A Federal fast-tracking bill is coming
Canada’s 45th Parliament kicked off last week with all the pomp and pageantry one would expect from a royal throne speech. While the King’s visit got heavy coverage, we’ve been paying attention to what the new federal government has been up to behind the scenes.
Recently we learned the government had circulated a briefing note to Indigenous peoples as part of a 7-day consultation for a major new bill that would fast-track designated “nation-building” projects. The bill would apparently ensure designated projects get up-front approval and then go through a compressed, less than two-year federal regulatory review process of impact assessment and environmental permitting (e.g. under the Fisheries Act, Species at Risk Act, etc., as relevant).
This review may lead to conditions being attached to a project’s already established up-front approval. And the bill may reportedly allow for conditions with standards of protection lower than would otherwise apply by law, or the federal government could alter any of the laws that would apply to the review on a bespoke basis. Basically, for the government’s favoured projects the question moves from whether to how.
The Prime Minister and Premiers are meeting in Saskatoon to discuss which projects will get the golden tickets — shamefully, without giving First Nations’ leaders a seat at the table. This is especially troubling considering June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada. While we have many questions about what this bill will look like once tabled, we already know enough to comment on two critical areas.
Bill may imperil Indigenous rights and the climate
First, it is an open question whether Indigenous constitutional rights holders potentially impacted by the projects could be meaningfully consulted by the federal government over such a compressed timeframe. The Crown’s duty to consult cannot be put within an arbitrary two-year box if that does not provide sufficient time for meaningful consultation. What’s more, the structure of up-front approval makes one wonder whether the principle of free, prior and informed consent for Indigenous peoples — which Prime Minister Carney has pledged to uphold — only applies to conditions imposed on the back end (the how) rather than project approval itself (the whether)?
Second, no new oil and gas pipelines should be on the list of projects. Prime Minister Carney has been non-committal on pipelines throughout the election and the initial weeks of his government, stating that Canadians want “pipelines that make sense”. However, credible scenarios for avoiding the worst of climate change show that there is already so much oil and gas in production globally that there is no need for investment in any new oil and gas. In other words, new pipelines to enable more oil and gas production don’t “make sense” unless what we want is a future of more and bigger wildfires, floods, droughts, storms, and sea level rise. The wildfires burning out of control not far from where the Prime Minister and Premiers are conferencing today should be reason enough to decide that pipelines designed to supersize oil and gas production cannot be in the “national interest” as they will only supercharge the climate disasters befalling Canadians every year.
Domestically, oil and gas production is Canada’s largest source of climate pollution, accounting for almost a third of the national total (reminder: the production stage only creates about 15 per cent of the total pollution from oil and gas, with most created once burned for energy). There is simply no way to make progress toward our national climate goals without slashing that sector’s pollution. However, it may be that Prime Minister Carney’s government decides a risky and heavily subsidized bet on the Pathways carbon capture and storage (CCS) project is in the national interest. Even if that project were to beat the odds and become effective on a large scale, all it would accomplish is *maybe* a slight extension of the oil and gas sector’s runway while the world continues to move toward clean energy leading to ever-declining demand.
Ecojustice will be watching
When the fast-tracking bill finally hits Parliament, Ecojustice lawyers will be ready to cut through the noise — breaking down exactly what it says and what it means for our environment. Stay with us. The next few weeks will be critical.
