Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Finance
Issue 15 - Evidence - July 6, 2010 - Evening meeting
OTTAWA, Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, to which was referred Bill C-9, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures, met this day at 6:16 p.m. to give consideration to the bill (topic: Part 20).
Senator Joseph A. Day (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Senators, this is the twenty-first meeting of the committee in relation to Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill for 2010. Over our previous meetings, this committee has heard from ministers, departmental officials and outside stakeholders who are interested in or impacted by this legislation.
This evening, we will be concluding our consideration of Part 20 of the bill, which deals with environmental assessments. We are pleased to welcome, representing MiningWatch Canada, Mr. Ramsey Hart; Mr. Richard Lindgren, counsel for the Canadian Environmental Law Association; and, joining us by video conference from British Columbia, Mr. Josh Paterson, staff lawyer for West Coast Environmental Law.
We will ask each of you to make your introductory remarks, and then we will engage in a question and answer session. If a question is posed to one of you and the other wishes to make a comment, just signal so we know that you would like to be involved.
Mr. Paterson, we have found in the past that when we have two people at the table here and one on video conference, the one on video conference tends to get missed out, so please do not hesitate to intervene. We will start with you and your introductory remarks.
Josh Paterson, Staff Lawyer, West Coast Environmental Law: Thank you very much. I represent West Coast Environmental Law, which has been actively involved in the development of environmental legislation at the federal and provincial levels for a number of decades.
This budget bill is an attack on environmental assessment in Canada and, in an important way, it is an attack on the democratic process that is critical to ensuring that Canada's environmental assessment is credible and trusted by Canadians. I use this fairly strong language because of the way that this bill has been designed to ensure that the weakening of environmental assessment bypasses detailed scrutiny by being buried among piles of other changes in a 900-page budget bill.
West Coast Environmental Law recognizes that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act has numerous challenges. Many of these issues are well documented and have been known for some time. Clearly, the act needs to be strengthened to better address the challenge of climate change and to ensure that the health and resilience of Canadians and their environment are protected. However, the changes introduced in Bill C-9 fail to address these challenges.
As you will have no doubt heard today, Parliament, in its wisdom, set out that this year there is to be a wholesale root-and-branch review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, a seven-year review. That is the best forum in which to consider the changes that are needed to the act, with robust public and stakeholder participation and the meaningful involvement of First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples. This budget is making a deliberate end-run around this review and around democratic processes. It is something you have seen before in last year's budget, and now the government is trying again. We are asking that you try to put a stop to it.
The provisions in Part 20 of the bill are clearly aimed at gutting the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. They have nothing to do with the budget and have no business being there. None of the changes address the problems that have been widely identified in the act and that are canvassed in good detail in Professor Robert Gibson's excellent submission, which has been provided to you. In addition, none of the changes appear to be in accordance with the purposes of the act, which include ensuring that projects are considered in a careful and precautionary manner so that they do not cause significant adverse environmental effects.
While I do not have the time to get into a lot of detail, you will have heard already that clause 2155 allows the Minister of the Environment to avoid doing detailed, comprehensive environmental assessments on large projects by breaking them up into smaller pieces under certain unspecified conditions, in a major move that undoes the Supreme Court of Canada's recent decision that this is illegal under the current law.
Clause 2153 also has a blanket exemption for a host of major projects connected with the recent infrastructure program, paving the way for projects that may cause significant environmental damage without any thought being given to the mitigation of those risks.
Neither of these changes appears to serve even the bill's purpose to avoid unnecessary duplication and to promote coordination between federal and provincial environmental assessment processes. In respect to the whittling down of projects for the purpose of environmental assessment, there are no conditions defined in the bill to bound that discretion or to require consideration of whether the project will be comprehensively assessed by some other level of government. Rather than adding more certainty to the system, this discretion substantially decreases the certainty that is already provided through the comprehensive study list. It is now impossible to predict what sort of an assessment a project will have at the federal level.
The blanket exemption for infrastructure projects was introduced by regulation to foster growth during the recession and is made permanent here. It has no conditions, either. It just says that certain projects will not receive any federal environmental assessment, full stop, whether or not there is an equivalent assessment at the provincial level. This exemption offends against the very idea of environmental assessment, which is that all projects with potential significant environmental effects must be assessed. With the federal Minister of Finance saying just last month that we have seen the worst of the recession and are coming out of it, we question the need to make this kind of exemption permanent.
The last thing I would cover briefly is that the bill appears to facilitate the continuation of giving environmental assessments over major pipeline and nuclear projects to the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. It appears to encourage that by establishing participant funding programs at those agencies. It is a trend we are concerned about because these bodies do not have experience conducting environmental assessments or assessing cumulative effects, which is something that the federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development has already identified as a challenge in environmental assessments.
To conclude, CEAA and its regulations were developed only after years of public and stakeholder review. Any one of these changes proposed to be made without any real public or stakeholder consultation, meetings like this aside, represents a significant setback for sustainability and environmental protection. Combined together, they set back the environmental assessment process many years. It is undemocratic to use the budget to ram through an attack on Canada's environmental laws, and it undermines Parliament's purpose as a place where laws are to be thoroughly debated and improved. That, in fact, is your constitutional responsibility as senators.
We are asking that in spite of the fact that a motion has already failed on the Senate floor to separate these provisions out for separate review as part of the seven-year review coming in the fall, we strongly recommend that you recommend to the body of the Senate as a whole that these provisions be separated out and be given the kind of scrutiny they deserve.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments and we have your prepared statement, as well, which has been circulated and remains as a record of what has been discussed.
Ramsey Hart, MiningWatch Canada: Thank you for taking time to go through this bill in such a detailed fashion. We do very much appreciate it. We feel this is an issue of significant national importance and of much interest to Canadians.
I have had the opportunity to drop in with you throughout the day between phone calls and answering emails. I know much of what I could say has already been said today, so I will try not to belabour the points. I will try to bring a different perspective and a sense of clarity to some of the key issues.
MiningWatch is a relatively small organization based here in Ottawa. We are small but quite effective at engaging on mining issues, both nationally and internationally. I have often heard it said that we punch above our weight. We are a pan-Canadian coalition of 20 different organizations including environmental, Aboriginal, social justice, development and labour organizations. We advocate for responsible mining for Canadian mining companies here in Canada and wherever they may operate, which is pretty much all around the world.
