The Energy East hearings themselves have been “adjourned” until someone can figure out what to do. That “someone” would normally be the same chairperson who is no longer permitted to make any decisions on the matter.

Bowing to mounting pressure over scandals exposed by National Observer, the NEB’s Energy East panelists have all stepped down and NEB chief executive Peter Watson will not be allowed any further role in the pipeline review.

It’s an object lesson in the importance of independent investigative journalism. The NEB has long had a serious problem with its public credibility. But it is only because of reader-supported investigations by Mike De Souza that we know the chairman and two of the panelists met privately with Jean Charest to discuss the pipeline proposal while he was on contract to TransCanada.

The Charest affair also gave Canadians a glimpse of the hidden albatross left by Stephen Harper around the neck of the current government. Stephen Harper may be gone from Parliament but his legacy of political appointees will continue to hamper progress on energy and many other files for years to come.

Even as Harper’s appointees at the NEB sought to lance the boil on Energy East, they continued raising doubts with their own obsessive secrecy. Despite the flurry of recusals announced on Friday, the NEB rejected legal motions calling for them to come clean. It refused to release all of its documents related to the Charest meetings and refused to conduct a proper investigation. The Harper M.O. lives on.

But the immediate question is what to do with Energy East? The NEB clearly hopes that a step sideways by its chairman and some new panelists will be enough to assuage the public.

That’s almost certainly wishful thinking. As law professor Jocelyn Stacey recently observed: “there is nothing the NEB can do in response to the most recent allegations of bias that can redeem the Energy East hearing.”