Good morning. Wendy Cox in Vancouver today.
Earlier this week, B.C. Premier David Eby held a triumphant news conference with members of the Haisla Nation to announce the approval of a second liquefied natural gas production facility.
Included were hereditary chiefs of the First Nation. The Haisla will co-own Cedar LNG with Pembina Pipeline Corp., and it’s hoped LNG will start shipping to Asia from the proposed $3-billion floating export terminal by 2027.
Premier Eby and Crystal Smith, the elected chief of the Haisla Nation, called it a historic deal, one that exemplifies the province’s commitment to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples legislation.
But despite the pageantry and optimism of the announcement, Cedar LNG fits into the stickiest wickets for the province.
For one, the support for the project by Haida hereditary chiefs is in stark contrast to the staunch opposition of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, who have been leading a years-long protest against construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The pipeline is the same one that will feed natural gas to the Cedar project. The B.C. government has taken pains to avoid weighing into the CGL dispute, saying only that the pipeline project has been approved and decisions about who speak for the Wet’suwet’en people are for them to decide.
Another conundrum involves the province’s climate commitments. The NDP government was the first in Canada to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and passed provincial legislation underlining that pledge.
But the province is also committed to its CleanBC plan, which is supposed to lower the province’s climate-changing emissions by 40 per cent from 2007 levels by the end of this decade. As of November, there had been little progress.
When Mr. Eby was seeking the leadership of the NDP last fall, he positioned himself as a climate activist after the only other contender entered the race with some bona fides on that front. Last October, he announced at a news conference: “We cannot continue to expand fossil fuel infrastructure and hit our climate goals.”
By December, in a year-end interview with legislature reporter Justine Hunter, Premier Eby was more nuanced, declining to say yes to the expansion of projects such as LNG, but also not saying no.
This week, his government said yes, at least in this case.
“We have concluded that this project can fit within B.C.’s climate targets and goals,” environment minister George Heyman said.
On the same afternoon as B.C. announced Cedar, the province announced it would set a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions for the entire oil and gas sector, which will include LNG production.
LNG Canada will create four million tonnes of GHG emissions annually, while Cedar LNG, which will power its turbines with electricity instead of natural gas, will create about one million tonnes.
To meet the new goals, the action plan is relying on BC Hydro to accelerate electrification of homes, businesses and industries. That presents another challenge: The utility has said major transmission lines take eight to 10 years to build.
Chris O’Riley, BC Hydro’s chief executive officer, told reporter Brent Jang last month transmission line projects are complex and have impacts on the land and First Nations, among other things.
“We’re trying to do the right thing and come up with the best possible plan that’s consistent with B.C.’s climate plan, and it’s really hard,” he said.
The provincial government would likely agree with that assessment.
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.