In my brief comments today, I would like to focus on three points: the importance and status of federal environmental assessment; the appropriate mechanism for improving the environmental assessment process; and the potential for increased confusion and delays that could come from the proposed amendments to section 15 of CEAA, specifically regarding project scoping.
We have worked on the federal EA process at both the policy level as well as for specific projects. We have been intervenors in a number of mining-related environmental assessments. We think the environmental assessment is so important that, under considerable risk to our organization, we took the Red Chris case all the way to the Supreme Court. I know that case has come up several times. I would be happy to provide our perspectives on it.
From our perspective, three main results came out of that decision. The first is that where projects are listed on the comprehensive study list, they must receive at least comprehensive if not a panel review. The second is that a project is proposed, not arbitrarily determined by federal authorities. Finally, there already exists a variety of opportunities for federal and provincial authorities to coordinate environmental assessment processes and those options need to be used to greater effect.
There is a second finding regarding project scoping that I will return to in a moment. Before doing so, I would like to provide you our perspectives on the federal environmental assessment process. As we heard earlier today from the Mining Association of Canada, mines make up a significant percentage of federal environmental assessments. Therefore, I think the perspectives of an organization that focuses on mining are quite relevant to your consideration.
Across Canada, we have examples of mining legacies regarding projects that went wrong. Many of these are historic. However, they point to the fact that if projects are done wrong, they can have legacies that can last for generations. When I hear complaints about delays of a few months, it is challenging for me to have sympathy for industry when the potential implications of a project gone wrong can last for tens and hundreds of years. Certainly, I do not want to arbitrarily hold up development, but decisions take time, as the Senate knows. You are taking the time to carefully consider the decisions before you. Good decisions take reflection and thoughtful analysis, and that sometimes takes time.
Canada's economy is certainly suffering right now. Did environmental assessment cause the recession? No, it did not. Will environmental assessment unduly prevent a recovery? I do not think it will. It should, however, help us to transition our economy to one that is based on more sustainable and socially and environmentally responsible alternatives. However, I am deeply concerned that the current bill is being used as a Trojan Horse under economically difficult times to dismantle one of Canada's most important pieces of environmental legislation.
Regarding duplication, which is an often-cited problem regarding environmental assessment, it is important to recognize that the federal process as it exists includes several important advantages over most, if not all, provincial processes. These include access to participant funding, the potential for engaging in federal policy decisions, and the issue of climate change has come up throughout the day, as just one example. Other examples would include the conservation of fish habitat and the Crown's fiduciary responsibility to First Nations, Inuit and Metis.
The federal EA process also includes clearly mandated requirements for public consultation and, in the case of panel reviews, public hearings that go well beyond the typical information sessions offered by project proponents.
Several references have been made throughout the day to the Auditor General's 2009 review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. I would like to paraphrase some of the main points in that document.
Generally, comprehensive studies and review panels were done well. There were some problems with screenings, however, in that they seemed to lack accountability. For projects where there is more than one responsible authority, disputes about project scope may cause serious delays in the environmental assessment process. The agency does not know whether responsible authorities are conducting good quality EAs or whether assessments are contributing to the protection of the environment as intended. That is an issue around accountability and documentation, I would suggest, more than the process itself. The agency has also established and maintained the Canadian Environmental Assessment Registry Internet site, which is doing a good job of providing information to the public.
My reading of those findings is not of a system in complete collapse, as has been portrayed by some, but one that needs improvement. We do not disagree that the system needs improving. How should it be improved upon, however? Not by an omnibus budget bill that sneaks changes through the House of Commons; it is not getting snuck through here, fortunately, and I appreciate the effort that you are putting into reviewing it.
Canada has a long and admirable history of engaging with stakeholders to review environmental legislation, and CEAA is a good example of that. Several structures already exist that could facilitate a review. There is an existing multi-stakeholder advisory group, although it has been disbanded for some time, unfortunately. There is also the Canadian Environment Network's environmental assessment caucus. Neither of these bodies has been involved at all in the proposed amendments. As you have heard, there is the upcoming full statutory review of the environmental assessment process, which will include not only legislation but also administrative issues, which are key to improving the EA process.
I would encourage you to send the government a clear message that proper democratic and fundamentally Canadian approaches should be used to address concerns about the environmental assessment process. You can best do this by splitting Part 20 away from the rest of Bill C-9.
I would like to conclude my submission by briefly returning to the famous issue of scoping, which you have been grappling with throughout the day. For us, the issue hangs on this point: At MiningWatch Canada, most of the projects in the exemption list are not related to mining; none of them would address mining. For us, this is the crux of the issue, though we share other organizations' concerns about the other exemptions.
Our concern is that even if we have projects on a comprehensive study list going to comprehensive study reviews, they may not actually look at the core issue of a project. There may be an opportunity for the minister to say, "We will only review a tailings impoundment or a stream crossing because that is our federal mandate." However, the intent of CEAA is to contribute to sustainable development, which requires looking at the whole project. If we are to use environmental assessment as a planning tool, the whole project must be examined.
I would argue that this increases uncertainty, rather than decreasing it. The Red Chris case brought a certain degree of certainty that a project is a project as proposed, not as different bureaucrats can negotiate it with a proponent. That is fairly clear.
Now there will be a bit of room around the edges to define exactly where the boundary is. That is where the scoping authority should rest, but it should not be about key aspects of a project being split apart.
Again, I urge you to amend Bill C-9 by removing proposed Part 20. Thank you very much for your time and dedication to this issue. I look forward to the discussion that will follow.
Richard D. Lindgren, Counsel, Canadian Environmental Law Association: On behalf of the Canadian Environmental Law Association, CELA, I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak to Bill C-9's amendments to CEAA. As you may know, the Canadian Environmental Law Association is a public interest law group that was established in 1970. Our mandate is to use and improve environmental laws in order to protect ecosystems and public health and safety. For that reason, we represent citizens and public interest groups in the courts and before various administrative tribunals on a wide variety of environmental issues.
CELA has long advocated the need for federal environmental assessment legislation that is effective, efficient and equitable. For example, it was about 20 years ago today that I appeared before a parliamentary committee when CEAA was first introduced and debated, and we supported it then. We also participated in the first parliamentary review of CEAA that occurred from 2000 to 2003.
We do not just do law reform; we do litigation. We have appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada on various federal environmental assessment cases. For example, I was the lawyer for the six environmental groups that intervened in the MiningWatch Canada case that we have heard about already.
