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It started with the War in the Woods, mass protests that quashed plans for clear-cutting in Clayoquot Sound.
Then came decisive demonstrations over airports, cellphone towers, wind farms, biotechnology — and one gas plant so hated by Ontario residents that the Liberals under former premier Dalton McGuinty allegedly spent $1-billion to cancel it.
Now it’s pipelines versus the people: protests over Alberta’s oil sands, and the metal tubes meant to carry its bitumen to market.
The outcome is uncertain. But dozens of recent developments have been overturned by the rise of “social licence” — the idea that community buy-in is as important, or more, than regulators’ approvals.
Or is it just NIMBYism by another name? Who speaks for “the people”? Who decides whether social licence is granted or not?
“You want people to feel heard in their concerns,” says Brian Lee Crowley, the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy in Ottawa. “But I believe there’s a whole group of people who have become free riders on this concept of social licence, people who are dyed-in-the-wool opponents — whatever it is … They say, ‘Oh, you must not be allowed to do this unless you have social licence. And I’m the standard. I decide whether you’ve got it or not. And because I’m opposed to what you’re doing, you will never get social licence.’ ”
Mr. Crowley was one of a dozen speakers at a recent conference on “social licence” at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. The school has ties to the oil and gas industry, but the symposium included participants from across the political spectrum (both the right-leaning Fraser Institute and the left-leaning Pembina Institute took part).
What they share is a growing concern that as opposition groups — empowered by social media and support from the likes of Neil Young and Leonardo DiCaprio — gain authority they stall the development of anything with a whiff of controversy.
And ultimately undermine the law.
The term “social licence” was coined in 1997 by Jim Cooney, then a B.C. mining executive and an occasional advisor to the World Bank.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/17/rise-of-social-licence-believing-they-speak-for-their-community-protest-groups-are-undermining-the-law/