ABSTRACT
While shale gas exploration is currently being carried out in several Canadian provinces, there is an indefinite moratorium on the practice of fracking in the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick (NB) that came into effect in 2015. This chapter makes sense of this moratorium as a consequence of the provincial government’s failure to democratically engage citizens in dialogue about a potential shale gas industry. Specifically, it is argued that two provincial governments were aware of but failed to address the fact that many NB citizens, perhaps especially First Nations residents, viewed the development of shale gas primarily as a moral and political issue. It focuses on a set of “roundtable” consultations on fracking as exemplary, and drawing on textual analysis of roundtable sessions, it is revealed how governance efforts focused on investigating royalty rates and fracking’s environmental risks at the expense of those issues at the root of public concern — somewhat paradoxically, concern about democratic process.