Mr. Chair and members of the committee, based on our experience and our public interest perspective, we have three fundamental concerns about Bill C-9 amendments to environmental assessment legislation.
First, we object strongly to the process that has been used to put forward these amendments. In our opinion, amendments to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act should not be buried in a budget bill. They need to be brought forward in the form of standalone legislation, subjected to full parliamentary debate and meaningful public consultation, none of which has occurred to this point.
Our second concern is that we object to the timing of the proposed amendments to CEAA. As you have heard many times today, we are on the eve of the mandatory parliamentary review of the whole legislation. In our respectful submission, that is the preferable forum for debating, discussing and bringing forward significant changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
Third, and perhaps most important, we object to the content of the Bill C-9 amendments to CEAA. In our respectful opinion, the amendments do not represent sound public policy. In fact, we take the position that the amendments represent a significant weakening or rollback of existing EA safeguards within the legislation. At the same time, the amendments do nothing to address the priority matters that need to be considered and addressed in terms of the legislation and its implementation.
Like the previous speakers, we are particularly concerned about the scoping powers that will be given to the minister. As we understand the proposal, the minister will be given the power to redefine or scope down the project as it goes through the assessment process. Although this is touted as a mechanism that might speed up the process, and perhaps end some delay or uncertainty, we think the opposite result will be achieved. We think this kind of make-it-up- as-you-go-along, let's-make-a-deal scoping will result in more delay, more uncertainty and more litigation.
I have to tell you that as a lawyer, I like the sound of more litigation; but in the public interest, that is not the best way forward and I will readily admit that. It should not be open to the minister, on a case-by-case basis, to screen down, scope down or whittle away a project so that, at the end of the day, the matter being considered is just a small subset of the actual proposal. That is the kind of project splitting that the Supreme Court of Canada said should not be undertaken under Canadian environmental assessment legislation.
For those reasons, Mr. Chair, we do not support the Bill C-9 amendments to CEAA. We encourage and recommend that this committee do everything in its power to delay, defer or defeat those amendments.
Subject to questions, those are our submissions.
The Chair: Mr. Lindgren, thank you very much.
We have been provided with a copy of a letter from the Canadian Bar Association's environmental law group. Their words sound similar to yours. What relation has your association, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, to the Canadian Bar Association's environmental law group?
Mr. Lindgren: There is no direct relation. Some of us used to be members of the Canadian Bar Association, and on these environmental issues we find that our interests are similar. It does not surprise me that the Canadian Bar Association has expressed a view similar to what we have been expressing as environmental lawyers at CELA.
Senator Angus: The confusion may be that the Canadian Bar Association, of which I am a member, has a series of subsections — for example, marine law, environment law, criminal law and so on. However, a number of the specialties, such environment law and maritime law, have their own separate associations. They are totally unrelated, other than that the members are members of the bar.
I want to ask a couple of questions.
Mr. Paterson, did you have an opportunity today, through whatever media, to hear the comments of Minister Prentice?
Mr. Paterson: No, I did not, senator. I was not able to pick up on those, unfortunately.
Senator Angus: I believe you did, Mr. Hart. You were in and out of the room, as you said. Did you hear all of his comments?
Mr. Hart: No, I got a phone call in the middle of it, but I did hear several of his remarks. If there is something specific, I would be happy to comment on what I heard.
Senator Angus: What about you, Mr. Lindgren?
Mr. Lindgren: No. I was in transit so I missed it, unfortunately.
Senator Angus: In listening to your submissions, they address points that were addressed in every case by the minister. What I found — and I think many here felt — it was presented in a cogent and articulate way. As you know, he was a member of the Canadian Bar Association when he was a practitioner, and a very competent one at that. He, like many of us, when we were looking at the last seven-year review, found that there was a lot of confusion amongst the various statutes that govern the protection of our precious environment.
Without oversimplifying his testimony, which is a matter of record, I want to ask each of you if you disagree with what Minister Prentice told us this afternoon. If so, with which part do you disagree? He was candid in saying that it is only a first step. I can understand you objecting to the process and the timing, but we are interested in substance. It is either good or bad law. You can argue until the cows come home whether it should be in this bill, but that matter has been dealt with in the Senate already and we have what we have here.
I happen to be Chairman of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, and we look at these issues. Personally, I was satisfied with the minister's explanations and the motivation of streamlining otherwise conflicting factors.
Senator Banks is here, and he was the chair of that committee when its members did the review. They made recommendations which, in some ways, are these initial amendments. As I heard him, the minister definitely left the door open that this is only a first step and that there will be more comprehensive legislation. There will be all the usual processes that you would like to see. In any event, I cannot ask you the question about whether you disagree because you were not there.
Mr. Hart, I would like hear specifically what he said that you do not agree with.
Mr. Hart: There is a contradiction in what he said that I find troubling. Part of his intent was to ensure that the minister was the person who should make the decisions about scoping, and that is where the decision properly lies. However, in the same amendment, the minister is able to delegate that authority to a responsible authority. If it is the minister who should be deciding, why does the next line say that the minister can delegate to a responsible authority?
I am not a lawyer; I am an ecologist. I am pretty new at government relations and policy consideration. Forgive me, but I do not understand that contradiction. I am not in a position to say where the authority should be, whether it should be with the responsible authorities or with the minister. However, the minister said he should have the responsibility as minister, and then in the next line of his amendment that he will give it away. That is confusing to me.
I disagree that all of the proposed infrastructure projects will have no environmental effects. I do not see how we know that. He suggested there was no controversy around any of them. Well, just up the road there is a road extension going through sensitive wetland habitat, threatening a rare turtle species called the Blanding's turtle. Now we are into my territory as an ecologist. That is causing a controversy. Those are two concerns in the part of his discussion that I heard.
Senator Angus: That is interesting.
I am a lawyer, so I notice in nearly all the statutes that govern subject matter that there is generally a responsible minister. He does not go out and do it all himself. It comes from agencies or other bodies, if deemed appropriate at the time, to be under that minister's aegis, and he then must delegate. If you look at any of the maritime laws in this country, the Canada Shipping Act or the Canada Transportation Act, all of them have "the minister" contained therein. It is the same with financial legislation. The Minister of Finance does not go out and do your tax returns for you. That explains that part of it.
I thought Minister Prentice was cogent on that point. I do not want to argue with you. I just wanted to find out where you disagreed with him, and you have made that point.
Mr. Paterson, I am not familiar with West Coast Environmental Law. Is it an independent organization? Who finances it?
