Tag Archives: New Brunswick Energy Institute

Apr 27 2015
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Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas

Doubling-down on government waste

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For a government that appears to believe that duplication is the mother of perdition, New Brunswick’s Grit regime has a funny way of sticking to the guns of its political principles.

As Premier Brian Gallant’s cabineteers defund and dismember the province’s energy institute – a creature of the former Progressive Conservative government, established to provide scientific research on the effects of hydraulic fracturing on soil, water and air – they convene a panel of non-experts in these matters to do precisely the same thing.

Granted, the New Brunswick Energy Institute began under crossed stars (its original head was forced to resign after it was revealed his curriculum vitae fudged his credentials), but the group has, by all accounts, conducted its work over the past two years with circumspection and objectivity.

But now a triumvirate composed of a former university president, a former board chairwoman of the province’s community college system, and a former provincial Chief Justice, are being asked to determine whether hydraulic fracturing is safe, socially acceptable and economically viable.

It bears mentioning that none of these fine, upstanding citizens – John McLaughlin, Cheryl Robertson, Guy Richard – are geologists, hydrologists, or mining engineers (unlike those who lately worked for the disbanded institute). Yet, they are tasked with determining whether “clear and credible information about the impacts of (fracking)” are even possible. Stranger still, their mandate insists that they discover how and under which circumstances these effects are perceptible in “a New Brunswick context”.

Politics, of course, is never about telling the truth; it’s about spinning the plates on which you serve your own version of veracity. The proof of life in this dictum is in the current government’s utter disinterest in the work Institute members have already performed. Apparently, and for no sensible reason, we begin again.

According to the provincial government’s terms of reference for its new panel, released to the Saint John Telegraph Journal earlier this week, “the specific role of the Commission will be to study each (of the province’s conditions) in a New Brunswick context and report its evidence based findings directly to cabinet. Government has set a period of up to twelve months  for the Commission to complete its report.”

Meanwhile (and in some trick of political mastery), “the Commission will be independent of government, transparent in all its activities, open minded. . .and accountable for all government assigned resources.” What it won’t be, likely, is informed by the research and findings that actual scientists have already produced.

Findings like this, published this week: “The first research project funded by the New Brunswick Energy Institute and carried out by the Canadian Rivers Institute has been finalized and released for public consumption. . . .‘The document serves as a scientific review to provide background information on environmental flow assessment approaches and on the current status of environmental flow guidelines used in jurisdictions across Canada and internationally,’ according to Allen Curry the scientific lead on the project.

“The project was funded by the New Brunswick Energy Institute because there are currently no federal guidelines regarding determination of holistic environmental flows in Canada, i.e., guidelines to safeguard the wellbeing of aquatic life and maintain ecosystem integrity. ‘While New Brunswick has not experienced serious pressure related to surface water abstraction to date, that will change as the Province develops more of its natural resources, therefore we see a need to define policy guidelines and best practices for New Brunswick’s environmental flow needs,’ Dave Besner, Chair of the New Brunswick Energy Institute said in releasing the study.”

Forgive my obtuseness, but is this not exactly the sort of perspicuity this government needs, and has already inherited?

Must we always follow good dollars with bad ones in this province?

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Nov 25 2013
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Energy, Oil and Gas

Institute’s mandate in search of a reason

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The last thing New Brunswick needs is yet another reason to bloviate about the provincial government’s diabolical plans to shove shale gas down the throats of its citizens. But for a polity that seems bound and determined to leave most of our natural resources in the ground, we do seem extraordinarily skilled at mass-producing hot air.

In an interview with CBC Radio out of Saint John last Thursday, Fred Metallic – a member of Listuguj First Nations in Quebec and a PhD in environmental science – explained why he suddenly quit the scientific advisory council of the New Brunswick Energy Institute, whose purpose is, according to its website, “to examine the science surrounding energy possibilities in our province.”

Declared Mr. Metallic: “When I was approached by the Institute. . .we were going to take a citizen-based approach to the development of energy. As a First Nations researcher, I generally work with people and (so) this was compatible with the way I like to approach (things). . .We did discuss aboriginal issues. However, these issues were not a priority, unfortunately. The priorities were more around the technology around shale gas development.”

What’s more, Mr. Metallic lamented, “At this point, the institute is more concerned about the government’s plans to develop shale gas and other forms of energy. It is more concerned about industry and whether industry and science can work together to ensure that these resources are developed safely. As First Nations researcher, I didn’t see First Nations issues to be central and that was a concern for me.

In the end, he said, “I have more faith in people to want to move things forward than I do with government, sometimes.”

Of course, that’s it in a nutshell. Isn’t it? Here is the cri de coeur of the modern age. And you don’t have to be a member of a First Nation to utter it.

Having little faith in governments is simply de rigueur these days, and not just for cultural warriors and libertarian trendsetters. Everyone – liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, progressives, the one per cent and the remaining 99 per cent – wants to thump his chest with one hand and with the other grab the nearest elected official by the scruff of his scrawny neck and declare: “You, sir, are a cad!”

But before we get caught up in this, the standard plot line, and cut and paste it to this, the latest chapter in the shale gas melodrama, it behooves us to recognize what, exactly, the New Brunswick Energy Institute actually does – which is, quite frankly, a whole lot of nothing.

