Commentary
We may soon need to lay Ottawa to rest, following its decision to deny itself the necessities of life.
The fateful die was cast last month after the Enbridge energy company made what it believed to be an urgent and uncontroversial application to the Ontario Energy Board to replace a corroded 65-year-old natural gas pipeline—which is at high risk of failing—in the city of Ottawa with a modern pipeline able to reliably meet the city’s needs into the future.
To Enbridge’s surprise, the natural gas pipeline emergency it warned about was trumped at the Energy Board by a different emergency—the “climate emergency” that city planners, in league with environmentalists and others, declared in 2019 “for the purposes of naming, framing, and deepening our commitment to protecting our economy, our eco systems, and our community from climate change.”…