The federal Joint Review Panel examining the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline issued a 506-page report on Thursday explaining its reasons for recommending the project, with conditions.
Here are some of the key findings:
After weighing the evidence, we concluded that Canada and Canadians would be better off with the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project than without it.
We have concluded that the project would be in the public interest. We find that the project's potential benefits for Canada and Canadians outweigh the potential burdens and risks.
In the unlikely event of a large oil spill, we found that there would be significant adverse effects on lands, waters, or resources used by residents, communities and Aboriginal groups. We found that the adverse effects would not be permanent and widespread.
We found that, in the unlikely event of a large oil spill, there will be significant adverse environmental effects, and that functioning ecosystems recover through mitigation and natural processes.
We found that small spills are unlikely to cause significant adverse environmental effects. Small spills would be caused by relatively minor equipment failures or human error and would likely be contained near project facilities such as pump stations, valves, or the Kitimat Terminal.
It is our view that, after mitigation, the likelihood of significant adverse environmental effects resulting from project malfunctions or accidents is very low.
We also found that the project would not significantly adversely affect the interests of Aboriginal groups that use lands, waters, and resources in the project area.
In our view, there would be significant potential benefits to local, regional, and national economies associated with the project. We found that construction and routine operation of the project would likely result in substantial positive economic effects on employment, income, gross domestic product, and revenues to all levels of government. We also agreed with interveners that economic effects are difficult to estimate precisely.
We were not persuaded that diluted bitumen was significantly more corrosive or abrasive than other crude oils transported in Canadian pipelines.
In two cases we recommend that project effects, in combination with effects of past, present, and reasonably foreseeable projects, activities, and actions, be found likely to be significant. These were effects on woodland caribou . . . and eight grizzly bear populations that would be over the linear density threshold. . . . Considering the overall benefits and burdens of the project, we recommend that significant effects in these two cases be found to be justified in the circumstances.
There is some uncertainty regarding the behaviour of diluted bitumen spilled into water. We found that diluted bitumen is no more likely to sink to the bottom than other heavier oils with similar physical and chemical properties
