THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES
EVIDENCE
WINNIPEG, Friday, April 12, 2019
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, to which was referred Bill C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, met this day at 1:02 p.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Rosa Galvez (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good afternoon, and welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. My name is Rosa Galvez. I’m a senator from Quebec and chair of this committee.
Senator McCallum: Senator Mary Jane McCallum, Treaty 10, Manitoba region.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons from Alberta and from Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Neufeld: Richard Neufeld from British Columbia.
Senator Patterson: Dennis Patterson, Nunavut.
The Chair: I would like to thank and introduce the library analyst Jesse Good and the clerk of the committee, Maxime Fortin, whom you have been communicating with, and all the Senate staff that are with us and that makes these hearings possible.
Colleagues, today we are continuing our study of Bill C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.
Thank you for joining us. I will invite each of you to proceed with your opening statement after which we will go to a question period.
For our first panel this afternoon, we have, from ATCO and Canadian Utilities Ltd., Siegfried Kiefer, President and Chief Strategy Officer. He is accompanied by Dale Friesen, Vice President, Indigenous and Government Relations & Sustainability. From Amnesty International, we have Connie Greyeyes, Community Advocate, and Jackie Hansen, Gender Rights Campaigner. And, as an individual, we have Professor John Sinclair, Acting Director of the Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba.
We will start with Mr. Kiefer.
Siegfried Kiefer, President and Chief Strategy Officer, ATCO Ltd. And Canadian Utilities Ltd.: Thank you. If I could begin my remarks by acknowledging that we are on Treaty 1 territory, the land on which we gather is the traditional territory of the Anishnawbek, the Cree, the Dakota, the Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Metis Nations of Winnipeg. Thank you, senators, for meeting with us today and to discuss our views on Bill C-69.
ATCO, if you do not know, is a proudly Canadian company that was founded with a modest investment of $4,000, seventy years ago in Alberta. Today ATCO is a global enterprise, it’s diversified with approximately 6,000 employees worldwide, and our business provides integrated solutions for electricity, housing, logistics, pipelines, gas and liquid storage and processing, ports, transportation and retail energy supply.
Core to our operating practices and philosophy is partnering with Indigenous peoples in all the communities where we work. Today ATCO has formed over 47 partnerships with Indigenous peoples in Canada ranging across Canada and right up to the far north. Those 47 partnerships last year delivered $250 million dollars of benefit to the nations that we are partnered with.
We have been fully engaged in participating in the federal environmental assessment review process since 2016. We have been proactive in trying to make the bill as workable as possible for Canadians by engaging and providing constructive suggestions with ministers, officials, advisors and parliamentarians right from the outset.
We support the underlying objectives of Bill C-69, that is, to uphold the highest environmental standards, provide for meaningful public participation, provide for effective Indigenous consultations, a robust science-based review on projects and assessments, and provide for a competitive resource sector and a strong economy for all Canadians to enjoy.
ATCO’s concerns are that the detailed drafting of this bill frustrates some of these stated objectives. As currently drafted, Bill C-69 will increase the scope and complexity of federal impact assessments, and it will add to, not reduce regulatory uncertainty. It will also increase project delays and litigation opportunities for opponents of major projects. If passed in its current form, Bill C-69 will make it more difficult to get significant projects built in Canada. This is true not just for pipelines or oil and gas projects; it is true for investment and replacement and new electrical generation facilities, electric transmission and distribution projects, extremely needed investments if we are going to advance Canada to a lower carbon energy system.
Honourable senators, you have our brief before you. We worked very hard to present you a package in both official languages, with clear themes and targeted outcomes to improve the bill without sacrificing its objectives. We have made the effort to propose detailed wording as well as our rationale for the finite set of doable amendments that we’ve provided you. I want to stress that the amendments we are proposing are not a wish list in the hope that you might adopt just one or two of what we are here putting forward. The amendments work as a system, and they work as a system to address some significant shortcomings in the bill. However, if these amendments are adopted, we’re confident that the bill will contribute to stronger confidence by all Canadians that project impact assessments can be properly reviewed and decided upon in a timely manner.
In the package of amendments we submitted to the Senate committee you’ll see three themes that we focused on. The first is the introduction of consideration of economics and other factors in the purpose of the act. The second is to bring greater certainty and clarity around three elements covered in the act: the process, the timelines and the participation. The third is the role of the lifecycle regulator in impact assessment and the ongoing operation of these facilities.
To conclude, ATCO appreciates the opportunity to work with the Senate committee, and we appreciate the work you’re doing in reviewing this act. The amendments that we have proposed aim to increase the certainty and provide a clear process from start to finish for all Canadians. Providing such a system to uphold high environmental standards is extremely important to the future of Canada, its economy and the growth and prosperity of Canadians. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Ms. Hansen.
Jackie Hansen, Gender Rights Campaigner, Amnesty International: Good afternoon, senators. My name is Jackie Hansen, and I am the gender rights campaigner with Amnesty International Canada. Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today on Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Metis Nation.
We appear before you today to address ten critical words in Bill C-69, the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors. We just returned earlier this week from northern Manitoba where we travelled in partnership with York Factory First Nation and Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak to deepen our understanding of the impacts, both positive and negative, both historic and ongoing, of hydro developments on Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people in northern Manitoba.
We heard about profound impacts on the land and their profound impacts on Indigenous peoples. We heard about rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, things like racial slurs, sexual violence experienced by Indigenous women, both in industry work camps and also by industry workers in urban centres. Some of the incidents that we heard about occurred decades ago, some occurred in the past year, and a common theme through everything we heard about these incidents, in particular sexual violence, is a complete impunity for perpetrators, absolute impunity.
We heard from women who said that when they were assaulted, men were moved out of camp, but there was no police investigation. We heard about the Keeyask labour camp where there are 2,500 people living in that camp, that is more than the size of some small communities in this country, and yet despite the population in that camp there is no police presence. How can there be accountability for acts of sexual violence when there is no law enforcement present?
Connie Greyeyes, Community Advocate, Amnesty International: Good afternoon. My name is Connie Greyeyes, and I hail from Fort St. John, British Columbia. My home community is the Bigstone Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Wabasca-Desmarais, Alberta.
I know firsthand what the impacts of the resource sector are because I am from a resource town. I’m a former medic who worked on drilling rigs for a number of years in and around northeastern B.C. I myself have experienced sexual violence, racism and discrimination while working in industry and living in a resource host community.
I know many women who have also been impacted. I know many women who have approached the police reporting sexual violence that had occurred to them with no investigation and no justice, including my own traumas where I had reported a sexual assault, a rape, and was dismissed. Government and industry have long known about and failed to mitigate these impacts, and that needs to stop now. Gender-based analysis in the federal assessment process is a critical tool to help understand and mitigate these risks, risk to myself and other women and girls in our communities.
We are uncomfortable appearing before you today because both York Factory First Nation and MKO requested to testify before this committee, and their requests were denied. We are deeply disappointed that the committee has not prioritized hearing from Indigenous peoples in Manitoba, and we want to acknowledge the presence of Chief Leroy Constant from York Factory First Nation, his council and community members, and representatives from MKO who are in our audience this afternoon.
Ms. Hansen: Opponents of Bill C-69 have stated that gender-based analysis is a cumbersome process and that it is unnecessary, given the whole of government commitment to gender-based analysis. As the gender rights campaigner who spends my time thinking about these things, I can tell you we could not disagree more.
The requirement that future impact assessments include an intersectional gender-based analysis is potentially one of the most important advancements of Bill C-69. Some have said that it is already happening in assessments, and I can tell you from the research we have done that is simply not the case.
Gender-based analysis is a tool to assess how people of different genders are impacted by issues in different ways. It’s actually pretty simple when you think about it. An intersectional gender-based analysis assesses how people of one gender experience the world in different ways based on their race, ethnicity, age, and other factors. When applied to the impact assessment process for resource development projects, gender-based analysis is a tool to assess the social implications of projects to help understand how people of different genders are likely to be positively or negatively impacted by projects.
And when we talk about mitigation, we’re talking about really practical measures and strategies that can be put in place to mitigate any likely harmful impacts. We are talking about things that could include decals on company vehicles so they can be identified if they’re trying to pick up a woman in a community, or codes of conduct for employees in their off hours.
