The long-running proposal to truck millions of tonnes of coal through Tseshaht and Hupacasath First Nations traditional territories is officially dead in the water.
On April 4, the provincial Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) advised Vancouver-based Compliance Energy Corporation that they had rejected their application for an environmental assessment for the Raven Underground Coal Project, largely based on their failure to conduct meaningful consultation with First Nations.
Keith Hunter, who represented Tseshaht First Nation on the EAO Working Group, said while Compliance officials complained loudly about the assessment process, they consistently failed to do a proper job.
“As far as Tseshaht’s interests were concerned, they did not meet the standard of engagement [required],” he said.
Compliance claimed to have spent $35 million of investor money on the project, of which $10 million was directed towards the assessment process.
Hunter said he had “no idea” how much money Tseshaht spent to monitor the process and to prepare its own responses as the process stumbled along.
In his April 4 letter, EAO Project Assessment Manager Tracy James noted that his office advised Compliance on March 5, 2010 that it would be required to provide detailed information spelled out in the Application Information Requirements. Six years (and three unsuccessful applications) later:
“EAO has determined that the Application does not contain the required information and has decided not to accept the Application for detailed review,” James concluded.
“After the first review process, that was one of the things [EAO] reviewed: adequacy of consultation,” Hunter said. “They didn’t meet that the first time, in May 2013. They had the specific set of directives from the EAO that they would have to correct, and they never did that. The second application they submitted (October 2014) didn’t have anything about First Nations consultation at all.”
That fatally flawed application did not even make it to the screening process, he noted.
“Then, when they submitted the third application, they did not correct any of the inadequacies of consultation from the first application.”
As reported in Ha-shilth-sa in June 2015, Tseshaht First Nation filed a request that the project be terminated after failing to complete the application process within the statutory three-year time frame.
At the time, then-chief operating officer Stephen Ellis downplayed the failure to meet the June 7 deadline, and said the company could simply initiate a new application process, despite a reported working capital deficit of nearly one million dollars.
Then, in an angry letter dated Aug. 25before resigning, Ellis accused EAO of having “built-in biases” that meant Compliance “would never be able to achieve an [Environmental Assessment] certificate.”
Hunter said the company finally called it quits on Feb. 26, after Japanese and Korean investors withdrew from the project.
“Compliance issued a news release that their whole Board of Directors had resigned and that they had stopped public trading of their stock. At that point, we re-submitted [the request for termination], saying that, based on their own press release, they were no longer a going concern,” Hunter said.
When EAO did not receive any response after 30 days, James issued the April 4 termination letter.
Hunter said he has been impressed with how EAO has handled the process.
“As much as Compliance would like to think there was an anti-proponent bias, the EAO was very thorough in what they had to do to reach a decision.”
