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HALIFAX — The details of Ottawa’s attempts to streamline environmental assessments are shocking conservation activists, with one saying there are now legal loopholes “big enough to run your rapid transit through.”
Environment Minister Jim Prentice said a week ago yesterday that he wanted to overhaul the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act soon, but added he has not yet decided what form that would take.
On Thursday, the changes were revealed in the Canada Gazette. Effective immediately, and for the next two years, numerous types of projects will not require a federal environmental assessment in certain circumstances. They include construction and remodelling of community buildings, water treatment and distribution systems, transit, road construction and waste management projects.
“When you look at the exclusion list … [it’s] big enough to run your rapid transit through. I mean, the loopholes [are] major opportunities for abuse,” Stephen Hazell, the executive director of Sierra Club Canada, said yesterday. “My reading of this … would allow [Ottawa MP] John Baird to authorize a bigger bridge over the Ottawa River and the highway up to it without any environmental assessment.”
Mr. Prentice defended the changes after an unrelated announcement in Halifax yesterday morning.
“We’ve heard from Canadians … significant concern and we have to make sure that we can get the infrastructure money that’s being invested delivered to create jobs. We don’t need unnecessary red tape to slow down those projects,” he told reporters.
“In order to determine which kinds of projects we felt did not have an adverse environmental impact, we looked back over the last 10 years at the history of previous projects and examined the kinds of projects, the classification of projects, where in previous work there had been no negative environmental consequences.”
Mr. Prentice, who recently expressed surprise that approximately 7,000 federal environmental assessments are done annually, said only time will tell how many projects will fall under the new exemptions.
“The regulations that have been put forward relate only to the public investments that are being made by the government under the Building Canada Fund and Budget 2009,” he said.
“The regulation … sets out the kinds of projects that will now be subject to this streamlined process. Really, until we’re finished the complete investment over the next two years, it will difficult, categorically, to say how many projects will be through that streamlined process and how many won’t.”
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency estimates that as many as 2,000 infrastructure projects over two years will be exempted under the new rules. In a backgrounder, the agency says that would represent “approximately 90 per cent of environmental assessments for these types of projects.”
Leaders of several environmental groups reacted with dismay, charging yesterday that the government has gutted crucial safeguards without consultation.
“They used [the economic crisis] as a cover, as an opportunity to make these changes,” said Mark Butler, policy director for the Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre.
Mr. Butler said that a chance was lost to make meaningful and needed changes to the environmental assessment process, a view backed Sierra Club Canada’s Mr. Hazell.
“There are probably too many assessments that are legally required to be done,” Mr. Hazell said. “Absolutely, yes, the act needs reform. The way the government is going about it is completely unacceptable.”