Ms. Greyeyes: Even when there is a specific commitment to address the social impacts of resource development, the absence of gender-based analysis leads to important gendered impacts being overlooked. For example, the environmental assessment of the Site C dam, which is in my region and currently in year three of construction, considered social and economic impacts, but failed to consider specific gendered impacts. The assessment noted that jobs created by the project would draw more workers to the region and make accommodation harder to find and more expensive. But it failed to consider whether increased housing and security might affect women differently than men and whether some groups of women, for example Indigenous women, face a heightened risk of experiencing home insecurity and homelessness.
In contrast, the P.E.A.C.E. Project, a research initiative carried out on behalf of the Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society, an organization that I volunteer with, identified insecure housing as a critical risk factor for violence against women with local service providers identifying affordable housing as the top need for those women and girls most at risk of violence. Indigenous women and girls in Canada face a heightened risk of violence. Numerous studies in Canada and around the world conducted over more than three decades link resource development with factors that can lead to increased levels of gender-based violence.
Ms. Hansen: All governments are expected to take every reasonable measure to stop human rights violations, and that includes those committed by private actors and companies. The state responsibility to take every reasonable precaution to prevent human rights violations is often described as the duty of due diligence. In relation to violence against women, the standard of due diligence is so well-established and widely accepted that it has become a matter of international customary law, meaning that it’s not only a moral obligation on states; it is a legally binding obligation.
Understanding how resource development impacts people of different genders, paying attention in particular to the impacts on Indigenous women and girls and mitigating these risks is about ensuring that projects have the greatest possible positive impacts on the greatest number of people, and who wouldn’t want that? It’s about mitigating potential harms. It’s a tool to support the development of strong projects, to promote gender equality, but it’s also much more than that. Implementing gender-based analysis in the impact assessment process is also the lawful thing to do to uphold Canada’s international human rights obligations.
Amnesty International recommends that the committee does not amend the existing language on the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors. Further information about our rationale behind this is available in our written submission, which I believe you all have copies of. I would also encourage you, when you have a moment, to have a look at our report Out of Sight, Out of Mind, which we conducted in northeast B.C., with Connie and others, where we really looked at the complicated interconnection between energy development, gender and Indigenous rights. And we look forward to taking your questions. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Professor Sinclair.
John Sinclair, Professor and Acting Director, Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba, as an individual: Senator Galvez and members of the committee, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today. Like others, I want to welcome you to Treaty 1 territory, the home of the Metis homeland, as well as Winnipeg, home of the Whiteout and the Slurpee. I hope that you have time to take advantage of both of those, and I’m glad that the weather hasn’t turned into a whiteout like they thought it might.
My background is outlined in the brief that Dr. Minehart-Doyle and I presented to the committee. I’m not going to build on that now, but I will say that I have said quite a bit about Bill C-69, written quite a bit about it and EA more generally over the past 25 years.
In the time since CEAA 1992 was passed and before that the ERP process, we certainly collectively learned a whole lot about environmental assessment. There are really no mysteries anymore about what constitutes sound environmental assessment, and all of the aspects of assessment that we were talking about or that you have been hearing about are practised in various parts of the world.
In my deck, the next page is an image of some of my students. I’m in the privileged position of being able to work with bright young scholars and graduates. I take great pride in the fact that many of our students and graduates have shared their views on environmental assessment and on Bill C-69 with the expert panel, with legislators during the legislative process, and with you.
Most of us here are of a certain age, and it seems from looking at the witness list that you haven’t heard from very many millennials and the types of students that I’m currently working with, and I’ll tell you that their views and ideas about things are changing the way that we’re offering education.
I want to just offer two quotes, one from my student Heather Fast, who is here today. She applied to present, but wasn’t able to. She’s one of my PhD students who is also a lawyer. A quote that’s in her brief is: “We’re running out of time to make the changes necessary to ensure my generation and those that come after us have a future that involves enjoyment of a healthy environment and access to the natural resources currently and future Canadians need to survive.”
I was speaking to a colleague from another university just this week, and he was talking about one of his top undergraduate students, and she had said to him that she wasn’t sure that she was going to have time to do a Master’s degree because she needed to focus on taking care of the planet because it needed immediate action, and she felt that she had to devote her time to that rather than continuing her education.
The bookstore image in the next picture from the deck, while it is a joke, it probably captures quite well how many millennials feel concern about where we are at. Whether it’s apocalyptic or not helps to set the context for which you are carrying out these hearings and also the context in which we will be making development decisions. A lot of complexity has been added since 1992 when environmental assessment first came to be here in Canada.
A couple of examples I just want to share with you, one, of course, that you heard about this morning is our relationship with Indigenous people and trying to find a path to reconciliation and co-governance. Another is the interest in the public in actually being consulted on decisions that affect them. We have documented the rapid increase in this, particularly in the resource sector here in Canada as well as elsewhere; moving from government to governance.
As well, our understanding of natural systems has changed considerably, and 1992 was the year of the first convention on biodiversity, and we certainly now understand that the number one threat to species is habitat change and degradation, and this comes from multiple agents.
Climate change, of course, I work with colleagues on issues of climate change. In our faculty we look at climate warming and its impact on the environment, both social and ecological and the changing ice regime in the arctic. Who would have thought in 1992 that there would be the Crystal Serenity travelling, plying the arctic waters every summer?
As well as you’ve heard from the powerful testimony of my colleagues from Amnesty just a minute ago as well as from Dr. Maureen Reed yesterday, we now understand our relationships with each other better and are trying to find ways to work with the problems that have resulted from not understanding those relationships.
If you move to the next picture, while making the right decisions is, of course, urgent, we need to do that understanding the complexity that’s before us. In order to deal with that complexity, I put before you that we need at least good legislation. Industry in the oil and gas sector particularly pushed for changes that we see in CEAA 1992. That’s led to the broad recognition, I think, even amongst senators, not to mention politicians of many stripes that CEAA 2012 is broken, misguided and damaged in the words of Premier Notley.
So the next slide just has a number of the things that I felt are important to highlight as innovations of Bill C-69. I don’t plan to go through those. I had identified early planning, the broadened focus, consideration of climate as well as the single-agency approach as being important.
What I would like to focus on just for a minute, though, from that list is early planning. I have been a big proponent of early planning for at least 20 years. You heard about the early planning process on February 6 from the government officials that designed the process as well as from other presenters. I would just like to support what you’ve heard that the move to early planning is critically important to an effective, efficient and fair assessment process. As described, the current process is like a steamroller, once a proposal is submitted and the discussion of key questions and issues like alternatives left to the submission point, it only promotes conflict and uncertainty amongst those involved. Recognizing this early planning phase is fundamental to realizing the promised improvements in the process to participation, cooperation, coordination and timeline management, as I know you’ve heard from others like the Mining Association of Canada.
So what’s in need of improvement, I have a list there as well for you. I only highlight one thing on the list, and that’s meaningful participation and engagement. I’m highlighting that because I have spent a lot of my career writing about governance and how people gain voice in participatory processes like assessment. I see the step of removing the standing clause for CEAA 2012 in the bill as a very positive step. Having that clause in the bill did nothing more than focus and require people to move into the streets. As you saw earlier today, people will find a way to gain access if they haven’t been able to gain access through the channels that we set up, as I think Byron tried to acknowledge as well.
Having said that, writing about participatory governance for a long time now, I am very disappointed that the bill doesn’t say more about meaningful participation. The bill does not even define meaningful participation. The approach that’s chosen is to leave things to guidance and has largely failed participants since 1992. There are, and we can discuss in the discussion period, many innovative ways to involve people, many guides to effective participation. We keep focusing on the default ones. We have organizations that help with assessment, participation, and we need to move away from where we are now, which is leaning towards the informing form of consultation or participation and using open houses for consultation when we actually have consultation. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Before we proceed to the question period, I would like to ask Ms. Hansen, you said that you have a report called Out of Sight, Out of Mind.
Ms. Hansen: Yes, the report is called Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Gender Indigenous Rights and Energy Development in Northeast B.C. I am happy to send a copy to the clerk.
The Chair: Yes, please. Thank you very much.
Senator Simons.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to first say to Ms. Greyeyes how grateful I am that you had the courage to come and tell us what I’m sure is an extremely painful story. Thank you very much for speaking so frankly about your own experiences. As I am from Alberta, I understand the implication of what it means when there is a large work camp that comes to town.
