CANADA REPEATS PAST MISTAKES
Environmental reviews need to be fixed, writes Robert Skinner
Re: “Bill C-69”s detractors can start with Harper,” opinion, Sept. 26.
Martin Olszynski’s drive-by shot at “him whose name dare not be mentioned,” while predictable given a federal election next year, is just too easy and based on a very narrow selection of history. Certainly, former PM Stephen Harper will again be blamed for everything, including the failures of PM Justin Trudeau. But Trudeau’s Bill C 69, the proposed law that dismantles arguably the world’s best energy regulator, mixing into a tossed salad of woolly, almost new-age socio-environmental assessment processes, has a very bipartisan history.
Canada’s environmental regulatory morass has deep roots. Since Confederation, programs and regulations intertwined and grew like weeds, choking out or sapping economic efficiency. This is especially so for environmental regulation — one of our most prominent jurisdictional “grey areas.” From the 1937 Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, successive governments have commissioned studies of the effects and costs of federal-provincial regulatory and program overlap and duplication. Following up on the 1972 Stockholm UN Conference on the Human Environment, Pierre Trudeau’s government launched Canada’s environmental assessment process. Some provinces followed suit. The weeds began to grow.
But it was not until the 1985 Nielsen Report under the Mulroney government and subsequent Regulatory Reform Strategy that Ottawa got serious about cutting the paper burden and red tape choking the nation’s enterprise. Under the strategy, average federal regulatory approval times were reduced from nine to three months.
But like any garden if ignored, Canada’s environmental regulatory acreage soon again became laced with weeds. A 1991 Treasury Board study found that 45 per cent of programs directly overlapped with provincial programs, but most were considered to be complementary. Of those where problems were chronic, the board pointed to the environment.
Fast forward to 2007. The global economy was booming. The world oil price was rising. Canada’s energy infrastructure was badly in need of improvement. The overlap and duplication in the environmental and review processes in the country became a major concern for the premiers. Their 2007 Council of the Federation specifically targeted energy — A Shared Vision for Energy in Canada. They noted “the efficiency of (environmental assessment and regulatory processes) has been reduced by a complex web of government … approval processes.” Citing duplication and overlap in provincial, territorial and federal regulatory reviews, uncertain approval time frames and process steps, concerned about the uncertainty and costs and real risk that projects would not be built at all, they strongly urged all governments to act. They called upon Ottawa to act swiftly on implementing its 2007 commitment to streamline the federal regulatory process. The 10 premiers included five Liberals, three Progressive Conservatives and two NDP. That’s pretty bipartisan, even if a little heavy on the left.
Squaring the environment with the energy circle had become the favoured theme of conferences in the first decade of this century. Canadian think tanks, academics, industry organizations, lawyers and bagmen from all parties shouldered their hoes to bring some order to the regulatory garden, increasingly complicated by the pressure to be seen to be doing something about climate change. The Winnipeg Consensus Group, the Energy Policy Institute of Canada among others declared that what Canada needed was A National Energy Strategy. One of the key elements of a would-be strategy was streamlining the nation’s environmental review processes. In 2012 the Council of the Federation agreed a strategy was needed and launched a major set of working groups. Again, streamlining the regulatory process was central.
The same year Harper obliged the premiers and the think tanks with Bill C-38, Jobs, Growth and Long Term Prosperity Act. Some called it The Environmental Destruction Act. As described by Prof. Olszynski, it did indeed shake out, reduce and streamline much environmental regulation. While limiting interveners to those directly affected by a project and reducing active environmental assessments from 3,000 to 75 might have seemed dreadful to lawyers, it was certainly welcomed by others. Not one premier came to Harper’s defence.
Naturally, this reform was too much for the environmental assessment industry. So, the Liberals promised to undo it all. And now we have Bill C-69. If passed by the Senate, critics say it will choke off enterprise. It too will surely be reformed by some future government. Oh, Canada.