Seven-year review of CEAA. A Comedy of Errors:

A proper, Canada-wide consultation, of key stakeholders, including affected communities, First Nations, provincial and territorial governments, and the key departments and agencies with the responsibility of conducting environmental assessments was not done.

The Federal Government intends to make sweeping and substantial changes to the regulatory approvals system for major resource projects, but provides no needed details as part of the review .

- lack of clarity on process and
- lack of evidence on which to base the conclusions and recommendations of the report.
- Omnibus Budget Implementation Act 2010 amendments to the CEAA, included exemptions for certain projects and provisions granting the Minister of Environment power to limit the scope of assessments, were not considered during the Committee’s review of the Act.


Lack of Clarity on Process
- inadequate time to prepare written and oral submissions and an idea of the scope and objectives of the legislative review.
- it was left unclear what aspects of the environmental assessment regime the committee aimed to study.

Lack of Evidence
- the truncated, unfocused hearing process, testimony from important stakeholders and experts was curtailed or absent from the study.
- Numerous government departments and agencies were not heard from during the review.

Fundamental Flaws in the Report

Not raised in the findings of the report.

-assessment tools such as strategic and regional assessments,
-the need for cumulative impact assessment,
-meaningful public participation, participant funding, and the
-importance of and duty to consult First Nations,
-funding for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency,


Inappropriate citations, as justification for conclusions, statements made by Committee
members.

It focused primarily on efficiency and reduced timelines.

(1) a framework was not developed using a systematic method from the testimony heard (i.e. the process was not an evidence-based approach);
(2) testimony was limited;
(3) the report does not accurately reflect all views presented by witnesses,
(4) testimony regarding the environment and the need for better protection is largely not included in the report.


How will `significance` be defined? - an evidence-based approach was not used,
and hence, the scope of the study, and stakeholders from whom we heard, were limited.

(1) possible reduced public participation in any environmental assessment, which we would see as undemocratic, unfortunate, and poor for the economy, environment, and society;

(2) possible reduced Aboriginal consultation (e.g. Recommendation 15 says, ``streamline aboriginalconsultation``), which we would consider a breach of duty to consult, and completelyunacceptable; and

(3) possible increased ministerial powers - we run the risk of loss of natural life support systems and other ecosystem failures. Now a risk of slowing down the process through possible conflicts and lawsuits, especially where constitutional rights and public concerns are not adequately addressed.


Elizabeth May's take:

http://elizabethmaymp.ca/news/publications/articles/2012/03/21/no-government-has-a-mandate-to-destroy-our-natural-world/

No government has a mandate to destroy our natural world

We are now fighting a rear-guard action against losing all the laws we have.

For the last forty years or so, any paper on environmental policy could
be forward-looking. The steady, if lamentably slow, process of
developing environmental law and policy has been advancing since 1970
and the creation of Environment Canada.

Canada was slower than the United States. Under the Nixon presidency,
the US passed the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered
Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and laws governing
environmental assessments.

It took Canada several decades more to develop less robust laws, with
the heavy lifting done in the Mulroney era with the Canadian
Environmental Protection Act, the creation of the National Round Table
on Environment and Economy, and the launching of the Canadian
Environmental Assessment Act.

The CEAA ultimately came into effect once Jean Chrétien had become prime
minister, and it was Chrétien who brought in the Environmental
Commissioner, within the office of the Auditor General, as well as the
Species at Risk Act.

I would love to write an article setting out where the country needs to
go to advance better environmental law and policy. However, we are now
fighting a rear-guard action against losing all the laws we have. Not
only is the CEAA process under assault, but so too are the habitat
protection provisions in the Fisheries Act.

The attacks on the environmental assessment process have been
unrelenting. First, the Harper government weakened it in the 2010
omnibus budget bill. By attaching wholesale changes to environmental law
to the budget bill, it was forced through, without benefit of hearings
or public outrage.

Sadly, opposition parties at the time were more afraid of an
inconvenient election than they were dedicated to preserving
environmental law. The 2010 omnibus budget bill savaged the CEAA by
taking energy projects out of its jurisdiction and weakening
comprehensive study. The next move to hogtie environmental review was to
cut CEAA’s budget by 40 per cent.

Last week, the House environment committee issued a pre-ordained set of
recommendations to further destroy environmental review.

Under the CEAA, every five years there is a mandatory review of the Act.
In 2000, the review took over a year; hearings were held across the
country; the process ran from January 2000 to March 2001.

This time, the committee pulled the plug after hearing witnesses for
nine days. That’s right—the previous government studied the law for 15
months, and the Conservatives didn’t give it 15 days.

Many witnesses, who had been informed they would be heard, were turned
away. I thought at the time that the Prime Minister’s Office must have
told the Conservatives who control the committee to deliver ASAP a
report to gut the process. And they did.

I fear that the sweeping changes—removing the CEAA’s jurisdiction from
any province with “equivalent” environmental assessments, removing the
requirement to consider alternatives, ordering fixed timelines for
reviews, giving the minister increased powers, “streamlining” First
Nations consultations—all point toward more nails in the CEAA’s coffin.

A few days after the recommendations to emasculate the CEAA process,
Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield confirmed in the House that the
Fisheries Act is also targeted for massive erosion.

The Fisheries Act, with its origins in the earliest days of Canada, is
the strongest environmental law we have in Canada; now the minister
appears set to remove the sections of the Act that prohibit the
destruction of fish habitat.

We are also hearing that the protection of fish, a constitutional area
of federal responsibility, is to be weakened. Only fish of “economic,
cultural, or ecological value” will be protected. No one knows what that
means.

We do know that none of this is coming from the scientists at the
Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It is not coming from the minister
either. Just like the Environment committee report, this appalling
change has PMO fingerprints all over it.

It is clear that Stephen Harper has one burning desire; one unalterable
vision. It is of six million barrels of oil a day coming out of the oil
sands. He wants it dug out, pumped out, or steamed out, and turned into
a form of bitumen crude capable of flowing in a pipeline to get it to
refineries, preferably outside of Canada.

The prime minister has promised a foreign power, none less than the
government of China, that its state-owned oil enterprises with profits
that flow to the state and its military, will have its pipeline built
through northern British Columbia. He has promised that oil supertankers
will chart the most treacherous waters on the planet, ignoring a tanker
ban that has been in place since 1972.

All this has he promised. And what stands in his way? Fish habitat and
the laws that protect it, as well as hundreds of streams and lakes
between the oil sands and Kitimat, BC.

As well, he is apparently untroubled by the opposition of dozens of
First Nations, nor by the fiduciary duty he holds to protect First
Nations constitutionally-enshrined aboriginal rights. Nor does it enter
his calculus that 80 per cent of British Columbians oppose opening the
coast to tanker traffic.

After 35 years of working on environmental assessments, I am watching
the current government weaken the process to less than what we had in
1970. No government has a mandate to undo environmental law. No
government has a mandate to destroy our natural world.

Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and the Member
of Parliament for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

Originally printed in Embassy Magazine