But I actually wanted to take some of the issues you’ve raised and direct them to Mr. Kiefer because ATCO builds the trailers. I would like to know what ATCO does in terms of gender-based analysis, what your current practices are. I don’t know how many work camps you have as opposed to work camps you build for other people, but if you could speak to how ATCO manages issues on-site, if there’s a protocol, and how you feel about gender-based analysis being in the bill.
Mr. Kiefer: We do build a lot of work camps, and I would have to report that all of them are for other people, not our own work. It’s a line of business, we provide housing in remote locations where other housing is not available. But I can speak for our company’s philosophy around gender diversity and gender inclusion. It does factor into our thinking. I have a boss who is very passionate about that topic, and she makes it clear that that is philosophically the company’s position as well. In terms of employment practices, in terms of everything we do, we do look at gender impacts.
We have operated camps in the far north, and at different times different rules are put in place at those camps. The ones that we have used for very remote construction of transmission lines and those types of things have a very strict rule-set around, no alcohol permitted in the camp. We find some of these things help restrain some of the bad behaviours that sometimes occur in remote locations with large workforces. We provide segregation and separation for female workers if they’re on-site. I can’t comment anymore.
Senator Simons: And then I guess I wanted to ask, CAPP and CEPA and the Indian Resource Council gave us a package of amendments that are not unlike your package of amendments. Are there specific things you wanted to highlight that perhaps you have dwelled on that they haven’t, maybe around navigable waters? When you and I met earlier this year, you and Mr. Friesen were the first people who really got me to understand the impact of navigable waters for electricity generation.
Mr. Kiefer: Yes. We came looking at the act not from an oil and gas perspective because we’re not directly in the oil and gas business. We came at it from an infrastructure and electricity sector perspective and developing national-scale projects with respect to both of those items. It’s true we have landed on amendments in many of the same areas and with much of the same language, but we have gotten there with different rationale. I encourage you to read the rationale that we have placed adjacent to our amendments. None of it relates specifically to oil and gas development; it relates to the businesses we are in and why it’s important to get this bill correct.
The bulk of our amendments are around creating that certainty and clarity. We did not restrict or eliminate any of the aspects that a project review could undertake in the process. We are a full supporter of a broad review as required. We also believe that different projects require focus on different elements, and so we think it’s important that the agency have the flexibility to spend more time on more important elements.
The Chair: Do you have anything to add?
Ms. Hansen: Certainly. Just very quickly on employment practices, we, of course, want to make sure that all companies are upholding the human rights of all of their employees, But I just wanted to caution against playing a numbers game in terms of percentages of women and working for companies. When we’re talking about gender-based analysis, it’s often seen as how many women are working on a project or with a company, and that’s actually not what we’re talking about. It can be part of it, but what we’re really talking about is what the impacts of a project are on women, men, nonbinary, two-spirited people, and so that isn’t always a number game; it’s something other than that.
Connie had a comment on work camps.
Ms. Greyeyes: I have a lot of experience working in a work camp, in a man camp, and I have a personal story about a work camp. When we’re talking in terms of the safety of women and girls in communities, I’ll give you this to reflect on: I was a level 3 medic on drilling rigs and service rigs, and I know ATCO trailers quite well because I lived in them for months and months at a time. When we were on service rigs, we’d have to stay in different camps instead of the ATCO trailer right on-site. I had gone once to a project, a job outside of Fort Nelson, and thankfully they actually had separate living quarters for the women and the men. I was grateful to find that out. When I got to camp, I was shown the women’s trailers, and it was a lineup of ATCO trailers, probably anywhere between 50 and 75 rooms in the women’s quarters, and the men’s side was full. Unfortunately for me, the front door of that camp didn’t lock for my living quarters, and I was the only woman in there. So, when we’re talking in terms of camps and the safety of women and girls within the constructs of this, those are things that we need to take into consideration.
The Chair: Thank you.
Before we pass to the next question, I want to tell the York Factory First Nation in the back that I present apologies in the name of the committee and that we will make sure that we will hear from you in Ottawa when we are back in Ottawa. Thank you.
Senator Patterson.
Senator Patterson: Thank you, Madam Chair.
First, to ATCO, I want to say it’s a great Canadian company. I’m familiar with your work in the north and the Pan Arctic Inuit Logistics operation of the North Warning System that had huge benefits for your Indigenous partners. It’s a shame it wasn’t extended.
Following on Senator Simons, thank you for the very comprehensive list of amendments. I believe you have worked with CEPA and CAPP and the Mining Association of Canada on a suite of amendments. Is this CAPP plus or is this the same amendments we have got from CAPP?
I’ll just ask another question to you. Bill C-69 has been harshly criticized by the pipeline industry and the oil and gas industry and other major companies. The government has so far mostly ignored this criticism except to say problems will be fixed in regulations. As an investment decision maker, is hearing we’ll fix it in the regulations enough, or will investment leave Canada unless we make major amendments to this bill?
Mr. Kiefer: Thank you for your question, senator. I would characterize our amendments as a CAPP and CEPA minus. We have been less industry focused and more generically focused on things that can apply broadly across all sectors. They would have specific amendments that are specifically targeted at pipeline projects and/or oil and gas development projects. We stayed clear of that. We think a generic impact assessment act is the way to go for Canada.
When it comes to correcting flaws in legislation through regulation, we don’t support or agree with that approach. This is a very important piece of legislation for Canada and Canada’s future, and when it comes to attracting investment, Canada is a country that has benefitted significantly from foreign investment and capital investment in our country. It’s what has provided good-paying jobs. It has developed regions of this country and provided a great standard of living to many people.
What happens when you introduce uncertainty in legislation, trying to correct it in regulation still leaves the courts as the only avenue because the courts don’t rule on regulation, they rule on legislation. We would be strong advocates of making sure this legislation clearly outlines the intent of the government and the people of Canada with respect to project reviews. We are yet to see a project list associated with what will apply to this, and we have yet to see a draft of the regulations, so I think it’s important to get this step right.
Senator Patterson: Yes. We’re in the dark too.
Could I ask, Ms. Greyeyes and Ms. Hansen, a short question? Thank for your presentation. You strongly recommend the inclusion of the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors in section 22 should be retained. Could you tell us what other identity factors there are, please?
Ms. Hansen: There isn’t one magical list, to be honest. I think we have to recognize that people of any one gender are not a homogenous group, that when you are looking at a project, you need to really look at the community and hear from community members to really understand the diversity of the community and understand what are the things that you need to be looking into and in what depth. So, for example, if we were in northeast B.C., it’s an area of intense energy development, there is a large Indigenous urban population as well as a number of reserve communities nearby. It would be preposterous to do a gender-based analysis without looking at the intersection of Indigenous identity with gender.
It’s really about understanding the communities that you’re engaging with and making sure you’re understanding the identity factors that come into play and really having that depth of discussion around how different people are impacted in different ways. You know, as an Indigenous woman living in Fort St. John, Connie would be impacted in a different way than I would be as a non-Indigenous woman living in western Quebec. So, it’s important to just understand who we are and these various parts of our identity that really make up who we are and understand how that can influence how we will experience projects in different ways.
Senator Patterson: We need to find a way to pay for the social programs we value in Canada, and the natural resource industry has been a significant contributor to Canada’s GDP. You have heard even today a major, I think, great Canadian company say uncertainty is scaring investors, and we have heard evidence earlier that investing capital is fleeing the country in significant numbers. $100 billion worth of projects cancelled in the last couple of years. So you have said about other identity factors, and I appreciate your candour, there isn’t really a clear list or a complete list; it may vary from project to project. Do you understand how opinions like that could give investors uncertainty about what they have to deal with, what they have to put in their environmental impact statement, whether the EIS will be challenged later in court for missing out things? Can you understand however laudable this goal is, and I understand that and support that, that your answer today created the very uncertainty that investors are saying is the enemy of progress in this country to pay for our social programs?
Ms. Hansen: I actually disagree with your remark, senator. It is about knowing and understanding communities who are going to be impacted by a project, and if you really wanted a list, you could look at the Human Rights Act and look at what are protected grounds for discrimination and use that list. But in Canada, all levels of government have a responsibility to uphold human rights, so Canada has a responsibility to make sure that that happens. So, it’s really about looking at how do you understand who is going to be impacted and how. This really isn’t that difficult. There are gender-based analyses and gender specialists across this country, around the world. This is something that is well laid out and can be done.
