The Joint Review Panel has been reshuffling the lineup of intervenors trying to wrap up the presentation schedule before friday afternoon.
A late day email from Kristen Higgins of the National Energy Board stated that, “the reason for the friday schedule change is due to three unexpected deaths for the panel and members of the panel staff.”
Higgins said that the panel is by no means rushing through anything—though they have allowed presenters to go late at the end of the day to help wrap things up.
She added that panel sessions will resume as normal on monday if not everybody has had a chance to present their final arguments by mid-friday.
Around 1 p.m on wednesday Sheila Leggett, one of the three panel members who are hearing the final statements of opponents and proponents of the proposed Enbridge pipeline, announced they were a week ahead of schedule.
Original estimates had the final hearing lasting two weeks, but a number of presentations were shorter than the allotted time frame of an hour--for instance the Government of Canada's presentation by James Shaw wednesday afternoon that lasted 30 minutes.
One presenter, Dennis Horwood of the Kitimat Valley Naturalists, said he has felt the effects of the curtailed schedule, having been on call Wednesday afternoon waiting to see if he had to come down from Kitimat with his colleague Walter Thorne that day to give his final statements.
The accelerated pace also meant one group showed up to the hearings unexpectedly late.
Twenty or so members of the Gitxaala Nation left their village on Dolphin island south of Prince Rupert territory at 7 a.m. and arrived at 1 p.m. wednesday, thinking they had made it on time to see their representative speak to the panel, not knowing that the quickly unfolding hearings were ahead of schedule.
The lawyer for the Gitxaala Nation, Rosanne Kyle, was there on time to give the presentation.
Former Gitxaala chief councillor Elmer Moody said the trip cost them $7,000 dollars, another expense to add to the $3 million he says the nation has already put out for legal fees and other costs associated with challenging the Enbridge Northern Gateway project.
“They could have made a better effort to contact us,” Moody said about him and his colleagues having missed the presentation.
The Gitxaala Nation members were recognized in the hearing room when they resumed after lunch, and according to Higgins, “the change in time from 1 p.m. To 11 a.m. was the timing estimated by the Gitxaala not a time slot given by the Panel.”