Mr. Paterson: West Coast Environmental Law is very much like the description provided by the Canadian Environmental Law Association except we are based on the West Coast. We are a not-for-profit organization. We have a number of staff lawyers. We receive funding from the Law Foundation of British Columbia and for other projects, specific funding — depending on the different things we are working on — to conduct law reform principally in British Columbia, but also at the federal level in as much as it affects things going on in British Columbia. We are a not-for-profit legal association.
If I can go back to your first question, senator, I do have before me a letter from the minister where he responds to a number of concerns with the act. I suspect that what he would have said today is similar to some of the things he indicated in the letter. One of the things he said about this scoping issue is that it would provide him with the "authority to focus an environmental assessment on key components of a project where it made sense to do so. This discretion is intended to provide legal certainty and to ensure that resources and efforts are invested where it matters the most."
First, I do not understand how vesting the minister with an unbounded discretion of this matter increases legal certainty. You are a lawyer; I am a lawyer. It seems to me that without putting any conditions around that, you are actually decreasing the amount of certainty. Right now we have a list that tells us, if your project is X size, if your pipeline is this big in diameter, a comprehensive study will be done, period. We know that. There is some certainty in that regard, particularly since the Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Red Chris and MiningWatch Canada decision. They have re-established that kind of certainty.
To me, these changes detract from the certainty. I do not see why you would not put conditions in the act to say, "If we know there is an equivalent provincial process and if we know X, Y or Z, then in these situations we might tailor down the scope of the project for assessment purposes."
I fundamentally disagree with the minister's contention that that increases certainty. I do not think it is a good way to go.
Senator Banks: The chair was right when he said that in conducting our review of CEAA, we proposed that efficiency would be had in the same way that we proposed the first response to emergencies in the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. It used to be that it was criss-crossing within the federal government. It was everyone's and no one's responsibility, as the minister said earlier.
Senator Angus: Your analogy about it being a big bowl of spaghetti was a good one.
Senator Banks: That is right. In light of that we recommended that the responsibility should be made more clear and that it should reside in one place so there is no doubt as to where the responsibility lies.
What we did not propose, and what others who have urged that kind of efficiency did not propose, was the kind of reduction to which Mr. Paterson has referred; that is, as I referred to it when I was speaking with the minister, a reduction of rigour. I do not know if that is the right word. I am not a lawyer, as you will see, because I am about to ask a question to which I do not know the answer.
I would like to use a hypothetical and oversimplified example of my understanding of the meaning of the Supreme Court's decision and of the scoping language contained in the present bill. Let us say this is a mine and over there is a wildlife refuge and over here is a lake and over here is a river and over there is a road to get into the mine. The scoping does not consist only in the minister saying, "I will decide whether this will receive a panel review or a comprehensive examination." It means that the minister can look at this project and say, "We will check out what the road will do, but we will not look at the mine or the lake or the wildlife refuge. We will just look at the road." If I am reading this legislation correctly, that is the scoping authority given to the minister. That is a reduction in the rigour that has been intended since CEAA was invented and brought in, if I understand it correctly, and I hope that you will correct me if I am wrong.
Mr. Lindgren: Senator, you have hit the nail right on the head. That is the essence of the concern. This legislation will enable the minister to do just that on a totally discretionary, case-by-case basis. The discretion is unfettered; there are no criteria; he can make it up as he goes along. That is not rigorous, predictable or certain. That is why we are quite concerned.
To pick up on the comment by Senator Angus, if that scoping provision and other provisions are merely the first step and Minister Prentice has other things up his sleeve, I am terrified of the next step. I ask why we are even taking these steps; we have a parliamentary review happening.
I will defer to my colleagues, but you are quite right. You deserve an honorary law degree because you hit the nail right on the head.
Senator Banks: I have an honorary law degree, Mr. Lindgren.
Mr. Lindgren: You should get a second one.
Senator Banks: If you ever get into any honorary legal trouble, I could be of great help.
Let the record show that I saw Mr. Paterson nodding.
Senator Angus: About the email.
Senator Neufeld: Thank you to the witnesses here with us today and the witness from British Columbia.
I have a question for you, Mr. Paterson. You said that it bothered you that reviews in regard to pipelines could be delegated down to the National Energy Board. Tell me why that bothers you.
Mr. Paterson: To be clear, we are talking here about review panels. Under the act, a review panel is intended to be an independent panel of experts in environmental issues, environmental assessment, et cetera. With great respect to the adjudicators on the National Energy Board, I do not think that tribunal has within it the kind of expertise required to do these panel reviews in the most robust and comprehensive possible way. It is just not a body that is designed to consider those issues.
There are human rights tribunals, and we do not give labour disputes to a human rights tribunal to resolve. We have specialized tribunals for certain purposes. Review panels are ad hoc, special tribunals, quasi-judicial in nature, composed of independent experts who are supposed to get their heads around many more things than what the National Energy Board normally has to consider. These experts assess such things as cumulative impacts, social and cultural impacts, impacts on Aboriginal use of land for traditional purposes, a lot of things that traditionally lie outside the scope of the National Energy Board.
On the Enbridge project, for example, we see National Energy Board panel members appointed as part of the review panel, but I do not think that is the best way to go. I think it will result in poorer decisions than there could be, which is my main concern in that respect.
Senator Neufeld: That is interesting because the National Energy Board has been doing reviews for 15 or 20 years. It is not new. If your fear has just been found now, that is interesting, but the National Energy Board has carried on these kinds of reviews for 15 or 20 years, and quite successfully. For you to say that maybe they cannot handle it, I would say that they have probably demonstrated that they can handle it. They have the expertise; they have the people; they have that knowledge.
In fact, in the bill, they are compelled to provide participant funding so that participants can come there. The minister can actually appoint a panel.
I wanted to find out whether that was just a new-found fear — I do not know how long you have been with West Coast Environmental Law — or if you have had that fear for 15 or 20 years. You have answered my question. Thank you.
The Chair: Did he answer? Has he had this fear for 15 or 20 years, or for the last 6 months?
Senator Neufeld: You can ask him. He told me that he has this fear now.
The Chair: I understand, but you had asked if he had it for 15 or 20 years, and then you said, "You have answered my question."
Senator Neufeld: He did not relate it to anything other than this bill.
The Chair: Let us ask him.
