Background
In a November 10, 2011 phone call, then-President Barack Obama told then Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the Keystone XL approval process was on hold.[7] In response, Frank McKenna, who was then Canadian Ambassador to the U.S., wrote a Financial Post opinion piece suggesting a west-east pipeline.[7] In June 2013, Irving Oil's Arthur Irving and Frank McKenna discuss the TransCanada negotiations which have frustrated Irving and Irving and TransCanada finally reach a deal.[7] The July 6, 2013 the fire and explosion with a 1 km blast radius[8] in the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster, the deadliest rail accident since Canada's confederation in 1867, took place. It was caused by the derailment of a freight train carrying Bakken Formation crude oil. Forty-two people died.[9] About half of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec downtown area was destroyed immediately[10] and almost all the remaining downtown buildings had to be demolished because of petroleum contamination.[11]
There were a number of factors that contributed to TransCanada's October 5, 2017 decision to cancel the Energy East project, including "politics, the energy market and the economics of the energy industry."[7] During the time between the announcement of the project (Aug 1st, 2013) and the cancellation (Oct 5th 2017) the price of oil had fallen from $106.57 USD/barrel to $39.40 USD/barrel. [12]
In 2015, National Energy Board members—NEB's chief executive, Peter Watson, Lyne Mercier, Jacques Gauthier and Roland George "derailed" the Board's public hearings and were "forced to recuse themselves from further dealings with Energy East".[13] They had held secret, private meetings in January 2015, with stakeholders, including Jean Charest, former Premier of Quebec who represented TransCanada at the time as a consultant.[14] Board members were "supposed to handle all of their dealings with stakeholders in public." Conservative MP, Lisa Raitt said the board members made a mistake with Energy East. "The NEB is there to make sure they do everything legally, by the book...If I were the minister in charge, I would read them the riot act."[7][13] Prior to the 2015 general election, then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper renewed the mandates of all nineteen politically-appointed permanent NEB members.[14] This prevented the "incoming government from making its own appointments to the regulator before the next federal election, scheduled for 2019."[14]
The proposed route crossed the "traditional territory of 180 different aboriginal communities",[15] most of which were strongly against it.[16] Each of the 180 may in law have had a veto under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau had previously vowed to sign and uphold.[17] This veto right was supported by some Canadian oil extraction corporations such as Suncor.[18]
Energy East had generated controversy in various areas. Some communities through which it was proposed to pass (notably North Bay, Kenora, and Thunder Bay)[19] opposed it categorically.
In partial response to these concerns, the NEB had planned to hear aboriginal oral evidence [20] from 70 specific intervenors.[21]
The project was also strongly opposed by some Canadians on scientific grounds. The Pembina Institute released a report urging the National Energy Board to consider the impact on carbon emissions, estimating the project's upstream impact as being between 30 and 32 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year.[22][23] This position was supported by the Governments of Ontario and Quebec, who had wanted the impact of the project on greenhouse gases examined as part of the National Energy Board review process, but did not oppose the project in principle. The Ontario Energy Board[24] also had right to assert its own conditions and jurisdiction, but did not before the project was cancelled.
Another controversial aspect was a new supertanker complex at the eastern end of the pipeline near Quebec City. Exploratory work was put on hold for a month after the Quebec Superior Court found that the Quebec environment ministry had not considered the impact of the project on beluga whales in the area.[25] A public opinion poll held in Quebec found only one-third of Québécois supported the pipeline, while it was supported by one-half of Canadians outside of Quebec.[26]
