A giant natural gas basin lies beneath Canada's Northwest Territories. And the drive to recover that gas is on, with a proposal in the works to open up three major production fields and to build two pipelines to southern markets. It's called the Mackenzie Gas Project and it has the potential to open the doors for the biggest industrial development Canada's Arctic has ever seen.
This project opens the area to further development and brings the risk of adverse impacts on the environment and society, but it also offers an unprecedented opportunity for economic development for Aboriginal groups and Northerners. To evaluate the impacts of the project, a Joint Review Panel, comprised of seven impartial citizens, was appointed in 2004.
The panel comprehensively considered both the opportunities and the risks in an effort to chart a path for the project to proceed in a sustainable way. Similar to the conclusion of the mid-1970s Berger Inquiry, the Joint Review Panel report found the public "still regards the project not simply as another industrial development, but as a force that would irrevocably change the life of the region, whether for better or worse."
Now the fate of the project and the panel's carefully crafted recommendations rest with the National Energy Board, the body responsible for determining if the project is in the public interest.
