Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue No. 59 - Evidence - April 8, 2019 (morning meeting)
VANCOUVER, Monday, April 8, 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 8:01 a.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Rosa Galvez (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning and welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
My name is Rosa Galvez. I am a senator from Quebec, and I am the chair of this committee.
I will now ask my colleagues around the table to introduce themselves.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Nova Scotia.
Senator Neufeld: Richard Neufeld, B.C.
Senator Woo: Yuen Woo, British Columbia.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy, Nova Scotia.
Senator Duncan: Pat Duncan, Yukon.
Senator Patterson: Dennis Patterson, Nunavut.
The Chair: I want to take this opportunity to introduce the library analysts, Jesse Good and Sam Banks, and the clerk of the committee, Maxime Fortin.
I see our colleague Senator Carignan from Quebec is arriving.
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.
Before I give the floor to our guest, I want to stress that witnesses must address the issues in Bill C-69, not other bills and not other areas that are not covered by Bill C-69. We want this hearing to be as efficient as possible.
With that, I will introduce our first panel. From Eagle Spirit Energy Holding Limited, Calvin Helin, Chairman and President, and Vivian Krause, Writer.
Go ahead, Mr. Helin.
Calvin Helin, Chairman and President, Eagle Spirit Energy Holding Ltd.: [Editor’s Note: Indigenous language spoken]. Thank you very kindly, Madam Chair, for the invitation to present today on an important bill to Indigenous people in Canada.
I will quickly introduce our project. Eagle Spirit Energy represents an energy corridor project that is currently supported by 35 First Nations. We are teamed with the four major pipeline unions that represent about 330,000 workers in Canada. We are proposing an energy corridor from Fort McMurray to Lax Kw’alaams, the community I am from, on the northern coast of British Columbia.
The reason this project was started initially was because the First Nations along the route were concerned about the environmental impacts of Northern Gateway. This project that we have been pursuing for six years will be 85 per cent equity owned by First Nations, without any government support. Underlying the philosophy of First Nations, most communities typically represent 90 per cent unemployment in the communities.
For most people in the Western world, the Great Depression ended in about 1939, or whenever it was, but it has never ended in First Nations.
The kinds of social dysfunction, lack of economic opportunities and the debt slavery that government policy has put First Nations into would shock any other country in the world. To hear our Prime Minister saying that he will solve all our problems when virtually nothing has been done, and in actual fact when Indigenous people are trying to solve their own problems, bills like this one and Bill C-48 are seen as barriers to our solving our own problems.
The Chair: We are discussing Bill C-69.
Mr. Helin: I just mentioned it because these two bills together are seen by First Nations as being highly obstructionist. The environmentalists are seen by First Nations as a group of people who have no connection with their traditional territory. The territory I am from has been there for at least 13,000 years.
To have environmentalists parachute in and seek to dictate policy in our traditional territory is obscene as is this kind of government policy. Our chiefs are represented through a council of chiefs. It is seen to interfere with decisions that tribal leaders have to make in their traditional territories to solve their own problems.
We have been looking after the environment in our territories for 13,000 years. We don’t need any latte-slurping rich kid flying in from the city and telling us what to do in our traditional territories. Most of you people probably have never been up in our territory. You don’t know what we’re talking about.
Having got into this project and having been involved in it for such a long time, we have created a project that would greatly simplify and provide a higher standard of environmental protection than anything the federal government is proposing. It is something that needs to be paid attention to.
In the current situation in the energy industry we’re having to ship our energy down to the Gulf of Mexico, either by train or by railroad. That environmental footprint or CO2 footprint is five to ten times simply shipping it out to the West Coast and to other markets.
As well, we are looking at trying to solve the world’s CO2 problems as a Canadian problem when it’s a world problem. When I say that, what I mean is that we only produce about 1.6 per cent of the CO2 in the world. The countries of China and India alone are projected to be increasing their CO2 output by potentially 30 per cent of world output.
With 48-inch LNG pipelines to the West Coast and with that product going to either China or India, we could reduce the CO2 footprint in the world by half of Canada’s current CO2 footprint.
We have proposed more stringent environmental regulations than are being proposed under any Canadian law right now. This has been done by the chiefs. What the council of chiefs has clearly said they don’t want is a standing given to anybody that has no skin in their traditional territory. It’s felt that Bill C-69 does that.
Indigenous people face a problem with the way most Western countries were settled by colonial governments pushing the Indigenous populations, whether it was Africa, India or North America, on to the worst pieces of land, taking away their abilities to be self-reliant, passing laws that prevented them from basically competing in the economy, and putting them in a debt slavery situation where their entire sources of income came from the federal government.
