Potential TMX appeals wouldn’t make it to Supreme Court: U of S law expert

A constitutional law expert doesn’t think a potential appeal against the approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion would make it to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Dwight Newman, the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law at the University of Saskatchewan, believes it’s likely the project will have to deal with more legal challenges.

“Certainly, opponents of the pipeline have said they’re going to continue whatever steps they can to try stop it, so I think it’s likely there will be an attempt to appeal it,” Newman told Gormley on Wednesday.

However, Newman thinks Ottawa’s ruling was fair and fact-based.

“Unless the Supreme Court were convinced that there were something wrong with the legal analysis in the Federal Court of Appeal decision, there wouldn’t really be a reason for them to hear the case,” he said.

“It’s a long judgment. Lawyers can get creative and sometimes could find something, but my initial impression is that I wouldn’t see something here likely to be accepted for an appeal, even to be heard at the Supreme Court of Canada.”

Due to the unanimous decision in the Federal Court of Appeal, work on the pipeline can now continue uninterrupted.