{"id":5144,"date":"2023-12-06T17:02:49","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T22:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/?p=5144"},"modified":"2023-12-06T17:42:47","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T22:42:47","slug":"mpsc-line-5-post-mortem-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/2023\/12\/06\/mpsc-line-5-post-mortem-pt-2\/","title":{"rendered":"MPSC Line 5, Post-Mortem, pt. 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 2: Relations<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week I started a new series of posts<\/a> in response to last Friday\u2019s MPSC decision approving Enbridge\u2019s application to relocate a portion of Line 5 inside a tunnel beneath the bedrock in the Straits of Mackinac. The decision has produced in me a feeling of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, hearkening back to the MPSC decision a decade ago that approved Enbridge\u2019s \u201creplacement\u201d of Line 6B<\/a>. It echoes, too, as a friend reminded me this week, the more recent but equally short-sighted decision by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approving Enbridge\u2019s re-route of its Line 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The hard truth is that in all three cases, the opposition never really stood a chance. And that\u2019s not because opponents aren\u2019t on the side of what is right, what is just, and what in the long term is best for human and more-than-human life. It\u2019s because, as I stated in my first post, the system is built in such a way as to set aside, to bracket, what is right and just in favor of what is most expedient\u2014by which I mean what is best for commerce. These public commissions might pay some lip service to what is right and just\u2014in the form, say of \u201ctribal consultation\u201d or basic compliance with some fairly weak environmental protections (if they exist)\u2014but those things are at best secondary, subordinate, minor checks on the economic imperatives that are the primary concern of the proceedings.<\/p>\n

This is not a bug in the system, as they say; this is a feature.<\/p>\n

In my last post, I emphasized two other features of the system. I highlighted the way that it is unjust because it is exclusionary both in form<\/em>\u2014limiting, in practice, who gets to participate\u2014and in content<\/em>\u2014limiting the kinds of things that are permissible as matters of consideration. Here I want to elaborate on the latter of these two points, especially on the way the proceedings\u2019 emphasis on process, on establishing and adhering to certain rules that define the field of play, encourages, even requires<\/em>, what I called \u201cconceptual partitioning or discreteness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the Commission simply calls this establishing the scope of review, which of course is necessary. Yet there\u2019s no question that the inclination of the Commission, and certainly of the Commission Staff, is for a narrower, rather than more expansive scope. Recall the Staff\u2019s remark that \u201cwithout reasonable and legally sound limitations,\u201d the intervenors\u2019 \u201canything-goes-approach would expand and weigh down the evidentiary record until it buckles.\u201d Staff seems to want to treat this as a practical and therefore neutral observation about process<\/em>; no proceeding, after all, can take up everything<\/em>. But the remark is disingenuous on its face; the intervenors weren\u2019t arguing that \u201canything goes;\u201d they were simply asking that a specific set of questions be allowed to go. But what\u2019s even more astonishing is just how little consideration Staff\u2019s process-oriented thinking gives to whether and how a narrow review might advantage one side and disadvantage the other.<\/p>\n

And there was never any question as to which side would benefit by this narrower scope. As I mentioned in my last post, Enbridge argued for exclusions at every turn. Here\u2019s just a brief list of things Enbridge sought to have excluded from consideration:<\/p>\n