NEB Emails Reveal Pattern Of Off-Record Meetings With Pipeline Industry

"It was the Friday before Christmas and Joe Paviglianiti, a senior engineer at Canada’s federal pipeline watchdog, the National Energy Board sent an email to TransCanada Corp. “Sorry in advance for bothering you during your holidays,” he wrote on Dec. 19, 2014.

Paviglianiti and Iain Colquhoun, the National Energy Board's chief engineer, had been in touch for almost a year with a whistleblower who worked at TransCanada as a heavy equipment operator.

The whistleblower had made serious safety allegations against the energy and pipeline company. He was as adamant that his identity be protected as he was that the company had been lax about safety. He wanted the company's standards to improve but he didn't want to lose his job or be blackballed from working elsewhere in the industry.

His allegations would eventually be dismissed by the NEB in October of 2015, but now, staff told him, they were taking his concerns seriously."

Mike De Souza reports for the National Observer March 17, 2016.