Shawn Denstedt, KC
Jul 12, 2016
Just days after the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the conditional permit the former Conservative government issued for the Northern Gateway pipeline two years ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau indicated his opposition to the proposed pipeline, according to a recent article in The Globe and Mail by Shawn McCarthy. As a result of the ruling, the Liberal government must undertake more extensive consultations with affected First Nations and then come up with a new decision. In the article Shawn Denstedt, Osler’s national co-chair and partner in Osler’s Regulatory, Environmental, Aboriginal and Land practice, explains that the discussions must be sustained and meaningful, with evidence that the government has heard the concerns of individual First Nations communities and sought to accommodate them.
“The decision does provide some clarity as to how the process is supposed to work between the issuance of the report and the decision of cabinet,” he notes.
The fate of the Enbridge-led pipeline remains unclear although the company has stated its intention to work with the government to complete the necessary consultations with a view to building this “critical Canadian infrastructure project.”
If you subscribe to The Globe and Mail online, you can find out more by reading Shawn McCarthy’s full article, “Trudeau says rainforest ‘is no place’ for Northern Gateway pipeline” dated July 5, 2016.