It's the end of oversight overkill

Only believers in big government would argue against taking 40 government departments out of play when it comes to reviewing major resource projects and giving the authority to three.

Those believers, of course, would be Liberals, NDPers, eco-activists and all those charity sleight-of-handers recently in the news for being lavishly funded by billionaire American foundations.

But not us.

For small-c conservatives, the Harper government's decision to trust the expertise of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the National Energy Board, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to ensure Canadians are protected from potential disaster, while cashing in on our resources, is one of those "about-time" moments.

Unlike Liberals, NDPers, eco-activists and those aforementioned sleight-of-handers, we do not believe three dozen-plus government agencies ripe with redundancies and hog-tied in red tape are needed to ensure oilsands pipelines and other resource mining meet the standards demanded by the Canadian people.

We believe in lean and mean. And we also believe in expediency.

It was a month after the Chicago Blackhawks won the 2010 Stanley Cup, for example, that a review panel began dealing with the Northern Gateway pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to the coast of British Columbia, yet community hearings only began in January.

The announcement of this streamlining, as laid out this week by Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, turned the keys to projects with little environmental impact over to the provinces, and reinforced the budget promise in March that review processes of all projects, including the big ones, be completed within two years.

"We are at a critical juncture because the global economy is now presenting Canada with an historic opportunity to take advantage of our immense resources," said Oliver.

"But we must seize the moment." He's right. Opportunity knocks for Canada.

One of the highlights in Oliver's announcement, and it should be a highlight for even believers in big government, was that radical environmentalists and foreign outsiders would be cut from the review process.

Who, for example, would give standing at the Northern Gateway assessment hearings to Petroleos de Venezuela, the state-owned oil company of Venezuela's ailing presidential whackjob Hugo Chavez?

No one in their right mind, that's who.

But it's on the list.

Original Article
Source: toronto sun
Author: editorial