Green groups outraged after Ottawa changes the rules on environmental assessments
CBC
Major industrial resource projects under provincial jurisdiction that spew massive amounts of carbon emissions will no longer trigger federal environmental assessments — a move that's angering environmental groups.
The Liberal government walked back the requirement in amendments to its controversial 2019 Impact Assessment Act, parts of which the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in the fall.
Environmental groups are raising the alarm and expressing their "disappointment" in a recent letter about the amendments introduced 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 climate impacts of major projects across Canada," says the letter, which was signed by various environmental groups, including the environmental law group Ecojustice.
"We urge you to act immediately to retain these important aspects of federal decision-making within the scope of the act."
Major industrial projects, such as oilsands mines, tend to fall under provincial regulatory authority. Under changes introduced to the Impact Assessment Act, oilsands projects will no longer be subject to federal environmental reviews of the amount of emissions they would add to the atmosphere.
They can still be assessed by the federal government for their impacts on fish, aquatic species and migratory birds.
Under the original law, a major project could fall within Ottawa's regulatory jurisdiction if it resulted in "a change to the environment … in another province." The recent amendments dropped this part of the law, which would have allowed the federal 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) emissions have a national impact," said Ecojustice staff lawyer Josh Ginsberg.
"Canadians lose the protection of assessments that consider, in a precautionary way, really significant air pollution and really significant GHG emissions."
Canadians are already seeing the impacts of climate change in the rising frequency 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 experienced 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 activities have caused the planet to warm.