Green groups outraged after Ottawa changes the rules on environmental assessments
Major industrial resource projects under provincial jurisdiction that spew mas‐ sive amounts of carbon emissions will no longer trigger federal environ‐ mental assessments - a move that's angering envi‐ ronmental groups.
The Liberal government walked back the requirement in amendments to its contro‐ versial 2019 Impact Assess‐ ment Act, parts of which the
Supreme Court deemed un‐ constitutional in the fall.
Environmental groups are raising the alarm and ex‐ pressing their "disappoint‐ ment" in a recent letter about the amendments in‐ troduced in Parliament on
Tuesday.
"We are concerned that the government is not fully living up to its responsibility to protect Canadians and the environment from the cli‐ mate impacts of major projects across Canada," says the letter, which was signed by various environmental groups, including the envi‐ ronmental law group Ecojus‐ tice.
"We urge you to act im‐ mediately to retain these im‐ portant aspects of federal de‐ cision-making within scope of the act."
Major industrial projects, such as oilsands mines, tend to fall under provincial regu‐ latory authority. Under changes introduced to the Impact Assessment Act, oil‐ sands projects will no longer be subject to federal environ‐ mental reviews of the amount of emissions they would add to the atmos‐ phere.
They can still be assessed by the federal government the for their impacts on fish, aquatic species and migra‐ tory birds.
Under the original law, a major project could fall with‐ in Ottawa's regulatory juris‐ diction if it resulted in "a change to the environment … in another province." The re‐ cent amendments dropped this part of the law, which would have allowed the fed‐ eral government to withhold approval of industrial
projects if their emissions could worsen the impact of climate change in other provinces and territories.
"Certainly, cross-border GHGs (greenhouse gas) emis‐ sions have a national im‐ pact," said Ecojustice staff lawyer Josh Ginsberg.
"Canadians lose the pro‐ tection of assessments that consider, in a precautionary way, really significant air pol‐ lution and really significant GHG emissions."
Canadians are already seeing the impacts of climate change in the rising fre‐ quency of severe weather events, the disappearance of freshwater resources, more frequent and intense forest fires, shrinking Arctic ice and the acceleration of glacial melting.
In 2023, Canada experi‐ enced its hottest summer ever, the largest wildfires in its history, drought in the Prairies and floods in British
Columbia and Nova Scotia, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conclude unequivocally that human ac‐ tivities have caused the planet to warm.
Guilbeault disagrees with environmental groups
The proposed changes to the law are almost certain to pass. The NDP has said it will support the bill because it contains other measures New Democrats support.
Federal Environment Min‐ ister Steven Guilbeault is backing the changes. He said Ottawa is regulating green‐ house gas emissions through strengthened methane regu‐ lations, an electric vehicle sales mandate and a pro‐ posed cap on oil and gas sec‐ tor emissions.
Guilbeault said those measures were not in place when the Impact Assessment Act was updated through Bill C-69.
"All of these things have been developed since the Im‐ pact Assessment Act was adopted in 2019, so we have an arsenal of measures now to tackle climate change pol‐ lution," he said.
"I respectfully disagree with my ex-colleagues of the environmental movement on that. The Supreme Court was very clear that, in its previous form, the Impact Assessment Act went too far in terms of imposing federal oversight over provincial projects."
WATCH | Steven Guil‐ beault defends changes to the Impact Assessment Act
On Oct. 13, the Supreme Court ruled that sections of the Impact Assessment Act were unconstitutional. Some parts of the law were found to fall within federal jurisdic‐ tion, but the court said other sections were too broad.
The Impact Assessment Act (IAA), previously known as Bill C-69, came into force in 2019. It allowed federal regulators to consider the potential environmental and social impacts of various re‐ source and infrastructure projects.
Writing for the majority in a 5-2 decision, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Richard Wagner said the processes set forth in Sections 81 to 91 of the IAA were constitutional and could be separated out.
Stewart Elgie, a law pro‐ fessor at the University of Ot‐ tawa, said the top court did not forbid the federal gov‐ ernment from assessing greenhouse gas emissions.
"I was surprised to see the government retreat further than they need to to address the Supreme Court's decision and abandon important areas of federal authority over climate change and air pollution," Elgie said.
"I wouldn't be surprised to see them try and fix this problem before the bill is passed into law."
Martin Olszynski, a lawyer who intervened in the case, said Ottawa is probably tak‐ ing a strategic approach, opt‐ ing for changes to the Impact Assessment Act which would survive another constitution‐ al challenge.
Olszynski said he would have preferred to see the government tweak the legis‐ lation to satisfy the Supreme Court while still maintaining the federal government's role in regulating the approval of projects with high green‐ house gas emissions.
"There is a threshold at which the individual emission of projects … start to matter when we're thinking about net zero," said Olszynski, who is also an associate professor at the University of Calgary faculty of law. "Every little bit matters."
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said it is reviewing the govern‐ ment's amendments. The Ontario and Alberta govern‐ ments, which opposed the act, did not immediately pro‐ vide CBC with comments on the amendments.