Article content

It may be risky to say the B.C. government is playing its final anti-pipeline card. There’s no statute of limitations on legal goofiness.

But the province’s latest move sure looks like an admission of looming defeat.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Braid: As pipeline gets closer, B.C. tries another dodge Back to video

The province’s new proposals, instantly referred Thursday to the B.C. Court of Appeal, seeks to require stringent permits for flows of diluted bitumen through the expanded Kinder Morgan pipeline.

That was expected. Most interesting is what the proposals don’t say.

They do not say the pipeline project cannot or will not be built. They assume a situation in which bitumen is already flowing through the expansion project.

Also, it appears that current volumes through the existing pipeline would not need permits.

That strikes University of Calgary law professor Nigel Bankes as “totally counterintuitive and bizarre. I think it really undercuts their argument.”

He says that if B.C. really thinks bitumen is so hazardous it requires provincial permits, that should apply to all bitumen, not just new flows through the Trans Mountain expansion.