Calgary – Alex Pourbaix, president and CEO of Cenovus Energy Inc., released a statement on June 13 on Bill C-69, and it wasn’t flattering. Here is the statement in its entirety, as seen on Cenovus’ Twitter account @cenovus:
As it stands today, Bill C-69 is unworkable. As a company that invests capital in Canada, we can't see how we would take a project through the process. Without the critical amendments our industry proposed, this legislation will virtually guarantee that no new pipelines or other major energy infrastructure projects get built in Canada. And that is a devastating blow to the future of the Canadian economy.
It's important to stress that our industry has never asked for a free or easy ride. We expect rigorous regulation and oversight. But when projects meet all reasonable regulatory requirements, proponents and their investors need a level of certainty that those projects will be built. Our industry undertook an unprecedented level of engagement with the government on Bill C-69. We are deeply disappointed that the changes we proposed in good faith, and were told were workable, were not accepted. The amendments we proposed were the bare minimum required for the Bill to be workable. And those recommendations were based on the input of Canadians, including many Indigenous leaders.
Our goal in this process was always to develop an environmental assessment process that would create both public and investor confidence. And this isn't just about the oil and gas industry being hurt by this bill. It is much farther reaching than that and will impact multiple large projects.
One example of our ongoing concern with Bill C-69 is that its language creates significant opportunities for groups whose only objective is to end oil and gas development in Canada to mount endless legal actions to prevent approved projects from getting built. The Trans Mountain Expansion project is a prime example. This approved project has been through the most exhaustive and rigorous regulatory review of any pipeline ever built, and yet it's been repeatedly stalled by vexatious legal action.
While the government says Bill C-69 will fix that problem - it won't. It will only make matters worse by throwing the door open to even more potential legal challenges to approved projects. We proposed amendments that would restrict legal challenges to project approvals to matters of jurisdiction or significant errors in law. Those amendments have been rejected. Without this clarity of language, this will leave decisions by an expert regulatory body about the impact of a project on the environment or even on sex and gender open to wide interpretation and second guessing by the courts.
The bill is also flawed because it does not provide certainty around timelines for project approvals. As drafted, there is too much wiggle room for approval deadlines to be repeatedly extended. Our proposed amendments would have provided certainty around hard deadlines, but the government has rejected those too.
Alex Pourbaix
President & CEO
Cenovus Energy Inc.