Actually, I think it adds certainty to a process, not uncertainty. I think we would want strong projects that are looking at how more people are going to benefit to understand some of the risks that we can anticipate based on the consultations that we have held, and here is how we’re going to mitigate those risks. Connie can tell you from the experience in northern B.C., it’s actually going to be a lot less expensive to mitigate the risks than to deal with the harms that are created if you don’t mitigate them proactively.
Ms. Greyeyes: I volunteer at the Women’s Resource Centre, and I have for several years. It’s been something that’s been very near and dear to me, women and girls in my community and the safety. Having been a grassroots activist in my community and working with the Women’s Resource Centre, we have noticed that since the Site C Dam project was approved, we have actually had to open the doors of the Women’s Resource Centre to accommodate men because there are not enough services for them.
When we’re talking about companies mitigating impacts and communities, those are the kinds of things we’re talking about. It’s ludicrous that a Women’s Resource Centre who cares deeply about community members has to have men Wednesdays so that we can also accommodate and help those people as well that are also impacted.
It really makes sense that you want companies to understand the impacts that they’re having on communities. The numbers from the Women’s Resource Centre from pre-Site C Dam construction, we had 3,285 women and men come through the door in 2015. 562 of those numbers were men. At the end of 2018, 6,578 women with their children have walked through the door, and of those numbers 1,892 of them have been men accessing food, trying to get warm, clothing, with nowhere to stay.
When we’re asking companies to mitigate those impacts that they’re having on communities, it shouldn’t be a bother. Women and girls in communities and the safety of them are not the enemy of companies who are making billions of dollars on the backs of the people in those communities.
The Chair: Senator Plett.
Senator Plett: I have a couple of brief questions for Mr. Kiefer. I have spent a fair bit of time in your camps in my previous life.
Nearly every resource company that we have heard from is concerned about the delays of Bill C-69 processes. However, the government still routinely says that Bill C-69 will make project reviews faster. I’d like your opinion on that, whether it will be faster than the CAA 2012, why or why not?
Mr. Kiefer: It is true that Bill C-69 has put some day limits on elements of the process. It is also true that Bill C-69 has inserted, I believe, 14 points where ministerial discretion can interrupt, suspend or delay the process. It’s that uncertainty that I believe will create delays in overall project approval, and that’s why we have advocated for a 730-day maximum time limit start to finish for the process in the amendments that we have provided you. We haven’t taken away all of the ministerial discretion that’s been asked for in the act, but we’ve tried to make it more guarded in that the rationale for a suspension would need to come with that decision. We think we’re affording the government the latitude it wishes to have in the process, cap the overall length of the process, and force some transparency on any suspensions that are introduced.
Senator Plett: You briefly touched on lifecycle regulators, so Bill C-69 marginalizes lifecycle regulators for offshore oil projects, nuclear projects, pipeline projects. Is there any good reason in your mind to limit the role of the most experienced regulators for these highly technical projects?
Mr. Kiefer: No. In my mind, I cannot see why you would in legislation preclude a certain body or qualified people from participating in a panel to review and establish the technical requirements for a project to go ahead. It’s also terribly important that the people who over the life of that asset have the obligation for ensuring its safe and continued safe operation whether that’s for public safety or for the workers, have a say at the table in how it’s installed, built, and then operated. So we are in full agreement that the lifecycle regulators should not be precluded from participating in a panel or chairing a panel.
Senator Plett: Mr. Sinclair, did you have something to add?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr. Sinclair: I just want to say I’m glad the fact was clarified a bit. The lifecycle regulators are not excluded in any way. In fact, the act talks about gaining their expertise through the process and using their expertise to make decisions related to projects that are affected by them. Last year CNSC, there were only four projects that went through a CEAA process. CEAA 2012 is very limited in its application, and all indications are that Bill C-69 will be the same, and the lifecycle regulators created the situation that required action in terms of how we’re going to try to move forward in approving projects, resource projects, major resource projects, in Canada. That was the problem.
Mr. Kiefer: If I could just clarify —
The Chair: Yes.
Senator Plett: Well, Mr. Kiefer, please. I do want to remind Mr. Sinclair that I did not say they excluded them; I said they marginalized them.
Mr. Sinclair: Well, actually, it was the speaker that said they were excluded.
Senator Plett: Mr. Kiefer, did you have something to add further to that?
Mr. Kiefer: I would just point out clause 47(4): “The chairperson must not be appointed from the roster and the persons appointed from the roster must not constitute a majority of the members of the panel.” That’s the wording from the bill, as written, and it does essentially marginalize the lifecycle regulators in participation.
Senator Plett: Thank you.
The Chair: Now, Professor Sinclair.
Mr. Sinclair: Marginalization is a view. I spoke with the CNSC last week, as a matter of fact. They called me to ask me about their participatory processes, which they are reviewing and modifying in light of the issues that have been raised related to Bill C-69 and their role as a regulator, and they don’t feel that they’re being marginalized.
The Chair: Senator McCallum.
Senator McCallum: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you all for your presentations and for Connie, your story, deeply personal and intimate. It’s sad that we have to share those stories to make our points when we need to make our voices heard and be understood.
The ongoing issues of safety, justice in home areas, there are ongoing issues of safety and justice in home areas. There is no escaping as resource development is at the door now. It shows the critical importance of passing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and that the inclusion of the gender-based analysis is a human right when looking from the margins of society and further marginalized because of the hesitancy of parliamentarians to address and support movement forward in the area of women’s self-determination and the right to participate fully and safely in all matters that affect their lives. If we don’t deal with that, we are further supporting oppression. The reality is that the technical pieces of this bill affect lives. It is only through early planning that all Canadian issues and all sides can be heard.
My question to Connie and Jackie is do you or do you know of any group that has a framework which companies can use so that they can look at what gender-based analysis is and that it makes it easier for them to be able to act on it?
Ms. Hansen: There have been some interesting assessments done, led and conducted by Indigenous women. I think our suggestion would actually be rather that proponents doing the gender-based analysis, to support community members to actually do community-led assessments, and two models that I would look to, the first would be Nak’azdli First Nation in British Columbia who actually did a community assessment with a really strong gender-based analysis in the approval process for the New Prosperity mine. The mine went in, and the community now does ongoing monitoring and assessment with a very strong gender lens.
The other that I think is really important to look to is a project that was also done by Nak’azdli First Nation, Lake Babine Nation and the Firelight Group a few years ago. These are communities with a lot of different forms of resource development over many decades, and they came together and said, okay, we know what these impacts are, we know what would prevent these harmful impacts, we know what would increase positive impacts, so let’s look at what mitigation strategies would be helpful, and let’s actually talk this over with government and industry.
We participated in a workshop where Indigenous women brainstormed and said here are the impacts on our communities, and here are our recommendations. Here is what we as a community can do to keep women and girls safe, here is what we want to call on government to do, here is what we want to call on industry to do, and here is what we want to call on police forces to do. It was all intensely practical. The next day industry and government were invited into the room, and when it was broken down into practical chunks and recommendations — I think sometimes when people hear gender-based analysis, they aren’t sure what it is, and so when people sat down and said, actually, this is the results of a gender-based analysis, the industry representatives in the room said, oh, yeah, we can do these things, this is no problem at all.
I think that’s a really great example of how to have a community-led process, inviting others in. It’s also dispelling myths, creating trust and understanding and recognizing that these are the things that would make a concrete difference. So, yes, there are some good examples out there.
Ms. Greyeyes: Just to add to that, we’re talking about human lives here. We’re talking about protecting women and girls and mitigating the impacts that these things have on their lives and ensuring that they have equal opportunity to be safe, to live, to become grandparents and parents. I’m happy to say that in British Columbia I’m working with a group of women, and we have been asked to help create the Indigenous gender-based analysis in the Province of British Columbia. We’re in the very early stages, we’re just starting to meet, and I would be happy to share that process with you when it comes time.
The Chair: We will appreciate if you can send us a copy.
Ms. Greyeyes: Absolutely.
