QUEBEC – The Quebec portion of the Energy East pipeline project will be submitted to a full evaluation process, putting to an early end a more general evaluation that began in March.

TransCanada Corp., the promoter of the $15.7-billion pipeline project to bring oil from Alberta’s oilsands, has dropped its objections to an environmental assessment by the province.

On Tuesday Quebec released its guidelines for the new evaluation.

But that decision has scuttled Quebec’s ongoing evaluation process, leaving out of luck interveners who had prepared briefs.

Quebec Environment Minister David Heurtel announced in a news release last Friday afternoon that TransCanada had agreed to submit its environmental impact study for the Quebec portion of the 4,600-km route, within Quebec’s evaluation process, by June 6.

Heurtel also announced Quebec was dropping its injunction proceedings against TransCanada, which previously claimed it was not subject to Quebec’s environmental laws.

Last Friday, Heurtel announced that the evaluation already underway by Quebec’s Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) was suspended, leaving unheard 300 briefs and 4,000 comments in the second phase of the BAPE hearings.

In the cancelled second round, which had been set to begin Monday in Montreal, participants were to present their views on the project.

“Why wait until the last minute?” asked Karine Péloffy, director of the Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement, an environmentalist lawyers’ group.

Péloffy said she had to work late into the night to complete the CQDE brief in time for the April 20 deadline.

While Quebec has dropped its injunction, Péloffy said her group has not decided whether to suspend its injunction request. She has asked the minister to make public the briefs and comments, and is calling for an interim report.

Sidney Ribaux, director of Équiterre, an environmentalist group that also backed the injunction, said it is a shame the government did not allow the BAPE to hear the new briefs, saying they contained a “a gold mine of information” that would be valuable in assessing the project.

He is also skeptical TransCanada can produce a complete environmental study on the complex project in time for the June 6 deadline.

Ribaux said he recognises the difference between the initial BAPE hearings, with a more general mandate, and the future hearings needed for Quebec’s approval of the Energy East project.

But he is convinced Energy East will fail the test of social licence.

“Three years ago a majority of Quebecers were for the project,” he explained. “Now a majority is against.

“The more they learn about it, the more they will be against,” Ribaux said, noting the prospect of oil spills and the huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from producing oil from Alberta’s oilsands.

In an email reply, TransCanada official Tim DuBoyce said the company and the province had agreed “on a mutually acceptable path forward.”

“This is an addition to the comprehensive environmental review completed by the federal regulator, the National Energy Board,” he wrote.

At the Quebec National Assembly on Tuesday, Heurtel brushed by reporters with questions on his actions without answering.

In the first round of hearings, participants were not allowed to express their views but were allowed to question Energy East and National Energy Board representatives who were present at the hearings.

Often in the first round, the Energy East and NEB reps were stumped by questions about who would pay if damage from an oil spill exceeded the $1 billion the promoter has allotted and what severity of earthquake the pipeline is required to withstand.

In a letter to Heurtel dated April 21, the company set out limits it expects Quebec to respect in its evaluation.

TransCanada states that, “Quebec recognises that the conduct and result of Quebec’s evaluation procedure will concentrate on authorizations under provincial jurisdiction.”

Quebec’s Environmental Quality Act stipulates that a promoter must have a Certificate of Authorization from the provincial environment department before the project can go ahead.

While Heurtel was not answering questions on Tuesday, a 32-page directive issued by his department set out Quebec’s requirements for the impact statement TransCanada must present.

It states that Quebec will initiate a second BAPE evaluation process.

In a letter to the BAPE, the minister said a new BAPE process would begin soon, with new public hearings and the resulting BAPE report would be used by Quebec in formulating its position before the NEB in hearings on Energy East next year.