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Frankel then set the end of the month as a deadline for would-be interveners to file notice as to why they should be permitted to participate and what they could contribute. Only then will the court begin to consider the next stage.

By May 31 the deadline, set by pipeline owner Kinder Morgan for deciding whether to proceed with the expansion, will have passed.

In declining to accept the government timetable and other assumptions, Justice Frankel may have been reflecting the usual reluctance on the part of judges to be drawn into disputes with a major political component.

Nor was it the first occasion where the NDP political agenda on the pipeline was at odds with legal, judicial and constitutional reality.

• July 18, 2017: On taking office, Premier John Horgan advised new Environment Minister George Heyman to drop further mention of the NDP election vow “to use every tool to stop” the Trans Mountain expansion.

“He had been given the legal advice that stopping the project was beyond the jurisdiction of B.C., and to talk about it or frame our actions around doing that would be inappropriate and unlawful,” Heyman confirmed later.

• July 25: New Attorney General David Eby warned the province could not unreasonably hold up or stall permits for the Trans Mountain project. To do so would leave B.C. open to a lawsuit: “We’ll end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars that should be going to schools and hospitals to an oil company.”