B.C.'s Supreme Court has dismissed legal challenges to Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain expansion project from the City of Vancouver and the Squamish Nation.
In a pair of rulings issued Thursday morning, Justice Christopher Grauer found the province of British Columbia acted reasonably in issuing an environmental assessment certificate to the company.
As Grauer pointed out in his opening remarks to both cases, the decisions are not the end of the legal hurdles facing the pipeline. They dealt strictly with the question of whether the province could defend its actions in light of the National Energy Board's approval of the project.
"This case is not about whether the TMX [Trans Mountain expansion project] should or should not go ahead. It is not about whether the TMX is in the national interest, or presents an unacceptable risk of environmental harm. These are policy issues, to be determined by the elected representatives of the people," Grauer wrote.
"This case is not about the adequacy of the consultation that was undertaken through the National Energy Board [NEB] and federal cabinet processes, nor does it resolve or define beyond currently settled law the constitutional limits on what either British Columbia or Alberta can or cannot do in relation to the project. These are questions under consideration by higher courts than this one."
The Trans Mountain expansion would triple the amount of oil being transferred through pipelines from Alberta to the terminal in Burnaby, B.C. The number of tankers in the water would increase from five to 35 each month.
More to come