Ottawa to re-examine responsibility for social costs of Mackenzie gas pipeline

Ottawa will re-examine who should be responsible for the social costs of building a Mackenzie Valley pipeline, a federal official said after meetings on how to get the $7 billion project moving again.

“What we need to consider is what are those associated costs and where does responsibility for those costs lie,” said Liseanne Foran, assistant deputy minister of Indian Affairs.

Foran was in Edmonton on May 4 for meetings with officials from the Northwest Territories and proponents of the pipeline.

The meetings came in response to Imperial Oil’s decision the last week of April to suspend some of the preparatory work on the project for the summer.

Imperial Oil criticized both the complexity of the regulatory process and the demands of aboriginal groups, who want enough money from the project to be able to mitigate social problems in the small communities of the western Arctic.

Aboriginal leaders have said they’re turning to energy companies for those funds because they haven’t been forthcoming from the government. But Foran suggested Ottawa may be willing to play a role in mitigating those concerns.

“Part of the work that needs to be done is assessing what is required where and from whom,” Foran said.

“There’s no question that money is a big topic between all those talking about this. We realize that that’s one of the issues that all the parties are grappling with.”

In Ottawa, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan emphasized that aboriginal groups need to talk to the territorial government about concerns such as health and job training.

“If you want a hospital or a school, you don’t go behind the premier.

They’re empowered to deal with those issues,” she said.

“If they think they can’t afford those infrastructure costs, they may look somewhere else, to the federal government.”

Northwest Territories Premier Joe Handley is scheduled to meet McLellan in Ottawa next week.

McLellan also said the government would do what it can to shorten the timelines for the regulatory process.

“That is one of the things that we’re very concerned about,” she said.

A senior Indian Affairs bureaucrat was recently put in charge of ensuring the entire process runs efficiently, said McLellan.

Jim Prentice, the Conservative northern development critic, said the impasse reflects a failure of leadership on the part of the Liberal government. Government departments aren’t working together, he said.

“We are no further ahead with respect to this pipeline than we were three years ago,” Prentice said. “I think everybody’s frustrated.

“Somebody has to take charge of this project and quit passing the buck.”

—The Associated Press