Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Act, passed its third and final reading in the House of Commons on June 18, days after a 24-four hour marathon vote on 159 bundled opposition amendments.
The Senate passed the controversial 425-page bill, which amends 70 pieces of legislation and contains 150 pages of amendments to environmental laws and the federal environmental assessment process, before adjourning for the summer on Friday, June 29.
Bill C-38 replaces the 1992 Environmental Assessment Act with a 2012 version that imposes a 24-month time limit on joint review panels involving the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the National Energy Board, and/or the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and 365 days on standard environmental assessments. The federal Environment minister can extend a review by up to three months, and Cabinet can further extend reviews. The federal minister of Natural Resources has similar authority to extend National Energy Board reviews.
In a May 29 appearance before the Senate Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) said that the reforms are necessary to streamline the approval of an estimated $500-billion worth of investment in 500 mining and energy projects over the next 10 years. Projects include oil and gas pipelines, mines, hydroelectric dams, oil and gas extraction, and wind and solar farms. Mr. Oliver estimated that the projects would create 700,000 new jobs over the next decade.
“Inefficient regulation leads to unnecessary and unpredictable project delays that can create additional costs for proponents and impede their ability to attract capital and stimulate economic activity,” said Mr. Oliver, who appeared before the committee alongside Environment Minister Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.) and Fisheries and Oceans Minister Keith Ashfield (Fredericton, N.B.). “Both industry and government are in agreement—Canada has suffered from this regulatory malaise for too long.”
Many of the 500 projects touted by the feds are already in some stage of assessment, however, and what the changes in Bill C-38 mean for projects already under review remains unclear. The budget bill contains transitional provisions for projects that are already under review. Under these provisions, the federal Environment minister will have the authority to decide whether assessments underway before Bill C-38 are sufficient, and will impose timelines on these current reviews.
Justyna Laurie-Lean, vice president of environment and health for the Mining Association of Canada (MAC), said that her organization is advising its members to continue following the previous environmental assessment process.
“By and large, we’re recommending that our members just keep going the way they were,” said Ms. Laurie-Lean. “In the transition period, our understanding is that any projects that were already going through an assessment, the agency was relatively efficient and timely about it, so I don’t see any change from one to the other.”
Ms. Laurie-Lean said that for mining projects there was more uncertainty around the changes to the Fisheries Act. Bill C-38 limits the focus of the act’s marine habitat protection to aboriginal, recreational and commercial fisheries.
“It’s still unclear how they’re going to roll it out and make those decisions, so it’s very difficult to estimate what kind of impact it will have,” said Ms. Laurie-Lean.
MAC estimates that the industry accounts for an estimated $140-billion of the $500-billion in resource and energy investment that the federal government anticipates over the next decade. These projects include chromite mining in Northern Ontario, iron ore in Labrador and Quebec, copper and gold in British Columbia, and diamonds in the territories.
Brenda Kenny, president and CEO of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA), said that she expects the government to apply the new rules on a “case-by-case” basis to existing pipeline assessments.
“The existing process that’s underway may fit with the government’s new rules, and if it doesn’t I expect they will be asking themselves how the policy objectives can be reflected in the remainder of that process,” Ms. Kenny told The Hill Times.
Ms. Kenny also defended the timelines imposed on environmental assessments, noting that project proponents put in years of preparation before applying to regulators for a project’s approval.
“Years and years of consultation and planning go into any pipeline application. Even though there is now a two year maximum [timeline], there’s probably three or four years that lead up to that point in time,” Ms. Kenny said. “There’s no shortage of opportunity within that time span to have a very full, open and rigorous evaluation. A further running of the clock does not lead to better decision making.”
CEPA estimates that oil and gas pipelines account for $40-billion of the currently-proposed resource projects in the works for the next decade. These projects include Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline from Bruderheim, Alta., to Kitimat, B.C.; Kinder Morgan’s expansion of its Trans Mountain Pipeline from Edmonton, Alta., to Burnaby, B.C.; and the on-again-off-again Mackenzie Valley Pipeline that would deliver natural gas from the Beaufort Sea to pipeline systems in Northern Alberta.
While mining and pipelines account for nearly $200-billion of the half-trillion dollars in anticipated resource project investment over the next decade, the most significant contributor is likely to be oilsands development in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers estimated oil sands investment to reach $20-billion in 2012.
When it comes to oilsands projects assessments, however, Simon Dyer of sustainable development think tank Pembina Institute policy director Simon Dyer called the timelines a “red herring.”
“From our experience the vast majority of extensions are associated with either the proponent not having the correct information, or, ironically, the federal government not having done its own job either,” Mr. Dyer said.
In a recent blog post on Pembina’s website, Mr. Dyer detailed how the think tank intervened in the joint provincial-federal assessment of Shell’s Jackpine oilsands mine expansion in Northern Alberta to highlight omissions in the project’s environmental assessment.
Pembina’s research found that the cumulative environmental impact was 12 times greater than the provincial panel had on record. The federal panel accepted Pembina’s findings and Shell responded by resubmitting a more comprehensive assessment that took into account the proposal’s true environmental impact.
Mr. Dyer said that the timelines could limit the time for organizations such as Pembina to intervene in federal environmental assessments and provide more accurate information to decision makers. He added that when it comes to oil sands development it remains unclear what projects will receive federal assessments, such as the assessment that allowed Pembina to intervene in the Jackpine review.
“Until the regulations are written, we won’t know what size and scale of projects will trigger federal involvement,” Mr. Dyer observed. “You would hope something as significant as an oilsands mine in a region with such a high level of cumulative development would still have federal oversight, but we don’t know.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Chris Plecash
No comments:
Post a Comment