Federal Court of Appeal rejects Trans Mountain expansion challenge

OTTAWA — The Federal Court of Appeal says the government’s decision to approve the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion a second time is reasonable and will stand.

In a unanimous, 3-0 decision today, the court dismissed four challenges to that approval launched last summer by First Nations in British Columbia.

The First Nations argued at a hearing in December the government went into consultations with Indigenous communities in the fall of 2018 having predetermined the outcome in favour of building the project.

But the three judges who decided the case say cabinet’s second round of consultations with First Nations affected by the pipeline was “anything but a rubber-stamping exercise.”