‘I was in shock,’ says government insider about instructions to ensure approval of Kinder Morgan pipeline | Unpublished
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Unpublished Opinions

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Vancouver, British Columbia
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National Observer is a new publication founded by Linda Solomon Wood and an award-winning team of journalists in response to the close relationship between the oil industry and media in Canada, and the urgency of climate change. National Observer focuses on news and in-depth reports on under-covered Canadian stories in the area of climate, energy, and related culture, business and politics. It was launched in May 2015 by Observer Media Group (OMG), which also owns Vancouver Observer.

Seed funding for National Observer came from a Kickstarter campaign, 'Reports from the Energy Battlegrounds' in February 2015. Since its inception in May 2015, National Observer has provided intensive, critical coverage of the oil industry, politics, corporate corruption, and much more.

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‘I was in shock,’ says government insider about instructions to ensure approval of Kinder Morgan pipeline

June 19, 2019

A new government insider has emerged to add their voice in support of allegations raised this week that Canada's review of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain expansion project was rigged.

The allegations were first raised on Tuesday, when National Observer reported that public servants said they had been instructed at an internal meeting in Vancouver on Oct. 27, 2016 to "give cabinet a legally-sound basis for saying 'yes,'" to the Trans Mountain project. They suggested that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government rushed its review of Trans Mountain and had made up its mind to support the project, despite claiming, at that time, that they were still consulting First Nations and the public before making a final decision.

Following the news report, another public servant spoke to National Observerconfirming that they attended the Oct. 27, 2016 meeting. The instructions from then-associate deputy minister Erin O'Gormanabout giving cabinet a "legally-sound" basis for saying 'yes' to the major oil expansion project left them in shock.

“I guess that's something that wouldn't have fazed me at all if the Harper government was still in power, But given the change in government, seeing as how we were told to provide serious advice, I was rather shocked..." 

"I'm not sure if that was word-for-word, but that was certainly the gist of the message. So I can't say if that was a direct quote, but that was the message I heard,” said the public servant, who spoke to National Observer on condition of anonymity. "I was in shock."

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/04/27/news/i-was-shock-says-government-insider-about-instructions-ensure-approval-kinder-morgan