There seem to be many ways to use the term ‘Social License.’ Natural resource extraction and pipeline industries use the term to describe the theoretical license the community provides to allow the necessary disruption of the environment in the process of extracting, processing and transporting our natural resources. The only problem is that social license is viewed from many different angles by the government, the regulator agencies, aboriginal rights activists, environmentalists and the community as a whole.
According to former Environmental Minister and current Finance Minister Joe Oliver, social license is being misused by environmentalists and aboriginal rights advocates to block resource development that he believes is in the public interest. This is the chap who, as environment minister, refused to put any restrictions on tar-sands extraction and processing—the most seriously polluting methods ever seen in producing oil.
Joe Oliver represents a government that severely restricts who can speak to the National Energy Board at their hearings. This is also the regulatory board that ended hearings in Toronto that were not going as was preferred.
Mr. Oliver needs to understand that once you have completely corrupted a federal agency such as the National Energy Board, it hardly deserves to be referred to as ‘independent.’
Mr. Oliver admits that even though pipelines, such as the Northern Gateway Pipeline planned to cross Northern B.C., have been approved by the Harper government and the National Energy Board, they are not in danger of proceeding in the near future. He fears that a small minority of Canadians are using social license to block construction of the pipelines. This small minority, according to Oliver, is made up of aboriginal bands whose lands are in the way of the pipeline and environmentalists. He assumes that the rest of us have given the pipeline a pass.
But what seems to be lost in discussion of social license is that it is not a stamp on a document that commits anybody to anything less than fair dealings. It is not a license to lie about the true destination of tar-sand’s bitumen. It does not allow the shipment of highly volatile crude oil from fracking in old tanker cars through Lac Megantic, Quebec with unsafe train procedures.
Only a fool puts profit ahead of safety. Social license is a bond between the public and the company. It is the trust that people are entitled to in protecting them from harm caused by industry in pursuit of progress, profit and performance. People like Joe Oliver seem to miss that point.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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