the city where local Mayor Derek Corrigan has promised to stand in front of bulldozers to stop the project, and where more than 100 citizens were arrested last fall in protest of the company's drill pipeline tests on Burnaby Mountain. The Friday appointment of Mr. Kelly does not yet appear on a NEB press release, but past appointments have. NRCAN says his hire was the result of a nationally advertised recruitment process launched in January. He begins his new job Oct.15.

Dont vote for conservative this coming election, because these democratic capitalists are selling our country, our land, our economic future and our government to the highest bidder. There is already strong opposition to this pipeline.

If you want to keep this country for its citizens and not owned and run by private organizations that only want to pollute and decimate the wildlife then vote for any of the parties except conservative. Bill C-51 last year was only the iceing on the cake. Now it is illegal for us to protest these changes! And bill c-51 opened that avenue to have police roll up and start arresting people.



This is huge news ATS. Us Canadians on the west coast are being bullied by these capitalist facists.
I am rattled by this.

a reply to: AnuTyr

Then be rattled as you please.

If one is going to get the best, in general, one goes to the private sector. Hello?

I don't know this guy, or his track record, but, if every time a private sector guy gets a gov't position, be consulting or otherwise, the inevitable bleating about corporate manipulation is rattled off.

Deal with it....

a reply to: nwtrucker
Just *Deal* with facism?
Canada is a democratic nation, we have all the right to oppose capitalist facism.
I don't know about you. But im not interested in my home town and community being pushed around by these Nazis.
We faught the nazis in world war 2 to defeat facism! Not welcome it with open arms to run our nation and its policies!

"Corporatism, also known as corporativism,[1]is the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.[2] It is theoretically based on the interpretation of a community as an organic body.[3] The term corporatism is based on the Latin root word "corpus" (plural – "corpora") meaning body

This is outright corruption!

a reply to: AnuTyr

Where's the fascism? Other than your own mind?

He's from the private sector. So what? We aren't idiots. You call it fascism, at best, it's corporate cronyism and you haven't even proved that.

If anything you rhetoric is closer to the propaganda department perfected by the Nazis.

Fascism...what utter garbage.

a reply to: nwtrucker

Historians, political scientists and other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism.[22] Each form of fascism is distinct, leaving many definitions too wide or narrow.[23][24] One common definition of fascism focuses on three concepts: the fascist negations of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism; nationalist authoritarian goals of creating a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture; and a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth and charismatic leadership.[25][26][27] According to many scholars, fascism — especially once in power — has historically attacked communism, conservatism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far right.

[28] Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism".[29] Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism and (iii) the myth of decadence".[30] Fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences.

He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.[31] Robert Paxton says that fascism is "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."[32]

Cronyism is when capitalists buy political power or changes in the government. Facism is when they take direct control of it. This isn't cronyism if Oil and gas giants themselves are sitting on the energy board. Cronyism would be bribing the people sitting in the board that make the decisions if the pipelines go up or not.

This is basically allowing those corperations to do what ever they please with no way short of violence of civil unrest to stop it. It is corruption to have prominent members of Oil and Gas Particularly those who directly profit from it sitting in power to choose where and when they want to build infrastructure. The national energy board is supposed to asses the economic and enviromental impacts of such decisions that need approval from the energy board itself.
If the people sitting in the board are the same people submitting plans for approval and are also the same people who recieve submissions for approval.... Then they just approve themselves!

a reply to: nwtrucker

His vast network of contacts lies in the private oil industry. He's on the board of people that decides if pipeline / extraction projects go forward. This guy is there for whose benefit? Certainly not yours or mine.

I was so happy when they decided not to pass the pipeline this way, i guess that was just a fake victory for us that live and raise our kids here.

a reply to: dukeofjive696969

They won't stop fighting until they lose, and we shouldn't stop fighting either. It's that or have 400 oil tankers coming in and out of the vancouver bay annually. Also The LNG tankers since these same guys are supporting it. I really don't want to see huge tankers in our bay here in Squamish. It would be an enviromental disaster waiting to happen.

a reply to: AnuTyr

Neither cronyism nor fascism has even remotely been proved in this instance.

The mere appointment by an oil/private sector individual has this knee-jerk reaction.

Oil/natural resources is the back-bone of the Canadian economic system. ( Canada wouldn't be in the economic situation it is if it wasn't for the idiots that didn't foresee the stupidity of remaining a resource based economy and the two-edged sword that policy led you to. [ A political decision, most certainly NOT a corporate one...they took the 'easy' political route instead of developing more secondary and tertiary industries.]

The ONLY reason were discussing this issue in English and not French is the corporate support of the British gov't, to wit, the Hudson's Bay Company that the French didn't have.

There is a balance between corporate and the so-called 'public interest'. Both are manipulated massively. Canada has done a fairly decent job of that balance, from what I can see.

Where that balance lies is beyond my knowledge and I suggest yours as well.

Finding a balance between money interests and political ideology is confusing, frustrating and without end.

BOTH are liars.

Adding to that by labeling one appointment as 'fascist' merely adds to that rhetoric.

Activists mark oil spill anniversary by spilling “oil” on Kinder Morgan sign warriorpublications.wordpress.com...

"In the early morning hours of July 24, 2015, urban land defenders attacked Kinder Morgan’s sign with black paint at the Westridge Marine Terminal, 7065 Bayview Drive, Burnaby, BC.
This symbolic “spill” and messaging was done with the intention of remembering the Westridge residents affected by Kinder Morgan’s crude oil spill on July 24, 2007."

"Not only were approximately 50 homes affected, evacuations displaced numerous residents from their homes. Further, the oil moving through the storm drain system eventually reached the marine waters of Burrard Inlet below the spill site where it began to spread further with wind and tides. As with most of these spills we may never know the full impacts to the people, land, water and air.
Moreover, the activists symbolic, non-violent action was also done to highlight the continuing struggle of indigenous land defenders all along the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline corridor. Let it be known that Kinder Morgan do NOT have the consent of First Nations to expand the Trans Mountain Pipeline through unceded territory. As usual, industry with their government cronies and police henchmen continue to attempt to bully their way through unceded indigenous territory.

a reply to: AnuTyr

Well let's vote this P.O.S out of office in October!

a reply to: MrMaybeNot

Why not in our interests??

Development, by definition requires input from both views. There certainly no shortage of anti-oil interests in gov't, both elected and career employees.

Oil has been a boom for Canada, up and down the economic system.

Just what are "our interests"? You surely don't represent mine.

I don't even know whether this is good guy or not. He surely won't last long if he's out of line with the overall interests of Canada.

My line is drawn when I hear the fascist crap...Can't even spell the word correctly....

Discourse? YES. Debate? YES. This is nothing but fear mongering propaganda.