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Who is policing the Keystone Kops

Flytrap

Enbridge and the Northern Gateway project is in the midst of a brand crisis.

It`s a mild, polite way of saying the Alberta firm Charlie Sheened its way through the summer. There was the public caning it received from a U.S. regulatory agency that now infamously compared Enbridge's spill response to the bungling silent-film era Keystone Cops. The company was slapped with an embarrassing $3.7 million fine from another U.S. government organization for the same incident, a 2010 spill into the Kalamazoo River which was the largest inland incident of its kind.

On top of that it continues to twitch like a dying fish in the face of fierce criticism from environmentalists and First Nations over the Northern Gateway, its plan to build a 1,170-kilometre twin pipeline through northern BC linking the Alberta oilsands to the port of Kitimat.

Enbridge is a punchline and a symbol of everything that`s wrong with resource development, the oilsands, climate change, Canadian politics, aboriginal relations, globalization, rabies, bird flu, tabloids, potholes, bad driving, plaid, terrorism and steroids in baseball. And that`s to be expected - the firm doesn't build Ferris wheels.

In fact, when one considers Enbridge's goal, it deserves a nod of respect for not being tarred and feathered and sent back to Calgary with its hat stapled to its backside. The Alberta firm wants to pump thousands of litres of highly toxic chemicals via hundreds of kilometres of pressurized steel tubes shoved through pristine northern BC wilderness. And that`s not even considering the implications of being the conduit through which one of the most environmentally-obnoxious substances in the history of civilization will be delivered to fuel the most powerful totalitarian regime humanity has ever seen.

The real public relations problem for Enbridge is that its Northern Gateway project reads like the plot of a Bond movie except for the fact it may well succeed.

But the task isn't as difficult as it seems. In its quest to garner what it calls the social licence to build and operate the Northern Gateway, all Enbridge needs to do is convince enough people in BC not to care - that`s doable in this day and age amid a debate where yelling is a stage whisper and tuning out the best option. And the carrot for northern BC is that, while Enbridge's promises of hundreds of jobs from the pipeline is sketchy, there will be some spillover benefits from a $5.5 billion project for the regional economy. Such an endeavour could be key as the forest industry faces a long, arduous, jobless recovery from the mountain pine beetle epidemic and a concomitant drastic reduction in timber supply that could take decades to get past.

The stakes for Canada, however, are exponentially larger. The oilsands make up 170 billion of Canada's 174 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, which puts this country at third in the world, behind only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. The problem, according to secret briefing notes provided to federal natural resources minister Joe Oliver (relax, it`s on the Internet), is that it's 'landlocked' - the oil can only mostly go to refineries in the U.S. Midwest, where it builds up and sits. That means Canadian oil has sold for up to a $15 per barrel discount because it's stuck in the middle of America.

The Northern Gateway would bring the oilsands to Asia and help eliminate that discount. So Canada can either suck the life out of Alberta and sell the oil to middle America or it can do the same and sell it to middle America, the west coast of the U.S. and Asia for a fistful of dollars more with the Northern Gateway.

The pipeline would help fulfil Prime Minister Stephen Harper`s dream of making Canada an energy superpower. But the prospect is clouding the government's judgment to the point where one wonders if a Tory minister salivates whenever they hear the word Enbridge.

The U.S. experience is a case study of how inadequate regulation hurts both Enbridge and the pipeline. While the U.S. National Transport Safety Board called the Western Canadian firm 'Keystone Cops' for its failures during the Kalamazoo spill, the board`s report could just as well of given the moniker to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which oversaw Enbridge, for "delegating too much authority to the regulated`" which was "tantamount to letting the fox guard the henhouse."

The PHMSA did try to send a message to Enbridge, but the most it could do was a meagre $3.7 million fine. And it wasn`t the first time it tried to discipline Enbridge - in what`s now the third largest fine in the PHMSA`s history, the firm's U.S. partner, Enbridge Energy Partners, was fined $2.4 million after a failed repair job resulted in an explosion and the death of two workers in Clearbrook, Minnesota.

In Canada, it's not much better. The National Energy Board, which oversees pipelines in this country, couldn't even levy fines until this month and can now apply the same tap on the wrist fines the PHMSA used.

And it gets worse. With their watering down of environmental rules and the stacking of the deck of the approval process, not to mention wink-and-nudge cheerleading for the Northern Gateway, it's hard to trust the Tories would be able to police an RV's septic tank, let alone a 1,170-kilometre pipeline.

And their bullishness is hurting Enbridge's cause. In response to leaked government reports safety concerns had been raised about the firm in 2010 and warnings its spill response was insufficient, the firm replied it would lean on Environment Canada's regional environmental emergencies team in the case of an accident.

Unfortunately, the Tories cut $4 million from Environment Canada and closed six offices, centring the emergency response in what`s slated to be two offices in Montreal and Gatineau, Quebec. Not exactly comforting.

That's the problem. Enbridge is Enbridge but there is currently no one capable of ensuring it meets its obligations.

And without decent adult supervision, it`s hard to say yes to the pipeline.