Mr. Paterson: Actually, I said that this bill appears to be encouraging a trend about which we have concerns. I am pretty sure that the record will reflect that that is what I said. We understand that the power for substitution is not anything new but that the intention is to increase the trend towards doing that. We are very much concerned about ensuring that the decision makers and the process around making these decisions is the best one possible. We do not think that the National Energy Board process is the best one possible, notwithstanding that they have been doing it for a while. That was the nature of my concern.
As for 15 or 20 years ago, I think that would have put me somewhere in primary school.
Senator Neufeld: That is what I thought. That is why I did not ask the question the chair wanted me to ask.
Mr. Paterson: West Coast Environmental Law has been working on it for substantially longer than I have, and this is an ongoing concern.
Senator Neufeld: Mr. Hart and Mr. Lindgren, when the minister was here, nothing has changed as far as CEAA is concerned. It still applies. However, someone will finally take charge. As Senator Banks talked about earlier, that was a recommendation; someone needs to take charge.
We found out from government officials and the minister that it took nine months, a year or sometimes eighteen months before the government made a decision about whether they would do anything and what kind of process they would take part in. I think you would agree that that is not very efficient, and I think this bill creates some efficiency. I believe someone actually has to be in charge, and who other than the minister responsible for CEAA should decide how this process will go instead of government departments fighting with one another for many years — 12 months for the liquefied natural gas project in Nova Scotia; 18 months for Ruby Creek. You will know where Ruby Creek is, I believe, and so do I.
I am sure you must agree that moving forward is good. You talked about change and positive change is good change. I get the part about the budget bill and all that stuff; I am not talking about that. Premiers from across Canada have been asking for over 10 years, as we have been told, to make decisions to change some of this so we can start doing better environmental assessments.
Do you agree that some of these changes are positive changes that need to be done? I ask you to disregard the fact that these changes are in a budget bill. We are thinking about the environment and thinking about jobs, thinking about people who need work. Remember that different governments of every stripe across Canada, from the provinces to the territories, not just this government, have been asking for some of these changes.
Mr. Lindgren: If your question is simply whether there any positive changes in Bill C-9's amendments to CEAA, my answer is no. There is not one thing in there I can positively recommend or endorse on behalf of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. Now, there may well be instances where particular EA processes have gone on longer than expected. In my mind that is an implementation issue; it is not a legislative issue. There are no deadlines prescribed in the amendments, just more discretion and more open-ended flexibility. That does not create any certainty. It may not lead to any more timeliness.
I am actually puzzled at the claim that this will speed things up. The only way that things will speed up is by the things that are exempted, like infrastructure.
The other point you made is that the minister made the claim that this changes nothing. This changes everything. More things are exempted. Public participation is eroded or diminished. Scoping is now completely a Wild West show. Those are significant and detrimental changes to this process. For the minister to sit here and say "all is well, be happy, smile," I am worried and I am not smiling.
Senator Neufeld: I can tell by your testimony that it would not matter what we brought forward, you probably would not be happy. It is pretty obvious to me.
The Chair: We try to be courteous with our witnesses.
Senator Neufeld: I am courteous.
Mr. Lindgren: Mr. Chair, by way of brief reply to that suggestion, we have been working with CEAA, the Minister of the Environment and other stakeholders for 20 plus years to get a good, effective EA process in place. We recognize the need for further and better improvements. That is why we look forward to participating in the 2010 review. However, to see this stuff trotted out at this time and have it spun as positive change is completely unacceptable.
I regret that I was not able to hear the minister personally today, but I will undertake to read the transcript of his remarks. I will be responding to them. It is not a dead issue.
The Chair: If you are able to respond in writing to us it would be very helpful.
Mr. Lindgren: Depending on your time frame.
The Chair: Our time frame is tight.
Senator Baker: I might add, you can be as nasty as you wish to Mr. Lindgren. He is used to it. He is an experienced litigator, like Senator Angus. He has 62 reported cases in WestlaweCARSWELL and I think a little more in Quicklaw. He has great experience before the courts.
I want to straighten out one thing for the listening audience. Some people have referred to the Red Chris case and others have referred to the MiningWatch case.
Mr. Hart, can you clear the record and verify to us that it is actually MiningWatch v. the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans; is that correct?
Mr. Hart: Correct.
Senator Baker: If it were referenced more than one time, you would say "MiningWatch supra."
Mr. Hart: I will defer to my esteemed legal colleague for the technical nomenclature.
Mr. Lindgren: Red Chris was the name of the project that was the subject matter of the litigation.
Senator Baker: Yes, but the style of cause was, in the beginning, MiningWatch versus Red Chris. Is that not correct; or is it versus the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans?
Mr. Hart: The latter.
Senator Baker: We know it is MiningWatch.
I have three basic questions and my second question is this: Mr. Lindgren, you said a moment ago that public participation is reduced in the new plan. I am taking the other side of the argument for a moment. A reasonable person reading the judgment in that case would conclude that in the end there would be a repeat public hearing, that what was missing was that the federal law said there should be public meetings regarding the matter and that is the way it should have been. In other words, there would be a repeat of what had been done under the provincial legislation.
Mr. Lindgren: I am not sure I would characterize it that way. There is no doubt at the end of the day that the Supreme Court did deny the remedy and did not order the Red Chris project to go back to square one and start over either federally or provincially. However, that was not the essence of the case.
As you recall from reading it, the problem was that the Red Chris Mine started out as a comprehensive study and somewhere along the line, despite good intentions to have a harmonized, coordinated federal-provincial EA process, it all fell apart. The feds unilaterally decided it would proceed by way of a screening only, without public participation, and the Supreme Court of Canada said that that could not be done. If it is a comprehensive study, it is a comprehensive study.
Senator Baker: If it is a comprehensive study you must have public hearings. I am looking at the judgment.
Mr. Lindgren: You do not have public hearings, per se, but it preserves the option for the minister at the end of the day to bump it up to a review panel.
Senator Baker: The judge concluded that the trial judge had exceeded his jurisdiction.
Mr. Lindgren: In granting the remedy.
Senator Baker: Yes; and that is why it was left alone.
What does this do to future judicial reviews of departmental decisions such as this, or ministerial decisions? It is my understanding that the appeal procedure is solely the jurisdiction of the Federal Court. One would have to go to the Federal Court to get a judicial review under section 18.1 of the Federal Court of Canada Act. What does this do for future cases and what does it do for the case law now if someone wishes to question the minister?
