OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — The Supreme Court of Canada has declared that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government’s Impact Assessment Act, dubbed the “no-more pipelines” bill, is mostly “unconstitutional.”
On October 13, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Richard Wagner announced that the court voted 5-2 to find Ottawa’s 2019 Impact Assessment Act (IAA), previously known as Bill C-69, largely unconstitutional.
“The balance of the scheme … is ultra vires (beyond the powers of) Parliament and thus unconstitutional,” Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote in the ruling.
Essentially, the 2019 law allowed the federal government to intervene heavily on the approvals process of provincial natural resource projects, so that before approving projects, province’s were forced to align them with the Liberal’s social and “climate change” priorities.
Wagner ruled that the process in Sections 81 to 91 of the IAA were constitutional and could be separated out from the rest of the bill.
Sections 81 to 91 refer to projects under federal authority on federal lands, or outside Canada. Therefore, those projects would fall under federal jurisdiction and are not unconstitutional for the federal government to regulate.
However, Wagner declared that the majority of the bill involves “designated projects,” which the federal government cannot regulate under the nation’s Constitution.
“In my view, Parliament has plainly overstepped its constitutional competence in enacting this designated projects scheme,” Wagner wrote.
“Environmental protection remains one of today’s most pressing challenges, and Parliament has the power to enact a scheme of environmental assessment to meet this challenge, but Parliament also has the duty to act within the enduring division of powers framework laid out in the Constitution,” he added.
The decision is a hard-fought victory for Alberta, which previously labeled the IAA as the “no more pipelines” bill under then-Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, and which has fought against the bill since its passing in 2019.
In 2022, the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the province’s grievance, determining that “The federal government’s invocation of concerns about the environment and climate change that all provincial governments and Canadians share is not a basis on which to tear apart the constitutional division of powers.”
Beyond the IAA, Alberta has been consistent in its fight against Trudeau’s push for increased energy regulations, with Kenney’s successor Danielle Smith repeatedly refusing to submit to the Liberal government’s demands, warning that Canadians could freeze in the winter if new “clean” electricity and energy regulations are enforced.
Late last month, Smith announced that she is preparing to use her province’s Sovereignty Act to fight the electricity regulations if the Trudeau government does not relent.
The draft version of the federal government’s “Clean Electricity Regulations” (CER) states that there will be billions in higher costs associated with a so-called “green” power transition, especially in the resource-rich provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, which use natural gas and coal to fuel power plants.
Business executives in Alberta’s energy sector have also warned that the Trudeau government’s fast-paced “green” transition could lead to unreliability in the natural resource rich province.
In addition to Smith, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has likewise promised to fight back against Trudeau’s new regulations, saying recently that “Trudeau’s net-zero electricity regulations are unaffordable, unrealistic and unconstitutional.”
“They will drive electricity rates through the roof and leave Saskatchewan with an unreliable power supply. Our government will not let the federal government do that to the Saskatchewan people,” he charged.
The Trudeau government’s current environmental goals – in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” – include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades.
The reduction and eventual elimination of the use of so-called “fossil-fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda – an organization which Trudeau and some of his cabinet are involved.