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The Sierra Club of Canada is going to court to try to overturn a controversial decision by Ottawa to exempt about 2,000 federally funded infrastructure projects from having to pass environmental assessments.
The legal action, filed in the Federal Court of Canada late last week, seeks to have to regulations allowing the exemption quashed.
The federal Cabinet approved the measures last month, arguing that its economic stimulus package would have faster benefits if infrastructure projects were freed from Canadian Environmental Assessment Act requirements of having to prove that they pose little risk of harming the environment.
“What they’ve done is under the guise of economic stimulus got rid of one of our most important environmental laws,” asserted Justin Duncan, a lawyer with Ecojustice, which is representing the Sierra Club in the legal action.
Under the federal changes, Ottawa says assessments will no longer be needed for such projects garbage dumps, public transit infrastructure, sewage treatment plants and road widening projects, among others, until March 2011 In announcing the changes, the government said that assessments can “unnecessarily slow down funding decisions” and that that reducing the number of these reviews would save $100-million to $150-million on the total cost of about $3-billion for infrastructure projects. It said the exemptions will only apply to projects where there is minimal risk of environmental harm.
But Mr. Duncan said that the Conservative government is almost alone internationally in rescinding environmental protection measures to stimulate the economy. He said the approach has been rejected in the U.S., India, and China.
“You see this same debate going on in the U.S., but they’ve gone the other route and they’ve maintained their environmental protections,” he said.
The filing by the Sierra Club asserts that the Conservatives should have passed legislation in Parliament for the exemptions, and weren’t legally permitted to do so through Cabinet decisions.
Copyright 2009 – The Globe and Mail