Senator McCallum: Mr. Kiefer, in your proposed amendments, it’s in the preamble where it starts off with the United Nations Declaration, and at the end you wrote: “The final decision maker on whether a designated project is in the public interest and the refusal by any person, group or community to accept or consent to a designated project will not be determinative of whether a designated project is in the public interest.” Could you comment on that?
Mr. Kiefer: This is an area where we think clarity is important. We deal with a lot of First Nations, and there’s a lot of interpretation around UNDRIP and FPIC and a number of the Indigenous rights and how you work through those situations with impacted communities. We are repeating what the government has told us; that UNDRIP does not give a veto right to any one community or person on a project. All we’ve done is said, well, then you should say that in the preamble to the act that this is not intended to set up a veto right for anybody in the process.
I would just highlight, we’ve just completed a project in northern Alberta. It’s a 500-kilometre transmission line. We went through the traditional lands in 21 First Nations, through two communities, many farmlands, lots of Crown land, and we filed for a permit and licence on that project without a single objection from any landowner, and we’ve completed the project now without a single objection across that piece of work.
So it can be done through good communication, and I think that’s the important thing, is that you get out and understand the concerns of each and every community. They’re different, and you need to accommodate them differently. Thank you for your question.
The Chair: Last question, Senator Neufeld.
Senator Neufeld: My first question will go to Mr. Kiefer. You said ATCO has been actively engaged with the federal environmental assessment reform process since 2016. You’ve been engaged almost right from the start when the government did. Were you a bit surprised when you saw the finished product?
Mr. Kiefer: Yes, although I would say on Bill C-69 there has been some movement in terms of the government accommodating some of the areas of concern before the bill went to the House for first reading. They just didn’t go far enough, and that’s why we still have an outstanding list of clarifications that need to be added to the bill.
Senator Neufeld: I know in the house it was 49 or 42 amendments that went through, all from government. Because of the timeframe, I’ll move on.
Ms. Hansen, I’m from Fort St. John. I live there. I lived for 19 years in Fort Nelson and had been involved in the oil and gas industry all my life until I got into politics.
So to Ms. Greyeyes, hi. Thank you for coming here and saying what you did. That must have been pretty tough.
I was an MLA prior to coming to the Senate, so I had a good association with all First Nations around Fort St. John. They never brought that to my attention, those kinds of things. That’s unfortunate because I know those kind of things shouldn’t happen. Basically, all I wanted to do was let you know that I’m from Fort St. John. I’ll talk to some of the people in Fort St. John that you are quoting and see what’s happening and why.
BC Hydro has a large work camp where they house all their people, right at the site. The only people that come to Fort St. John, as far as I know, are some who choose to. It surprises me that people don’t have a place to stay, because the camp is not full. I was just through it just a while ago, and it’s not full, so I don’t know what’s wrong there.
I don’t really have a question. I just wanted to let you know, unless you want to comment.
Ms. Greyeyes: I actually do want to comment. I was really happy to see you in the room because you’re a familiar face from the region, and I appreciate your comments.
I know that for a number of years the things we have been facing in the community have been kept quiet because that’s our nature. Historically we haven’t talked about the traumas of residential schools or day schools or even the trauma of first contact. And I know that you have been a very respected MLA and citizen of Fort St. John.
Incidentally, with the comments regarding homelessness, it was brought to our attention that the local Salvation Army actually uses the top half of the hotel to house industry workers, and they pay rent there, and meanwhile we have people living on the streets. It’s definitely a difficult situation, but I think that working together and actually coming to that mutual understanding that we have to value humans’ lives over money, and the thing is we can do that. We just need willing partners at the table.
Senator Neufeld: Yes. Thank you.
Mr. Sinclair, the reason I’m trying to move on is because the chair is going to cut me off. In fact, she’s ready to bang the gavel right now. Mr. Sinclair, one thing that you talked about was meaningful participation and engagement, and you said that probably we hadn’t seen very many millennials. Actually, quite surprising, we have. I’ll just give you the name of a couple of them. Sarah Vandaiyar, I think it is, President and CEO of Young Pipeliners Association of Canada; Katie Smith, Executive Director, Young Women in Energy. Those are just two, and I’ve noticed a lot of people coming through that aren’t as grey as me, so would consider those as millennials to testify, which is great, because that’s what we want to hear. Those are the people that are moving forward and taking over.
Explain to me a little more about participation and engagement, what you really mean.
Mr. Sinclair: Well, I guess I thought that I would probably get a question related to the standing clause because you’ve been talking about it quite a bit at the table.
Senator Neufeld: I wanted to change it.
Mr. Sinclair: Okay.
Senator Neufeld: But you can talk about it if you wish.
Mr. Sinclair: No, I won’t talk about it, but what I’ll say is I think that for some reason we are afraid of participation and engagement, that we think that either the agency or whomever can’t manage it, can’t manage the information that’s going to be brought before them. I see no basis for that. Under environmental assessment in Canada, at the federal level, there was never a problem until we had CEAA 2012 and the standing clause with participation and assessment.
Byron offered you some stats this morning from processes here in Manitoba and nationally. We probably think of Energy East as being a big — a lot of people were interested and wanted to participate. It was only 2,600 people. That’s not a huge number of people.
I have a colleague that I write with. He’s a consultant in Hong Kong. They typically prepare for 4,000 to 5,000 people. He sent me a report of one of their participatory events recently, and in addition to panel hearings there were 29,000 questionnaires conducted, there were 3,000 interviews, and there were 70,000 public submissions. So I don’t know what the problem is. There are a lot of ways now to deal with large amounts of data and to deal with it easily.
I have a box of public participation guides in my office, and we continue to use the same approaches. We use hearings, one approach to hearings, we use open houses, and we let people write submissions. Yet, people hate open houses. They’re a good onramp to more meaningful participation, but by and large people do not see them as an approach to meaningful participation. There needs to be more options, and there are books and books and books on this. I co-chair the International Association of Impact Assessment’s Public Participation Section. It’s not like it’s a mystery. There’s the IAP2, the International Association of Public Participation Practitioners. None of this is a mystery anymore. Just as Byron said this morning, and this is some of what CNSC is doing, we need to rethink the way that we carry out some of those administrative tribunals and the opportunities that are provided to people to participate. We need to be more imaginative. We need to actually use some of those guides that have been created, some of them written by the federal government. I’ll stop before I rant anymore.
The Chair: Thank you so much. If one of the books you mentioned summarizes this, I would appreciate reading it.
Mr. Sinclair: Sure.
The Chair: With that, thank you very much for your testimony. Thank you very much for this very important conversation that we had.
Colleagues, for our last panel, we have, from the Winnipeg Airports Authority, Barry Rempel, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tara Hull, Director, Operations Compliance, Winnipeg Richardson International Airport. And from the Pembina Institute, we have Nichole Dusyk, Senior Analyst; and Duncan Kenyon, Alberta Regional Director. Thank you very much for being here.
Barry Rempel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Winnipeg Airports Authority: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. First off, I really do want to welcome you, for some of you that actually live in this region, thanks for coming home, but I want to welcome you back to Winnipeg. I hope you had a great experience going through our airport here, both directions, I hope it all goes well.
I’m joined today by Tara Hull. Tara, I’m particularly proud of as one of our members at the airport. Tara joined us a number of years ago straight out of school to work in our environment area and is now our director of operations compliance for the entire airport.
I’m going to leave with you some prepared remarks. Rather than reading each of those that you’ll have an opportunity whenever at your leisure to go through, I’m just going to hit some of the high points in recognition of trying to keep it to five minutes at this stage, and, of course, in recognition that there may be a few of you that I want to make sure get out of here in time to go to the Whiteout downtown.
So to understand a little bit about the Winnipeg Airports Authority, why does an airport care and why we are here, I think it’s important to provide a little bit of context. First off, our vision as the Airport Authority starts with three very important words. Those three words are “with our community.” Our vision is with our community to lead transportation, innovation and growth. Most people, when they think about an airport, just think about people coming and going. It’s much more than that. It is about goods; it’s about leveraging the assets with which we’ve been blessed in a way that benefits our community.
Winnipeg is the seventh-largest airport when you measure it in terms of passengers, but we are the largest airport in Canada, bar none, when it comes to the application and use of freighter aircraft for the delivery of goods across the country, particularly between Southern Canada and the Arctic, Nunavut specifically.