Mr. Lindgren: It does not change anything in terms of the interpretation of CEAA. It has everything to do with the court's discretion to grant a remedy on the facts of the case. On the facts of that case the court decided that MiningWatch, as the judicial review applicant, really did not have a personal interest or a commercial interest that would be adversely affected. For that reason alone, the court thought that this was a pure public interest case, that it would decide the law as it saw fit, and that it would not grant a remedy.
In future cases, that particular result may be distinguishable. As a lawyer who will probably bring the next judicial review application, I will craft the application and supporting affidavits a little bit differently if I am representing a public interest group. I will not say that we do not have an interest, because that is an invitation for the court to say, "Here is our interpretation, but you do not get a remedy."
Senator Baker: That is what I was looking for. It really establishes some new law.
Do you have any suggestions to make? I find reading the rules of the Federal Court very confusing compared to the rules of the superior courts or the provincial courts or the Supreme Court of Canada. They are convoluted, especially in class proceedings and representative proceedings. I do not think there has been one case of a class proceeding that has been adjudicated that I could ever see. Do you find the same problem?
Are you saying that a judge hearing a case on judicial review under section 18 of the act, by an application made under rule 300 of the Federal Court, cannot go beyond simply referring the matter back?
Mr. Lindgren: That has always been one matter of discretion that is open. The other option is to simply quash it and allow it to proceed. Granting a remedy is entirely within judicial discretion. Just because the Supreme Court declined to grant one in the MiningWatch case does not mean that the next judge cannot grant one in the next case.
Senator Baker: Do you mean the trial judge of the Federal Court?
Mr. Lindgren: Correct.
Senator Baker: You just said the "Supreme Court," though.
Mr. Lindgren: The mere fact that the Supreme Court ultimately did not issue a remedy does not bind the discretion of the trial judge in the next case.
Senator Baker: It sure sends him a signal, though.
Mr. Lindgren: As a litigant, it sends me a signal as to how I will plead my case the next time around.
Senator Baker: That has to do with all of these questions we are looking at right now under the Environmental Protection Act and under all the other acts.
Senator Mitchell: I am quite interested in a couple of issues. One is the idea of the scope. It has been made pretty clear by you and others that there is no limit to how small it could get in a given project. Are you aware of any mechanism in this bill or elsewhere that gives people recourse to an appeal if there is a grievous oversight on the part of the minister in determining the scope?
Mr. Lindgren: That is a very good question. The short answer is that nothing in this package of amendments provides a remedy where there has been excessive, unjustified or unreasonable scoping. The only remedy is to do what MiningWatch did, which is to count your pennies, hire a lawyer, go to court, cross your fingers and hope you do not lose or get dinged with an adverse cost award.
Senator Mitchell: You need tons of money to do that.
Mr. Lindgren: You need lots of patience.
Senator Mitchell: Then it is too late.
One thing the minister said today that captured my interest was in answer to my suggestion that maybe some of the delays they talk about all the time have nothing to do with the environmental assessment process itself as much as it has to do with how poorly this government seems to manage itself in processes like that. It just does not manage well. We have lots of evidence of that.
He made an interesting point, that he will consolidate the authority to do the environmental assessments under his authority as the Minister of the Environment, yet there seem to be two contradictions here. You mentioned one, Mr. Hart, which is the responsible authority delegation. The other one is that he is still explicitly allowing the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the National Energy Board to do comprehensive assessments. Were you aware of his thinking in this regard? Can you make any sense of it?
Mr. Lindgren: No.
Senator Mitchell: That is a good answer.
Mr. Paterson, are you okay with that? Would you like to answer?
Mr. Paterson: I missed part of your last question. I apologize.
Senator Mitchell: The point I was making is that, on the one hand, the minister says he is solving any management problems there may be in implementing environmental assessments by bringing all the authority under himself. On the other hand, Mr. Hart's point is that he still has provision to delegate to certain authorities, and those are departments that have done these environmental assessments before, such as the fisheries department. He also has excluded from his direct authority the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Am I missing something here or is he missing something?
Mr. Paterson: I cannot speak to what either of you are missing, but it seems as if what you are saying is exactly what is happening. That is what we have been saying as well, that this is not an authority that will just reside with the minister. It can be delegated to the same departments it has been speculated are not doing a good job of doing it in the first place.
Senator Mitchell: There is obviously lots of talk and evidence of concerns with offshore drilling given this tragic disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. We are facing perhaps years of offshore drilling in Canada in very sensitive areas as well. This weakening of the environmental review process could have huge implications. Can you comment on that in the context of offshore drilling and how they might scope it in a way that would be detrimental?
Mr. Lindgren: I do not hold myself out as an expert in the regulation of oil and gas exploration in the deep sea. That is not something we deal with here in Ontario.
You are quite right. My colleague Mr. Hart mentioned this already. The particular oil drilling rig that caught fire, blew up, sank and caused the horrific impact in the Gulf of Mexico was exempted from undergoing a rigorous environmental study under the federal environmental assessment legislation in the United States. That is something we should try to avoid at all costs. We should ensure that situations where drilling rigs are going into deeper water than has ever been tapped into before, those kinds of novel, potentially harmful situations need to be fully vetted and rigorously assessed within a good environmental process and not just done in a licensing or technical hearing.
Mr. Paterson: In the wake of the spill, we heard on the floor of the other place from various ministers of the Crown that Canada has the world's best regulation possible around drilling for oil and gas; that we have the absolute best environmental assessment processes; that insofar as drilling and oil and gas activities offshore in Canada are concerned, we need not worry; and that this kind of thing would never be allowed to happen here. At the same time, this bill purports to weaken some of those very protections, protections that groups like ours would suggest are not robust enough already. I am not left with a whole lot of confidence around the current status and the direction for regulation of offshore oil and gas activity in Canada.
Senator Mitchell: I asked the minister today whether he would make a commitment, given that he can scope up or down, that he will ensure that all major energy projects, such as oil sands development or new power plants, be reviewed for greenhouse gas emissions and their potential impact in that regard. He did not answer yes or no, which was ominous, and it was not lost on several of us.
There is nothing in this bill that would prohibit him from excluding greenhouse gas emissions from reviews of major projects, is there?
Mr. Lindgren: That is correct.