Clarence Louie, a chief from British Columbia, has said that the best social program is a job. First Nations in Alberta, along with the rest of the Albertans, have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. The opportunity to create economic development within the traditional territories of most communities is contingent upon holistically balanced natural resource development. First Nations can look after their own lands. They don’t need a government, located thousands of miles away, with people who have no idea what is going on in their territory dictating to them what their rules should be.
Collectively First Nations are going to be making written submissions to the United Nations Committee on Indigenous Rights, basically stating that the Canadian government, with Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, is breaching their fundamental rights as protected by the United Nations declaration. I don’t know if this committee understands, or maybe you do, but I don’t think there is a lot of understanding in Ottawa about how not only the Indigenous community but the entire Western Canada, whose economy is based on natural resource development, feel alienated by the laws being passed.
Some 300 First Nations are organizing with the three western provinces and the two northern territories, the signing of a natural resources accord among the First Nations and the western provinces. This bill and Bill C-48 aren’t an Alberta problem. They’re a Western Canada and a Northern Canada problem because the people that live in those areas feel their only source of an economic future is being attacked by elitists from large cities.
Did I only have five minutes?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr. Helin: I will stop there. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Ms. Krause.
[Translation]
Vivian Krause, Writer, as an individual: Good afternoon. I will be making my comments in English, but I will gladly answer questions in either English or French.
[English]
I prepared to appear before you this morning by reading some of the submissions you have heard from other witnesses. I realized that your committee and the House of Commons committee as well have heard from more than a hundred witnesses. You have heard from oil companies, First Nations, environmentalists, industry associations, and even from a few other individual citizens such as myself.
I read as many of the submissions as I could, and I must say I was impressed by the breadth and the depth of the comments you have had on specific aspects of the bill. I was also surprised because many witnesses found improvements in it and found positive aspects. It’s obvious a lot of work has already gone into this.
There’s one thing, though, that I didn’t see, and that’s the one thing I would like to bring to your attention. One set of voices is having an influence on the development of this legislation and others. The one set of voices you haven’t heard from and hasn’t appeared before your committee is having an influence is the campaigns the environmental groups are participating in.
I have a couple of comments about those campaigns. The reason I think this is important is because, as you weigh the various views out have heard, many of which conflict, you will have to decide which suggestions you accept and which you don’t. I think it’s perhaps useful for you to know about some of the influences that you haven’t heard from yet.
One of them is a campaign called The Tar Sands Campaign. As far as I can tell, every environmental group that appeared or made submissions is part of this campaign. If you were to Google it today, you would find a description on the website of the organization that has been running it. It’s called CorpEthics and it looks very benign. Today you would read the description and it only says that this campaign is about educating citizens, but I want your committee to know that description has been rewritten. CBC reported about this in January, and after that the whole description of the campaign was rewritten.
I hope you have in front of you a document that shows what the original description of this campaign was and how it has changed. Other documents describe it, and I would have to say that I think the original description is more consistent with the other documents than this one.
This is important because the purpose of this campaign is to landlock Canadian oil. One of the ways that these groups are going about it is by getting changes in the legislation that would make it more difficult for the infrastructure projects needed for our country to be able to break the U.S. monopoly on our oil that has been keeping us over a barrel.
I wanted to draw to your attention the difference between the description of that campaign, as it stands now, publicly, and what it was like before CBC’s Wendy Mesley reported about it on “The Weekly.”
There were three significant things. First, the entire admission about how this was about influencing the price of oil by keeping Canadian oil out of global markets was removed. The role of the funders was removed, and the admission that this campaign had influenced the 2015 federal election was also removed.
Second, I would like to mention, and I will close with this, is that nearly all of the environmental groups have some common sources of funding. In the case that I gave you an example of, one of the common sources is a foundation called the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. I gave you some information about the funding that this organization has provided. It’s significant because this organization, like all of the funders, has an agenda. That’s one thing that is important to note and, second, the money involved here is big. The Moore foundation, for example, has spent $267 million in Canada; $234 million of that has gone to activist groups or more than 500 payments for an average of a half a million dollars each: a half a million dollars.
Just to put that into perspective, I have one more number for you. Mr. Helin’s organization last year started a GoFundMe to raise money to fight Bill C-48. It took my friend’s group nine months, 435 donors, and they didn’t even get to $50,000. That group of First Nations, in nine months and more than 400 donors, didn’t even get to one-tenth of the average size of a grant from the Moore foundation. His group barely raised $50,000. Coastal First Nations who also appeared before your committee got $25 million from one funder. This is just to let your committee know the magnitude of the money involved and of not only the cash but the courage of First Nations who are looking for a regulatory framework that will help them and what they are up against.
I want to mention, too, that I have circulated a short document on the Moore foundation. I will leave this file with the clerk. It has documentation on every one of those 500 payments, as well as another file with the very detailed analyses that I have done.
I will answer any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
The Chair: We will start with the deputy chair, who has given his spot to Senator Neufeld.