The airport supports about 17,000 jobs and is responsible for about just over $3.5 billion in economic activity. That didn’t happen by accident. A number of years ago we were responsible for 7,000 jobs, and it’s by working with our community and leveraging the assets that we were able to help grow and become an engine of our economy. That plan came about by working with our community in response to and in partnership with them.
With this in mind, we have four suggestions on how to improve Bill C-69 specifically. They are basically project definition, the 30-day posting and timeline initiative that’s incorporated in there, the issues around community knowledge, and then, I’ll say, respecting the Airport Authority’s mandate.
So the first one, being definition of the project, the current Canadian Environmental Assessment Act provides very clear guidelines on when an airport authority needs to conduct the assessments. I’d say that across Canada, airports have effectively managed to work and to be within those rules and to develop them in a way that helps us drive the economy.
We have invested over $22 billion in infrastructure in the last number of years. Winnipeg, itself, has invested just over a billion dollars, and in the next year we have another 112 million in significant projects on the table. Each one of those has been conducted within an Environmental Impact Assessment.
Our concern with Bill C-69 is the lack of clarity on when an airport really needs to conduct assessments, and that’s because the definition is simply inadequate. What constitutes a project is just not well-defined in clause 81. In its current form, we believe it will bring airport development virtually to a standstill. The inane nature of the impact, of the way it’s currently defined — and I’ll just give you just one example.
We recently, this past fall, installed water bottle filling stations in the airport. Kind of innocuous. You want to help people out. You want to be able to have them use their own containers and not throw away plastic bottles all the time. The problem is that, as written, Bill C-69 would require the airport to undertake an environmental assessment for the project; clearly an unnecessary step, frankly, a waste of our employees’ time and the time of everyone else that’s involved in these impact assessments.
CEAA today allows airport authorities to self-assess projects, and the supporting regulations define very well when an environmental assessment is required. I would submit that there is no evidence today of — certainly us here in Winnipeg — having abused the current system. Our recommendation in that regard, then, is that Bill C-69 retain the definition and scope that currently exists in the Environmental Assessment Act and the regulations that go with it.
The second thing I mentioned was the 30-day posting period. We’re actively and constantly engaged with our community in consultation processes. We engage through formal structures starting with our board of directors, who are all local right. We have a number of committees, including the community consultative committee and the committee on the environment. We also interact, virtually daily, with the public through social media on any subject, but certainly on anything that has to do with the environment. We also go through a regular process of consultation with the community on our master plan. All this to say that the opportunity for community engagement exists today, and we really don’t see value in delaying the projects by posting them online for an extra 30 days through another facility somewhere else.
The requirement in clause 86 to post information online simply is an extra step that becomes problematic for us and puts us in the position of filtering feedback as to defining what is meaningful or not. In that regard we would recommend that this clause be amended to leave airport authorities with the discretion to seek public consultation, as needed.
That relates to and drives into what is the third area that we wanted to comment on, and that’s the definition of community knowledge. Clearly we’re committed to working with our community. Our board, as I mentioned, are all from here. We have all of those items that I just mentioned in terms of feedback processes and loops for the community, and it is unclear, at least to me, how the requirement to consider community knowledge as defined in clause 84 adds anything further for a project.
I would say it is also unclear as to how airports would go about determining who has community knowledge to contribute and what would be defined today as meaningful consultation. In respect of paragraph 84(1)(c), we would recommend that it be removed or that airport authorities, given our unique constructs, be exempt from that section of the bill. It is simply redundant.
The last thing that I wanted to mention is respecting the Airport Authority’s mandate, which is our final suggestion. We need to find a better way to align Bill C-69 with the federal government’s desire to make air travel more efficient and more affordable. To me, it is unclear how bill C-69 delivers on that priority. It is unclear how transferring authority from the Airport Authority to the federal government benefits travellers. Clause 88 simply eliminates an Airport Authority’s ability to determine which projects have further consultation or where consultation is sufficient. Instead it transfers what we are currently doing back to the minister, which was something that was transferred to us when we were initially set aside from government. We don’t see where the value is added.
The final recommendation, then, is that the government considers the expectations for Airport Authorities in Bill C-69 and how it advances the stated goal of actually making air travel either more efficient or more affordable. Appreciate the opportunity.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Kenyon.
Duncan Kenyon, Alberta Regional Director, Pembina Institute: Good afternoon. I would like to thank the Senate hearing for allowing us to present here today. We get a chance here to talk about Pembina Institute’s position on Bill C-69.
My name is Duncan Kenyon and I’m joined here today by my colleague, Nicole Dusyk, whom many of you are familiar with, who is on our federal policy team and is the brains of our analysis on Bill C-69. She will be able to actually talk about more of the technical issues.
I am here to talk about some of the history around Pembina because I think that’s an interesting context in today’s discussion. We are a non-profit and a nonpartisan think tank that advocates for strong, effective policies to support Canada’s clean energy transition.
Although we now work across the country, our roots are in Alberta. Pembina was formed 37 years ago by local residents and landowners in Drayton Valley, Alberta in response to the 1982 Lodgepole sour gas blowout. That was an event in which, unfortunately, two people died. It also created a huge plume of sour gas that actually reached into Edmonton. What happened next is that 200 local residents and landowners decided to get together as a committee and say, there’s something wrong here; how did this happen; how do we change things? This committee called for and achieved a full-scale public inquiry into sour gas development in the province. As a result, there was a complete overhaul of the existing regulatory system for sour gas, and to this day we still have those strong regulations in place to enable the safe and responsible development of sour gas in Alberta.
For context, and just to understand, sour gas is actually natural gas that has a little bit of hydrogen sulfide in it, which is actually quite deadly in small amounts.
A core of people from that group went on to form the Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development, and I say our full name because it’s very important for the history of our organization. We are about appropriate and responsible development. As such, our approach has been to work with industry and government to ensure that oil and gas resources are developed safely and responsibly in the province and in the country.
We have brought that approach and philosophy to the 18 provincial and federal assessments that we have participated in over the past 25 years. We’ve worked constructively to address problems and find solutions in the planning for those projects, while identifying fundamental gaps and solutions for regulations and policies that relate to these projects. As Canada’s leading public interest experts on oil and gas development, we bring expertise and evidence on issues such as air emissions, the impacts to species at risk, regulatory development and public participation. So that’s our context for Pembina Institute and the expertise here and specifically on Bill C-69.
I would like to start by saying we all know the system right now is broken. We all recognize that. CEAA 2012 is not working out for anybody. After three years of rigorous study and consultation with industry, Indigenous people, environmental groups, civil society, and the public at large, this bill is the opportunity to fix the problems in the current legislation.
Our long history with energy policy, regulation and hearings, has informed our approach to the need for reform to Canada’s environmental law process. So starting in 2016, we conducted 23 interviews with a wide range of experts from industry, academia, Indigenous peoples, and environmental groups to gather ideas and understand the challenges facing the National Energy Board and CEAA 2012. We shared those results as part of the detailed submission to the NEB Modernization Expert Panel, and last year about this time we provided written and oral recommendations for improving the proposed Canadian Energy Regulator Act to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
Overall, we support the critically needed changes to the failed current process. The proposed Canadian energy regulator act would make these critical changes: the inclusion of climate considerations; the revised governance regime; the transfer of authority for impact assessment to the impact assessment agency of Canada; the expanded list of factors that must be considered when issuing a certificate or authorization; the increased transparency regarding decisions; the removal of the standing test for public participation; and the emphasis on partnering with Indigenous groups and organizations. These are significant improvements which will benefit industry and all Canadians by creating a more credible, fair and rigorous process.
Although we do feel that there are elements that the bill could be strengthened on, and we have proposed some amendments, our primary recommendation is for this committee to pass this legislation in order to improve decision-making for energy projects. As I said before, we’re all living right now with significant issues from the current system, and this bill is the opportunity to fix those problems.
Throughout the process to improve the NEB and the review process, our emphasis has been on two main issues, and the first is around stringent and consistent approaches to assessing climate impacts of projects and a second is ensuring that the review process is evidence-based, transparent and fair.
