VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) will seek standing as an intervenor in two upcoming court reference cases launched by the governments of British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

In British Columbia, the provincial government is asking the courts if they have the power to regulate oil shipments, which could effectively lead to blocking interprovincial pipelines.

In Saskatchewan, the provincial government is asking the courts to decide whether the federal government can impose a carbon tax.

“We want to go to court to stand up for pipeline approval and to fight the job-killing carbon tax. These two projects are immensely important for taxpayers across the country. Carbon taxes cost families and businesses a small fortune and pipelines are vital to our economy,” CTF Alberta director Colin Craig said in a statement on Monday.

Craig noted that clarifying the appropriate spheres of federal and provincial jurisdiction will serve to enhance political accountability by allowing Canadians to hold the proper level of government accountable for their policy choices.

The CTF will be officially filing the intervenor applications over the coming weeks, it announced.

Ottawa announced earlier this month that it will also intervene in the constitutional reference case filed by British Columbia under the British Columbia Constitutional Questions Act.

The Western Canadian coastline is a pristine environment that opponents of the Kinder Morgan Trans Canada Expansion pipeline want to defend at all costs. However, the same tidewater is also the gateway to developing new markets for Canadian bitumen, as its biggest consumer, the US, is fast becoming the world’s leading crude producer, reducing its appetite for Canadian crude.

The $7.4-billion project, which involves twinning the existing 1 150 km pipeline from near Edmonton to Burnaby, would triple its capacity to carry 890 000 bbl/d of oil and could create up to 15 000 jobs. The expansion would see three times more bitumen moved daily to the British Columbia coast and a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic.

The province wants to defer to the courts to affirm whether it has a right to protect its coast from increased oil shipments that the twinning of the pipeline would bring.

Ottawa in November 2016 approved the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, followed soon after by the British Columbia Liberal government signing off on the pipeline's environmental approval early in 2017.

However, things changed with a 2017 provincial election failing to deliver a majority mandate in British Columbia, giving underdogs, the New Democratic Party and the British Columbia Greens, the opportunity to form a minority government, that has since opposed the project at every turn, shifting the goal posts further and denting investor confidence in the province and the country.