“We feel that the institute is a scientific body,” Energy and Mines Minister Craig Leonard told the CBC last week as he gamely defended his government’s decision create it on the advice of departed and forcibly humbled academic Louis LaPierre. “The place for discussing treaty rights with First Nations is within government, itself. We want to keep those two separate.”

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The technology that enables shale gas drilling and the fracked ground that treaties may (or may not) protect as a collective resource (including the water therein) comprise a single issue.

But, the point is, the provincial government doesn’t appear to be enjoying much success on either of the issue’s constituent parts: nurturing scientific inquiry or ameliorating people’s concerns

In the case of the former, the number of “ongoing” research projects at the Institute number in the single digits, as in, zero. Ditto for the number of “requests for proposals”.

According to a Telegraph-Journal report last week, “Energy institute executive director Annie Daigle attempted to clarify the body’s mandate on Thursday, stating that its direction had been ‘muddied’ of late.”

She added: “Things sort of came to a standstill for a month and a half to two months. We haven’t developed any research, we haven’t signed any contracts or anything like that, and we haven’t put out the request for proposals for that work.

It is being reviewed by the scientific advisory council. We had some setbacks over the last couple of months, so we are just trying to get back on track.”

All of which suggests that if the provincial government is trying to shove shale gas down the throats of New Brunswickers, it isn’t yet relying on the Energy Institute for practical support.

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Oct 06 2013
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Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

The institutional non-credibility problem

For and against shale gas in New Brunswick: The immoveable object meets the implacable foe

For and against shale gas in New Brunswick: The immoveable object meets the implacable foe

 

New Brunswick Premier David Alward’s concern that his provincial Energy Institute is losing credibility owing to the long shadow its not-so-dearly departed founding chairman, Louis LaPierre, has cast raises a certain question: What credibility?

Are not reputations, good or otherwise, built on track records?

The Conservation Council of New Brusnwick’s Stephanie Merrill comes as close as anybody to putting a finger on the matter when she tells the Telegraph-Journal, “We’re concerned about this institute. Its mandate and what it’s going to do have been very unclear.”

Though she allows that the province could use an organization that soberly deliberates the future of energy in this neck of the woods, she perceives a “serious flaw in continuing the discussions around shale gas, pipelines, the same old story and not a new vision.”

It is, of course, in her job description to question the merit of pursuing a fossil-fuel -based economy, but I wonder if she prematurely gives the Institute too much credit. In the several months since its formal founding, it hasn’t done much for or against “shale gas” and “pipelines” and what might be termed an “old vision” of industrial development.

That’s not to say it isn’t packed with expertise (a fact which critics, who are out to skin Dr. Lapierre for misrepresenting his academic credentials even as he, himself, conceived of the Institute, conveniently neglect to mention).

Its scientific advisory council includes Adrian Park,Tom Al, Maurice Dusseault, Karen Kidd, Richard Saillant, David Besner, and Fred Metallic. All but one hold PhDs in relevant disciplines, such as geology, earth sciences, civil engineering, environmental biology, chemical engineering.

Dr. Besner, who replaces Dr. Lapierre, will function as the Institute’s interim chairman, a job for which he is eminently qualified, at least according to N.B. Energy and Mines Minister Craig Leonard. “He is very familiar with the framework that has been established for the institute,” the minister declared in a statement last week. “I am pleased that he accepted to lead (it). . .as it prepares to launch the water monitoring program along with several other key initiatives.”

So, what are these “key initiatives?” A more intriguing question, perhaps, is how they’ll be prosecuted, given this tasty revelation, reported in the Telegraph-Journal on Friday: “Besner’s hgonorarium does not increase in his new position. All members (of the Institute) are entitled to $450 for a full day’s work. Previous to taking the new position, Besner said the job typically involved a day and a half of work a month. He expects he’ll be be busier as chairman.”

Still, “he’s not quitting his regular job as a consultant and will not work at the institute full time.”

All of which sounds like extraordinarily light duty for a deliberative body in which the premier and his lieutenants have invested both money and confidence.

Certainly, the organization’s website doesn’t offer much in the way of enlightenment. “The New Brunswick Energy Institute is an independent body separate from government that was created to examine the science surrounding energy possibilities in our province,” the home page states. “Made up of experts in different areas of science, the Institute will examine the science pertaining to oil and gas development in the province.”

The “Research” section lists two publications: Dr. Lapierre’s initial report, which called for the Institute’s establishment (hardly, we now know, a rigorous piece of science); and a Deloitte study on shale gas supply chain opportunities in the province.

Click on the “Ongoing Research” button, and up pops a promise: “Coming Soon.”

To be fair, the Institute is still young. It hasn’t had time to find its walking shoes, let alone hit the ground running. But the political spin surrounding its eminent authority and now endangered credibility, which, we are assured, must be urgently restored is both irksome and counterproductive.

The perceived misdeeds of one man have far less to do with the Institute’s reputation than does its own lack of deeds to date.

Let it actually do something before we assign any degree of importance to its role – good or bad – in framing energy policy in New Brunswick.

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