Bill C-69 proposes for the first time that climate change impacts be considered in federal impact assessment and energy regulation. This is very significant and absolutely critical. The world’s energy systems and markets are undergoing game changing technological and economic shifts as our world’s economy decarbonizes. All industries, and maybe most critically the oil and gas industry, are starting to make the innovations that must be made to lower their carbon footprint as global markets and investors are demanding. As a result, our assessment regimes need to keep up with this reality, and the lack of robust and consistent rules for assessing climate impacts is a major problem in the existing regime. Removing climate change, as some are suggesting, will not depolarize the issue. In fact, it would actually reignite controversy and demonstrate to Canadians that project review process continues to lack credibility. Including climate change impacts and environmental assessments creates a systematic process to support and encourage the kind of critical innovation that is necessary for Canada’s economy to compete in a decarbonizing world.
Public participation. The second issue is public participation and inclusive processes, and there is no evidence to show that a standing test leads to frivolous participation or that it helps amplify the voices of those most directly impacted. Rather, Canada’s experience with the introduction of standing in 2012 was that it led to more opposition because it created a process that actually excluded participation from critically needed voices, and in our own firsthand experience standing tests are, in fact, often used to limit participation and silence those who might be construed as enemies when, in fact, they are representing critical views and perspectives that can help assess the project and that results in a more fulsome and broad review reflecting Canada’s diversity and strengths.
I don’t think any of what we’re talking about is actually news to industry leaders, not from the discussions I’ve been having in Canada for the last three years. They already understand that minimizing the risks of complex projects requires careful and transparent review processes. Public trust and legal certainty do not come from overly simplified processes or fast-tracked Indigenous consultation or public communication campaigns. Aligning themselves with the expectations of Canadians, these industry leaders have worked closely with the communities where proposed projects are situated and expanded the range of impacts considered in their project design. They also accept that accounting for climate change impacts and policies has become part of doing business. This includes designing projects that dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of their project and show that they’re accounting for the financial risk posed by decarbonizing global markets and the physical and real risks of climate change on their operations.
We urge the committee to support fully inclusive processes and to give Canadians the benefit of the doubt in assuming that those who take the time to participate, because it’s not a simple and easy process to become part of these processes, that they do so because they have something to contribute, and they have meaningful voices for the process. To do otherwise is to risk the credibility of the review process.
We have in addition some other elements here, a couple of amendments and some other more technical elements that are actually included in our written submission. In the name of speeding things up here, because I understand I am in the way of us getting either to the Whiteout or to flights or to “beer o’clock” on a Friday afternoon, I would just like to say that there was an alternate hearing that happened today in Winnipeg, and I think there was also a disruption that happened this morning, and I think that those organizations felt that they were excluded from being able to participate in this process, and I would urge the committee to really seek out the voices of those people because they are actually fully supportive of the legislation, and we are quite concerned that this is an example of organizations that may have been excluded as voices here.
The Chair: Can you give us the name of these two groups?
Mr. Kenyon: Absolutely.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Kenyon: That concludes my statement.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Plett.
Senator Plett: Welcome to all of you.
Mr. Rempel, I had the pleasure of coming through the airport again this morning, and we may be the seventh largest in terms of passengers, but I think we’re the best and the most functional, so congratulations for that. Not only do I enjoy coming home, but I actually enjoy leaving through that airport as well.
Senator Neufeld: So do other people.
Senator Plett: It’s a great airport. I had a question, and you explained it very well. I was blown away by us having to do environmental assessments to put water bottles into an airport, and so I was going to talk a little bit about that, but I think you did a good job of explaining that. And, again, as Mr. Kenyon said, in light of time and people going to the Whiteout or wherever they want to go to, thank you for your presentation. It was a good presentation. I have just a couple of questions for either Mr. Kenyon or Ms. Dusyk.
I understood you to say at the start of your presentation, Mr. Kenyon, you were both nonpartisan and not-for-profit; is that right?
Mr. Kenyon: Yes, that’s right.
Senator Plett: Where do you get your funding from?
Mr. Kenyon: That’s a good question. As I understand it, you had a presentation this week from someone who was trying to give clarity on where funding comes from for environmental groups. So 85 per cent of our funding comes from Canadian organizations, businesses that we work with and Canadians, and 15 per cent of our money does come from international sources, from organizations that are working on climate change around the world or on a variety of topics that we work on, including buildings or clean transportation or renewables.
Senator Plett: Do you get money from Tides Canada?
Mr. Kenyon: We no longer get money from Tides Canada.
Senator Plett: How come?
Mr. Kenyon: We are no longer working on some of the things that Tides Canada has been working on.
Senator Plett: Have you received money from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation?
Mr. Kenyon: We have historically. Their funding is quite interesting because in some cases they have been funding us to work on oil and gas issues in the spirit of our approach, which is to work with industry and find solutions. They have also funded our work on renewables and on climate change policy; things that have been in the best interest of the Canadians in improving our opportunities.
Senator Plett: Has Pembina participated in the tar sands campaign?
Mr. Kenyon: Our focus on oil sands has been that it is an area that is an excellent opportunity in Canada to improve our performance there. There is a great amount of responsibility from the operators in our province to make sure that that resource is developed responsibly, and, from our perspective, we have serious issues with what has historically been the case in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions and the existing liability from tailings, for example. So our focus has been on the actual development itself.
The tar sands campaign itself is a bigger campaign that includes many organizations that have different focuses, and our focus has been on the upstream and on tailings and greenhouse gases.
Senator Plett: Partly you have been involved in the tar sands campaign?
Mr. Kenyon: Again, this is an interesting characterization, so it’s like there is a tar sands campaign, but every organization is responsible for their own projects and their own development, so there isn’t a conspiracy of coordination as is being implied by some of the organizations.
Senator Plett: Thank you.
The Chair: Senator Simons?
Senator Simons: Thank you very much. I first want to say, being from Edmonton, I don’t want to hear about the Whiteout anymore. It just makes me too sad.
Senator Plett: First time, senator, first time.
Mr. Rempel: All Canadians.
Senator Simons: Don’t walk the pain of Edmontonians. It’s just too tragic.
Being from Alberta, I know the excellent work that the Pembina institute does as — I don’t want to say moderate, but as a balanced player in energy and environmental issues.
I had a question for each group here. I know that when I spoke to Ms. Dusyk earlier at a certain point environmental groups had gone through the earlier CAPP amendments and made a ping pong analysis of them. Now that CAPP and CEPA and ATCO have all updated their amendments, I wanted to know if you had your own analysis of their amendments that you could offer us as a side-by-side.
Nichole Dusyk, Senior Analyst, Pembina Institute: I don’t have it here with me. That analysis has been done. For Pembina’s part of that, we focused on the proposed Canadian energy regular act, so I can speak to those amendments. For the whole act the counter-analysis — looking at those amendments, considering what they might do to the overall architecture of the bill, whether there are any we might agree with or not, have any problems with, or whether there are ones that are of high concern — has been done, and I can provide it to the committee.
Senator Simons: If you could provide that to the clerk so everybody can see it, that would be great
Ms. Dusyk: Yes.
Senator Simons: Mr. Rempel, I share your frustration that there is no project list, everyone on this committee shares your frustration that there is no project list. But I think we know realistically that when we get a project list, it’s not going to cover water dispensaries inside the airport. There may be more realistic hurdles for airport expansions all across the country, and this is the first time that I’ve realized that you had been given in a previous legislative regime the power to do that. Say, for example, airport X wants to do a major expansion to add a new terminal, to add new runways, something that would legitimately be a major project. How does assessment of that work now and how might it work under Bill C-69 as currently written?
Tara Hull, Director, Operations Compliance, Winnipeg Richardson International Airport, Winnipeg Airports Authority: Thank you, senator. That’s a great question.
At present, under CEAA 2012 there are regulations that designate those types of projects, and we feel that those types of projects are definitely the high-risk projects that could cause community concerns, and we feel that those projects should also be adopted if Bill C-69 does move forward.
Presently the authorities have the, not permission, but the ability to screen our own projects. Those that we determine to have significant environmental risk, we will hire consultants to further address the project and look into potential mitigation. Should we feel that we are not able to mitigate them satisfactorily, then we would continue through the process and bring that to the Governor-in-Council’s attention.