Mr. Hart: I want to comment on the issue of delays and where they occur through the environmental assessment process because that comes back again and again. Delays can happen for a number of reasons, only some of which have to do with the way the act is written or implemented. We just completed a federal review process for the proposed Prosperity Mine in British Columbia, which the company likes to talk about as having taken 17 years. That sounds unreasonable to anyone, but what the proponent does not talk about is that they were in hiatus for five years because of economics and because they have been trying to do a project that the regulators did not want to approve. The regulators did not have the authority to say no, so the proponents came back again and again and kept trying despite the regulator's hesitance about the project.
Sometimes proponents hand in shoddy environmental assessments and they need to go back because the regulators say they have not met the requirements, even though they have been clearly spelled out. Sometimes it is the regulators. Sometimes the responsible authorities cannot get it together and figure out what they want in the environmental assessment.
There are a whole range of reasons that delays occur. Far too often, we only hear about the problems with the environmental assessment process and not all of the other reasons that can create delays.
Senator Mitchell: Sometimes it is land claims; sometimes it is dropping oil prices; sometimes it is recessionary periods; sometimes it is increasing interest rates. It can be all kinds of things. It is an urban myth — although it is not generally an urban project — that it is just environmental assessments that hold things up, and this will not speed up or facilitate things at all. It will just make things worse.
Senator McCoy: We had the pleasure of having the Mining Association of Canada as a witness earlier. You may have been present for that. Ms. Justyna Laurie-Lean said that they have been promised more effective results, more effective management of the federal EA process for as long as CEAA has been in existence, and none of those promises have been kept. She is looking at these amendments with favour because she is hoping that the intent this time will be to deliver on the promises.
We who have been involved with environmental assessments for years, as I have in Alberta, all say we want a more effective process. Now we are faced with these rather vague amendments in a rush, and we are interpreting them depending on whether we see the glass as half full or half empty.
I want to ask two questions. If you predict what the effect of these amendments will be, how do you assess them?
I asked the minister whether CEAA, the agency, would have the resources. I asked the agency. They both said they were given $11 million extra two years ago and would continue to have that. I point out that in his own planning document, they are losing the $11 million three years from now. That, to me, is a marker of how serious they are about true implementation.
Those of you who have been involved longer, over the past 10 years perhaps, may have been observing these matters. In your knowledge and experience, has there been a federal environmental minister that has delisted more projects than the current minister?
Mr. Lindgren: To the extent that the infrastructure projects we have been talking about were first exempted by regulation and now by statute, it is a big whack of projects right there. I cannot recall anyone else that swept the table of that many projects in one fell swoop. I guess he holds that dubious record.
Senator McCoy: Mr. Hart, to your recollection, has there been any federal environmental minister who has delisted more projects from EAs than the current minister?
Mr. Hart: My recollection does not go back as far as many people in the room, but I did want to comment on how we can predict the outcomes of these proposed amendments. Our big concern is that we will go back to the time of pre- Red Chris, where many mining projects were being split apart and where the federal assessments were not being assessed for the mine. Even though they may have supposedly triggered a comprehensive assessment, because the mines were over 3,000 tonnes a day, the projects were only being assessed for their specific permit issues, which were around fisheries and the tailings impoundment areas. You no longer had a mine, a road to a mine or a hydro corridor to the mine. Now all you had was a tailings impoundment. That is all the federal authorities were interested in reviewing. That is where our concern comes from and how we are forecasting the potential implications of these amendments.
Mr. Paterson: I do not have much to add to what the other speakers have on that point.
Senator McCoy: Does the current minister hold the record, in your experience, as to how many projects have been delisted?
Mr. Paterson: As Mr. Lindgren said, to eliminate thousands of projects from environmental assessment in one fell swoop is quite the daunting record. I could not say for certain, but it is quite a lot.
Mr. Lindgren: To answer the question of how we know what will happen down the road when these amendments have yet to be passed, I ask myself if anything in the amendments would prevent a Red Chris scoping or downgrading from happening again, and the short answer is no. Not only will it not prevent it, it will also probably facilitate it. That is the concern.
Senator Tkachuk: I am not a lawyer, either, but some of my best friends are lawyers.
I would like to get some information so I understand the organization. The Canadian B Association has an environmental group. Senator Angus or Mr. Lindgren, perhaps you can help me. It is a separate group within the Canadian Bar Association. What is it, exactly? I just want to know how many groups there are.
Mr. Lindgren: The Canadian Bar Association is the association of all the lawyers in Canada who want to be members of it. Within that organization, there are a number of specialized subgroups by area of practice, including environmental lawyers who hold conferences where they get together to talk about things. Then there are the rest of us, public interest groups that are out there litigating.
Senator Tkachuk: Your group is the Canadian Environmental Law Association. Was your group split off? Did you organize separately? How many members are there?
Mr. Lindgren: We are completely separate entities. Some of us used to belong to the Canadian Bar Association and some of us may still. There are five lawyers at CELA, including me. It is a voluntary thing as to whether you want to join the Canadian Bar Association.
Senator Tkachuk: How many people are there in the association that you are representing here, CELA?
Mr. Lindgren: That is an interesting question. We are not set up like a normal group with membership. We do not have 5 million people.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you have lawyers?
Mr. Lindgren: Yes, we have many lawyers.
Senator Tkachuk: How many members?
Mr. Lindgren: There are probably 15 to 20 of us at any given time. There are six or eight lawyers on staff that are either on contract or full time.
We are a legal aid group funded by the Ontario legal aid association, so we are basically a community legal aid clinic.
Senator Tkachuk: You are funded, then, by the provincial government.
Mr. Lindgren: It is more indirect than that because we end up suing the provincial government from time to time.
Senator Tkachuk: I want to know how you get your money. You seem to have a lot of staff members and very few members, so I am asking how you are funded. I think that is a legitimate question.
Senator Moore: Not in respect of court challenges.
Senator Tkachuk: Are you a business?
Mr. Lindgren: We are a community legal aid clinic. We are funded by the Legal Aid Ontario corporation, which itself gets money from the attorney general's office. Most of our money funnels to us through the legal aid system.
Senator Tkachuk: From the taxpayers of Ontario?
Mr. Lindgren: A lot of the money comes from the law foundation, which is money that lawyers generate as part of their practices.
Senator Tkachuk: Then we have the West Coast Environmental Law. Are you a split organization from the Canadian Environmental Law Association, or are you a separate group on the West Coast? How many members do you have?
Mr. Paterson: We are a completely separate group from the Canadian Environmental Law Association. In the same way as Mr. Lindgren described, we are not a member-based organization. Under the Society Act of British Columbia, our board is composed of our members. We have a board of X number of people. We have four staff lawyers.
