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What led to the failure of the Energy East pipeline, the largest oil pipeline project ever proposed in Canada? Journalist Jacques Poitras set out to chronicle the story of the Energy East project several years ago, but by the time he finished his book, the pipeline had been terminated by its proponent, Calgary-based energy company, TransCanada. It turned his book into a political whodunit.
After following the evolution of the Energy East pipeline project proposal for years, I thought I had documented a large part of this epic political saga, writes National Observer managing editor Mike De Souza. But then I read Jacques Poitras’s riveting account of the story in his new book, Pipe Dreams: The Fight for Canada's Energy Future.
The government of former prime minister Stephen Harper violated its own communications and transparency rules by muzzling federal scientists, and the Trudeau government has not made “firm commitments” to fix the problem, a federal investigation has concluded.
A third-party investigation prepared for the federal government has found that David Scott, the president and chief executive officer of Polar Knowledge Canada (POLAR), harassed Dr. Martin Raillard, an award-winning scientist.
The number of complaints against the National Energy Board for withholding records in the first quarter of 2017-2018 was 400 per cent higher than the total number of complaints in the previous fiscal year.
An executive at Canada’s pipeline regulator apologized to staff for hiring a private security firm to investigate staff after realizing the results of the unsuccessful "witch hunt" were about to be made public.
Environment Canada does not want National Observer to intervene in a court case that will determine whether records collected during the Volkswagen emissions cheating investigation will be made available to the public.
The National Energy Board's chief operating officer, Josée Touchette, has left the regulator to accept an executive job with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. Back in Calgary, its NEB's executive in charge of "transparency" has taken a mysterious extended leave of absence.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while in opposition, railed against the Harper government's closures of certain ozone monitoring stations, but his government has yet to reopen them. Instead, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s office has asserted that the country’s ozone monitoring is robust.