Senator Simons: So under Bill C-69, would that change? Would then a major expansion — I don’t mean a water dispenser, but new runways that might affect a migratory bird path, something like that — go to the IAA. It doesn’t seem quite fair that you should get to do your own environmental assessment, nobody else gets to do their own environmental assessment. But is there a balance that could be struck between having an objective analysis versus something that is so cumbersome that we don’t get airport expansions when we need them?
Ms. Hull: Right. So using your example of a new runway, that would be captured under CEAA 2012 as an assessment that we would not be able to complete ourselves. We would go through the agency to do that. So, for example, I have them listed here in CEAA 2012, sections 26 and 27: the construction, operation, decommissioning and abandonment of a new air drone located within a built-up area, city or town, and airport as defined in subsection 3(1) of the Aeronautics Act or an all-season runway with a length of 1,500 metres or more as well as the extension of an existing all-season runway by 1,500 or more. These are the projects that are above our ability to assess appropriately, and we would agree that an external agency should be assessing those projects.
Senator Simons: And those are all enumerated in CEAA 2012 or in your regulations?
Ms. Hull: In the regulations, yes.
Senator Simons: Okay. Thank you.
The Chair: I would like to ask a question of the Pembina Institute because there has been discussion about why the extension of existing projects needs to pass through an environmental impact assessment or impact assessment. Being a civil engineer and working a lot on the effect of climate change, I’m seeing that many of our infrastructures are becoming vulnerable, and so these extensions under the normal 2012, they don’t take in consideration cumulative effects or climate change. I am concerned that sometimes people are saying that extensions — for example, a dam or anything that is close to coast — do not need this new impact assessment. What is your opinion on that?
Mr. Kenyon: We were doing a little rochambeau of rock, paper, scissors to decide on that one. Our sense is that climate issues are a critical part of decision-making, and it’s absolutely critical that is considered in the new assessment act. You know, the question here is about particular projects and those that are excluded, is that what you’re asking about, like, and the ones that are too small and —
The Chair: Yes.
Mr. Kenyon: We’re not really experts on the EA process down to the smaller projects. I think what we should talk about here is that climate change is real and that we have to start planning for it in our infrastructure projects. And you’re absolutely right, when you’re building bridges or massive new infrastructure, every ten years you have to consider what will be some of the realities of one-in-100-year floods.
What I would encourage there is that we have some thoughts about the scope and what projects do need to be included and what the size, in terms of the GHG emissions, are from projects and what that threshold should be for the act. But I think there’s a lot of best practices with regards to planning for climate change that need to be infused into the rest of the industry, but I don’t think we have a specific — it relates down to the size of the project in terms of whether it gets scoped into the new act.
The Chair: I just want to say that it’s supposed to be added with the building codes, but because building codes are behind, we don’t take into consideration these things.
Senator McCallum.
Senator McCallum: I have a short comment. I go through the airport a lot as well, and I have never felt unsafe there. In your last recommendation, you said how it advances the stated goal of making air travel more efficient and affordable. You should include safe because you’ve always provided safe.
My question was in the same frame as Senator Simons about the oversight body that looks after you. Do you work with the province? Are you under the province in any way?
Ms. Hull: No. We were captured by CEAA 2012, and airport authorities were regulated federally at that point.
Senator McCallum: Thank you.
The Chair: Senator Patterson.
Senator Patterson: I would like to thank Mr. Rempel and the airport authority for their very clear, thoughtful proposed amendments. Almost every presenter has improvements to recommend to this bill, and I continue to marvel at the oversights and omissions and lack of clarity in the bill. Your amendments will be duly noted and I would like to ask you this: Are you confident that you would be speaking for Airport Authorities across the country in recommending these amendments?
Mr. Rempel: Absolutely. I think what you would find are probably slight variations on the theme, but certainly within the context of it, my peers would be making the same sorts of recommendations.
Senator Patterson: I have a question for Pembina. We had a very thoughtful presentation from the Director of the Canada West Foundation earlier today, Ms. Orenstein. She said that there was a big problem in their analysis with this bill in that it — we’ve heard this from other witnesses — injects policy issues, policy debates into the regulatory process. She said that the regulatory process is not set up for policy debates. She gave the example of how much greenhouse gas emissions should be in a project and how that relates to Canada’s obligations, which is more or less the wording in the bill, and there are obligations dating back from Kyoto. I wonder what all those obligations might be. But her strong thesis was that getting the regulatory process to debate policy issues is inappropriate, and the system is not set up for policy debates. We have those debates in parliament and in cabinets, but the regulatory system is not set up for that. We have huge policy issues like the meaning of Aboriginal rights under section 35 of the Constitution, which many of us have wrestled with since patriation. I wonder if you would have any comments on that.
I have another quick question, given we have a shortage of time. You talked about decarbonization. It’s not a happy reality, but the International Energy Agency predicted that global demand for oil and gas will steadily increase until 2040. I’ve been in Asia and other rapidly growing countries, maybe not as advanced as ours, and you can see the consumption of fossil fuels and the growth in the middle class and desire to have cars. Would you have any comments on that forecast and whether that’s accepted by you?
Ms. Dusyk: Thank you for the question. It is a good one. And I’m glad that you used the example of climate change for your first question.
Something that I think we can all agree on is that within the confines of a single project review, we should not be debating larger climate policy issues. That has happened in the past, in part, I think, due to frustration of not having what people feel to be adequate national policies, but that policy debate should not be happening. But that question of not debating the content of climate policy is not the same as not actually applying climate policy in an impact assessment, not taking into account the effects of climate change on that project as well as that project’s impacts on climate change.
So those two issues that are being conflated. By saying that you’re going to take the policy out, you shouldn’t be taking out actually considering climate impacts. Just to use an analogy or a parallel example, economic development is a policy issue. Nobody here is arguing that we should not be considering the economic impacts of projects. So to say that for climate or gender-based analysis is cherry picking issues that some people would rather not have within project assessments. It’s conflating the issue of what we really don’t want to do with what we really absolutely need to do.
You also mentioned the difficulty in terms of how the climate considerations in the act are actually worded, so being able to assess a project’s impact on our ability to meet our international obligations or commitments with respect to climate change. The strategic assessment of climate change, which is currently underway, that is the goal of that. It may be difficult, at the outset, to understand how that will be assessed and how we would take that into account. But the process of refining that, understanding what information needs to be brought to bear, how those decisions should be taken, is already underway.
Senator Patterson: Could you provide details on what’s already underway?
Ms. Dusyk: The strategic assessment of climate change?
Senator Patterson: Yes.
Ms. Dusyk: Yes, absolutely. That is underway by Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Senator Patterson: That’s a national process going on right now?
Ms. Dusyk: Yes, it is.
Senator Patterson: Okay.
The Chair: Last question, Senator Neufeld.
Mr. Kenyon: Do you want me to answer the second part of it, or are we against time?
The Chair: Can you provide an answer and send it to us?
Mr. Kenyon: The IAA does have that forecast. It does show a growth of oil and gas demand to 2040, but they also have several scenarios included in there. The scenario I think that you’re referencing, shows the demand in 2040 would have us on a path of a 5 degree warming for the planet. They also showed a scenario of 2 degrees, and they can show that the demand for oil starts to flatten in a 2035-2030 timeframe. There are several scenarios: Bloomberg, Shell, British Petroleum, BP, and Exxon. There’s a variety of scenarios looking at oil and gas demand going up to 2050.
What I would suggest in the interest of time is we can share those with the Senate if it’s interested.
The Chair: Please send.
Mr. Kenyon: Depending on the different scenario, demand for oil starts to peak anywhere between 2027 and 2040. That’s something for us to understand in Canada and what the implications are for us because it is an imprecise science. You are absolutely accurate that there is a growing demand elsewhere in the world, but there are a lot of forces at play right now that could really affect that demand. Happy to share that with you.
Senator Patterson: Thank you.
The Chair: Senator Neufeld.
Senator Neufeld: With the indulgence of the chair, I really don’t have a question, but for Mr. Kenyon, you spoke earlier, I think you said that there were some groups that were left out, that they should have been here that we couldn’t accommodate because of time. Written submissions are accepted, and those groups that you’re talking about, you can easily say, if you’ve got something to say, write a letter to the clerk, and all of us will get it. Thank you.
The Chair: With that, I thank the witnesses very much and my colleagues for their questions.
(The committee adjourned.)