Lawyers caution against granting subsidies for Ksi Lisims LNG, LNG Canada phase 2
Three lawyers for Ecojustice authored a letter advising the federal government, its ministers, and Crown corporations of potential constitutional challenges in the event of new or expanded public financing or subsidies for a new oil pipeline or large-scale fossil fuel projects such as Ksi Lisims LNG and LNG Canada phase 2.
The legal letter specifically addressed the prime minister; the Cabinet secretary; the federal ministers for housing and infrastructure, finance, and industry; and the chief executive officers for Export Development Canada, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and the Major Projects Office.
On behalf of the BC-based citizens group My Sea to Sky, the Ecojustice lawyers called for a careful consideration of whether federal laws, policies, and actions that “enable and financially bail out” such projects using government funds can ever align with the rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Ecojustice’s press release particularly called attention to the right to life, liberty, and security of the person under s. 7 and the right to equal protection under the law under s. 15. Ecojustice also acknowledged non-Charter rights such as the rights of Indigenous peoples.
“Judicial decisions increasingly link climate impacts with governments’ laws and actions, and the human rights obligations our governments owe to people under the Charter and international law,” said Charlie Hatt, lawyer and climate program director at Ecojustice.
Fossil fuel impacts
Ecojustice’s press release emphasized the role of fossil fuels in the global climate and affordability crises, as well as their other potential consequences, such as lives lost and breaches of human rights.
“The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that climate change poses an existential threat to human life in Canada and the International Court of Justice has called out fossil fuel subsidies explicitly as a potential ‘wrongful act’ under international law,” Hatt said.
Ecojustice explained that methane is 80 times more effective at heating up the climate than carbon dioxide.
Ecojustice added that federal definitions of low-carbon liquefied natural gas (LNG) use a narrow accounting of emissions that fails to cover most of its emissions, such as upstream extraction, methane leakage, pipeline transport, and end-use combustion.
“It’s bad enough that Canada has continually failed to meet emissions reductions targets, but to use taxpayer money to fund climate harms is simply unconscionable, and we believe Canadian courts are ready to address this,” said lawyer Patrick Canning.
My Sea to Sky originally retained Canning alongside lawyer Charlotte Chamberlain.
“Even if the wholly American-owned Ksi Lisims LNG project were to electrify its liquefaction, which impacts less than five percent, on average, of LNG’s total life-cycle emissions, it will still produce as much as half of British Columbia’s current yearly emissions,” said Tracey Saxby, My Sea To Sky’s executive director.
Ecojustice noted that the Lax Kw’alaams Band and the Metlakatla First Nation have brought federal suits assailing the Ksi Lisims LNG project, which lacks the consent of almost half of the Indigenous Nations that the BC government consulted.
Regarding LNG Canada, Saxby pointed out that its facility has been exceeding its air pollution discharge permits by as much as 40 times for multiple months in a row due to an operational flaw.
