SUBJECT: Ministerial Panel On Kinder Morgan: Two Bad Processes Equal One Good One… Right?

DECISION SOUGHT: Which Friday at 4:45 pm BC-time would be the best one for approving this albatross.

PURPOSE and/or ISSUE: Kinder Morgan did kind of a crap job of their proposal and GoC process wasn’t much better, but damn the torpedoes!

BACKGROUND

• Previous GOC helped move things along by appointing a Kinder Morgan consultant to the NEB Board. We one-upped them by appointing an LNG lobbyist with close ties to Kinder Morgan CEO to our three-person Ministerial Panel.
• Special meetings were held for First Nations, municipal officials, experts and the public. Is it our fault they didn’t know about them?
• Only 91.4% of speakers at Ministerial Panel meetings in BC were against Kinder Morgan! We were anticipating 95%!
• The PM promised to redo Kinder Morgan under a new and better NEB process and then we kind of didn’t do that. See consideration below.
• We are supposed to protect endangered orcas but the NEB process doesn’t and nor does our Ministerial Panel. People like them, so this could become a thing.
• The NEB analysis didn’t take our Paris climate commitments into consideration and the Ministerial Panel had no mandate to re-examine such matters. Hey look! We didn’t live up to our electoral reform promise either, why start committing to things now?
• The Kinder Morgan proposal is really, really, really, really, really, really unpopular in Burnaby and we have a newly elected MP there.

CONSIDERATIONS:

• The panel wasn’t tasked with taking notes, and to the best of our recollection we don’t feel that many people were opposed… nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
• Can the PM be held accountable for his election promises? After all, he made them back when young people liked him.
• How much would an ad campaign cost about how dangerous and mean orcas are? How about “Oil Tankers: At the Front Lines of Protecting Fish Farms From Hungry Orcas” or “Orcas: They Poop Where you Swim!”
• With the climate warming, the seasonal window for appearing shirtless will only increase.
• Our Burnaby MP has already been invited to the Liberal Caucus Christmas Party. Awkward! Maybe he could run in Alberta in 2019?

OUTLOOK: Sunny, as per PMO orders.

RECOMMENDATION: 1. Approve. 2. Hide. 3. Announce something distracting, like a spill response plan that pretends we can clean up bitumen even though (shhh) we know it will sink.