BY Doug Matthews April in Inuvik: A meditation on uncertainty The National Energy Board comes to town for final hearings

It began to rain in Inuvik that April night, an event unusual for that time of the year, but not unknown.

It was the night before the last of the National Energy Board hearings into the Mackenzie Gas Project, and some who were there thought the rain a useful metaphor, one that offered the promise of washing away the long-borne pain and uncertainties of the regulatory process just now concluding.

Like any resource-based town, Inuvik lives with uncertainty. Indeed, the town owes its existence to the uncertain flooding of the original Delta centre, Aklavik. The community’s fate is determined by unknowns over which it has no control, unknowns like commodity prices, exploration success or failure, competition from other suppliers, changing corporate priorities and regulatory outcomes.

Some argue that resource development is a risky business and the town has to suck it up and be prepared to take the risks. This sentiment misses the difference between risk and uncertainty.
You can calculate and take precautions against risk, but you just have to live with uncertainty.

The air at those final NEB meetings was full of uncertainty and speaker after speaker made the case that their approach would ensure the certainty of the outcome they were promoting.
Environmental groups wanted to be certain that all 176 of the Joint Review Panel’s recommendations would be accepted by the board before any approval was given for the pipeline, ensuring that all of their favoured hobby horses would be recognized and put in place.

This position, though, was itself underwritten by uncertainty, as the main spokesman for one southern group resorted to unfortunate self-puffery in pointedly letting the board know that he was a member of the Order of Canada. His insistence on the point contrasted with the quiet humility of the two Northern members of that order who were in attendance (Nellie Cournoyea and Fred Carmichael), who seemed to have no need to mention their membership, perhaps more certain of who they are.

The uncertainty over what other industrial developments might follow from a pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley – and how other boards and agencies might handle these projects – was dealt a clever hand by the lawyer for the NWT, who argued that the legal principle of “presumption of regularity” should give all assembled the comfort that those boards and agencies would do the right thing when the time comes.

Leaving aside the legal phrase’s unfortunate resemblance to an Ex-Lax commercial, the board seemed, eventually, to be certain about that legal case and the show moved on.
Matters like the uncertainty of getting the proposed pipeline through the Deh Cho region, an uncertainty obviously felt deeply by the board as its members questioned several of the Delta intervenors as to their thoughts on how, indeed whether, this goal might be accomplished.

Two senior Delta leaders, Richard Nerysoo and Cournoyea, were seasoned enough politicians to know better than to claim to speak for the Deh Cho, but their responses – hers aggressive, his more conciliatory – showed all in the room that the path through the Deh Cho was likely to remain a very big uncertainty.

As was what might happen when – if – the project received the sought-after certificate of public convenience and necessity from the board.

And that’s just the beginning of the uncertainty: What might be expected from the project proponents once the certificate is in the mail remains hard to discern, as they want six years to think about things before digging the pipeline trench. Several other parties, including the board, seemed to think three years was about right.

So even the promised end of the long-running regulatory process in September will not remove the uncertainty, it will just move into another arena and Inuvik and its people must wait some more.

But, later that April night, while the town slept, the rain quietly changed to snow and in the early morning, when the curtains were pulled back on window after window, Inuvik looked beautiful.

Of course, by noon all was melting, the mud was everywhere, the streets were full of slush and the town looked much like any other northern resource town – pretty grim.

But, for a while, it had been beautiful and maybe, in a world of uncertainty, being beautiful for a while is all anyone can expect.

Doug Matthews, former director of the NWT’s minerals, oil and gas division, is an energy consultant.