ARCHIVED – Allocation of Funds for Participation in the Public Hearing for Trans Mountain Expansion

On 22 July 2013, the National Energy Board announced that Participant Funding would be made available to assist individuals and groups with their participation in the Trans Mountain Expansion Project hearing. The Board announced it would make $1.5 million available under its Participant Funding Program and a higher amount may be considered once applications for funding had been received. The date of 6 January 2015 was announced in the Hearing Order as the deadline to apply for funding.

By July 2014, the Board had already allotted approximately $2.4 million in participant funding to eligible participants. At this point, there were 250 intervenors in the hearing who had not yet applied for funding. Given the heavy interest, we expanded the participant funding envelope to $3 million. It became apparent that we needed to be clear with eligible intervenors that there was a very limited amount of funding available to be distributed. The purpose of these changes was to manage expectations and to avoid the perception that we were inviting intervenors to apply for funding when none was available.

On 16 July 2014, the deadline for applying for participant funding was moved to Friday, 28 November 2014. Applications for funding received after 28 November were not considered. Of the 95 applicants requesting over $24 Million, 72 were offered funding valued at $3,085,370. 79% was offered to Aboriginal groups.

On 24 September 2015, the National Energy Board (NEB) Hearing Panel for the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project (Project) issued a revised schedule after receiving and considering all information and requested comments as outlined in the 21 August 2015 decision to strike the evidence prepared by Mr. Kelly from the hearing record [Filing A72283].

On 30 September 2015, PFP offered up to $10,000 of “special funding” to eligible Intervenors with evidence, information requests and/or responses to information requests directly impacted by the decision to strike the evidence prepared by Mr. Kelly from the hearing record. Six applications were received, requesting $97,025. $40,000 was awarded to the four applicants directly impacted by the decision to strike the evidence prepared by Mr. Kelly from the hearing record.

The Funding Review Committee (FRC), an independent committee established by the Board, reviews applications for participant funding, and provides recommendations on funding awards. Following a review of the FRC recommendations, the Board’s Executive Vice President, Regulatory, accepted the FRC’s recommendations and approved the following funding awards:

Date modified:

2020-09-29