Premier Moe talks regulation as Trans Mountain gets NEB OK

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe didn’t have too much to say about the National Energy Board’s approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline on Friday.

Moe was in Washington, D.C., for the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, and said he hadn’t had much of a chance to study the NEB report.

Moe did talk about regulations surrounding the energy industry, saying it’s a challenging environment — pointing to the length of time it has taken for the Trans Mountain pipeline to go through the approval process.

“We need to have the broader conversation around regulatory framework that works for our environment, works for our economy, and actually allows private investment to come in and look at these projects and start to move them forward in a reasonable period of time,” Moe said.

Moe said he knows there are some challenges when it comes to the current regulations around environmental assessments. And the solutions are either to change the regulations or to create new ones — and Moe says with Bill C-69, the federal government has chosen the second path.

He disagrees with the bill and has voiced that opinion before, saying the bill won’t work.

“It moves those goalposts further away and actually continues to vibrate them around …,” he said. “We need to find some regulatory certainty, if you will, as we move forward, and I fear Bill C-69 is not going to provide us that.”

Moe has talked before about the Trans Mountain pipeline, urging the federal government to do something to get the project back on track.

With the NEB’s report now finished, the federal government has 90 days to decide whether the project should continue. Officials in the office of the Natural Resources Minister have said a final decision won’t be made until consultations are finished with affected Indigenous groups.

With files from the Canadian Press