The bulk of our funding comes from the Law Foundation of British Columbia, which, as is the case in Ontario, is generated off the interest of lawyers' trust accounts and is granted out to organizations doing law work in the public interest. Then we have donations, the same as any other not-for-profit organization would have.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you give out charitable receipts, or is it just a not-for-profit organization?
Mr. Paterson: I am speaking on behalf of the West Coast Environmental Law Association, which is a not-for-profit organization. We do also have a charitable foundation, which has different charitable aims. People giving money to that are able to get charitable receipts. People who give money to the associations do not get charitable receipts.
Senator Tkachuk: How many members do you have? How many people do you represent?
Mr. Paterson: I am counsel representing the association, so we represent ourselves in this kind of matter. Our membership consists of our board. There are about 10 members on our board of directors, and they are the sole members of the association.
Senator Tkachuk: You represent this group of 10 lawyers. That would be like a small law firm in downtown Toronto.
Mr. Paterson: Not all of them are lawyers to start with. We are a not-for-profit organization.
Senator Tkachuk: You say "West Coast Environmental Law," so it is confusing for me. Not being a lawyer, I have to ask these questions.
Just so that I understand, because you impugn certain motives to the government about why they did this or why they did that, what are your motives?
Mr. Lindgren: Our motives are what they have been for 25 years. We want good, effective, enforceable, fair environmental assessment legislation. We want a good and efficient process. There seems to be a myth that the whole objective of environmental groups and First Nations and others is to stop and delay things. We have no real interest in delay and interminable proceedings. We do not have much money on behalf of the clients we represent, so we do not benefit from processes that drag out for months, years and decades. We want to see things decided in a timely way, too. There is a commonality of interest. However, the Bill C-9 changes that we see before us are not the way to get there.
Senator Tkachuk: Your group, then, would be more political in nature. Lawyers have differences of opinion, of course, with regard to this bill. Senator Angus is a lawyer, and he has a different opinion than yours. You are more like a political organization.
Let me ask my question, and the witness can answer as to why he is here. From my point of view, the more environmental law there is, the more business there is, is there not?
Mr. Lindgren: I would rather be home on my boat fishing, quite frankly.
Senator Tkachuk: I am just asking you. The more complicated the issue, the more work for environmental lawyers. It is a big business.
Mr. Lindgren: Maybe I was not clear about this at the beginning of my remarks. We represent individuals, farmers, ratepayers groups, First Nations, et cetera, who try to participate in these environmental assessment processes to ensure that the decision at the end of the day is environmentally sound, protects public health and safety, and ensures sustainability. That is where we are coming from.
Senator Tkachuk: That is a very clear answer. Thank you very much.
Mr. Paterson: If I could answer for the West Coast Environmental Law.
Senator Moore: For the record, it is the National Environmental, Energy and Resources Law Section?
The Chair: Yes, it is a section of the Canadian Bar Association.
Mr. Paterson, go ahead.
Mr. Paterson: I want to add something to follow up on what Mr. Lindgren said. In many individual matters, we act as counsel for the exact same thing: farmers groups, community groups, First Nations and various different groups that have occasion to interact with these processes at a federal and provincial level. Over the period of years we have been doing that, we have garnered some expertise. We have an interest in ensuring that the process works as well as it possibly can for the environment. That is why I am sitting in this studio here today.
Senator Tkachuk: You and I are on the same side, then.
Senator Dickson: I have a couple of questions for Mr. Lindgren and our friend on the West Coast. Have you ever represented a project proponent or have you always been on the other side?
Mr. Paterson: I have not.
Mr. Lindgren: I am a dog-and-pony show. The only thing I know is environmental law. I have only worked for the Canadian Environmental Law Association. We do not represent proponents.
Senator Dickson: My second question is broad. I am a senator from Atlantic Canada where, economic times being what they are, like all Canadians, our citizens have great interest in sustainable projects, particularly those that are sensitive to health, safety, environment and community. With regard to my friend out there on the West Coast, I get the sense that he feels the effect of this legislation will deny the benefits that flow from projects. I do not feel that way. I strongly support Bill C-9 because the drivers behind it at this point are that we should look at some public policy perspective and balance, and it will create jobs that Canadians desperately need now, particularly in Atlantic Canada. I would like your comments as to whether you agree or disagree. My feeling is that there will be jobs now, not later.
I was involved in one particular project where certain people are still waiting for an answer as to whether or not they have jurisdiction. I am sure that if I posed the problem to you today, you would give me the immediate answer that they have completely no jurisdiction. However, the particular official in the federal government is afraid to make a decision.
Mr. Lindgren: I am not sure I have ever seen any job estimates from Minister Prentice as to how many dozens, hundreds or thousands of jobs will accrue from these changes. Frankly, if any kind of estimates like that were made, they should be taken with a grain of salt.
Senator Dickson: I do not agree.
The Chair: We understand you do not agree, but you made your point. The witness is replying to it.
Mr. Lindgren: My only observation is this: When we get involved in an EA process, whether provincially or federally, we see a lot of grandiose claims from proponents that they can protect the environment, provide social benefits, create employment, generate tax revenue, et cetera. That is great. More power to you. Can you prove it in an EA process with some rigour? If you can, you have no problem; you will sail through it in a minute. If you cannot prove it, you have problems.
Mr. Hart: I spent six years living in New Brunswick before moving to Ottawa to take on this job with MiningWatch Canada. I appreciate the economic situation down east, but I also very much appreciate the sense of community values and the value of the land that people down east have.
I would perhaps put out for your thought and consideration the Whites Point Quarry decision in Digby Neck, Nova Scotia, where the community unanimously rejected a proposed development. They were able to say no to a proposed development because of a rigorous joint panel of due process. First Nations, farmers, fishermen and ecotourist operators all thought this project was not in the best interest of the community and were able to see that project denied through a federal-provincial joint panel review. That is a rare occasion, but it shows that down east, where perhaps economic times are amongst the hardest in Canada, people are not willing to accept jobs at any cost.
The Chair: Colleagues, two senators wanted to participate but were unable to do so. Senators Ringuette and Baker had follow-up questions. We are 10 minutes over our designated time. Our witnesses have been here longer than they thought they would be.
Mr. Lindgren, Mr. Hart and Mr. Paterson, we very much appreciate you coming here today to share your expertise with us. Thank you.
(The committee adjourned.)