Senator Neufeld: Thank both of you for being here today and for bringing us some very important information. I have a number of questions for Mr. Helin.
Are any of the 35 First Nations, who are part of Eagle Spirit, involved in any other oil and gas activity in either Alberta or British Columbia?
Mr. Helin: There is a huge community of First Nations involved in the petroleum industry both in northwest B.C. and in Alberta. In Alberta, there’s an organization called the Indian Resource Council that represents about 130 First Nations. In the oil sands alone, First Nations companies were doing over a billion dollars a year in revenue from providing services to the oil sands.
Senator Neufeld: Second, I want to talk a bit about consultation because the government always talks about the great consultation they do.
I would like to hear your viewpoint on the consultation that they had with First Nations on the coast.
Mr. Helin: Perhaps I could stretch that back a little further. In our traditional territory, which I can speak most about, our First Nations, the Lax Kw’alaams, has nine tribes. Their territories on the coast start at the Alaska border and go south about 150 kilometres. Without anybody actually ever visiting our community, the Great Bear Rainforest was created.
We’re just as much in favour of protecting the animals and the wildlife as anybody else. My uncle, the late Lawrence Helin, was the chief of the Gits’iis tribe. He and his tribe basically agreed to earmark their territory for the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary, the largest grizzly bear sanctuary in the world.
In relation to the Great Bear Rainforest, not once did anyone ever meet with anybody from our community. The chiefs were very incensed to later read that Tzeporah Berman was bragging in her autobiography that she dreamed up the name of the Great Bear Rainforest while sitting in a cheap Italian restaurant in San Francisco. An environmental group published an article that pictured a whole bunch of non-Indigenous people from the large cities of North America. The caption under the article was, “Architects of the Great Bear Rainforest.”
The question that the chiefs had was: Where are the Indigenous architects? This whole idea of protecting the area up there was seen in retrospect to be part of the environmental campaign that has been essentially rammed down the throats of the local people. There has been very little consultation on anything.
In the case of Bill C-48, the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation has filed already a writ to quash Bill C-48. The rest of the First Nations will file a writ to do the same if it becomes law. Likely, the same approach will be taken to Bill C-69.
Senator Neufeld: Could I just ask one question of Ms. Krause?
The Chair: Yes.
Senator Neufeld: You explained very well how the group of environmentalists have changed their tune a bit, but actually the same goal was to shut down the oil sands and to shut down natural resource development in Western Canada specifically.
Are the funders the same? The funders were the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Tides U.S.A. and some other large organizations. Are they still funding that group after they changed their wording of what they are doing?
Ms. Krause: The group that I mentioned is called CorpEthics. They changed that description in January. These grants happen yearly, so it’s too soon to say.
Senator Neufeld: I suspect, though, not to put words in your mouth, that it would be the same.
Ms. Krause: I don’t expect any changes in the funding, no.
Senator Neufeld: Thank you.
Ms. Krause: We know that the campaign is defined by the funders. CorpEthics was contracted to do what the funders had defined they wanted done, not the other way around.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much to both of you for being here this morning. It’s nice to be on the West Coast, although I was up at three o’clock this morning.
Mr. Helin, my first question is for you. Thank you very much for your testimony. I agree that the Indigenous communities have felt alienated. I think you have made that point very clearly.
We have had a lot of witnesses before the committee, and last week we had the Native Women’s Association speaking specifically about Bill C-69. Their comments were that the previous bill from 2012 left Indigenous peoples on the outside. They felt that Bill C-69 must be passed because for the first time ever in legislation gender-based analysis was in a bill. They felt it was an opportunity for Indigenous women’s voices to be heard, and that the process had been inclusive in terms of consultation with the First Nations.
In light of what we heard last week and now we’re hearing from you, are you suggesting that Bill C-69 be completely done away with, or are you suggesting that we have amendments, or what?
We’re hearing from a wide variety of people in our consultation, so I am just asking for some clarification.
Mr. Helin: Thank you for that question because some of the groups that Vivian Krause referred to were the people who need to be consulted. First Nations who actually have Aboriginal title in the territories are impacted.
It is fine to have somebody from some other territory give their opinion about what is going on in their territory. They have the right to do that, but they don’t have the legal right to do that. It’s like Quebec having the right to veto what goes on in British Columbia, or British Columbia having the right to veto what goes on in Quebec. That’s the way it’s seen.
This whole debate has brought about a lot of divisiveness created by the way the impacted Indigenous people in the territories felt the government had approached this issue. They felt that they were picking winners and losers, when the only people who have real skin in the game and should have legal standing are the people who have Aboriginal title. They are required to be consulted and accommodated under the Constitution.
First Nations people respect the opinions of other groups, but hen your kids are committing suicide because there are no opportunities in the Northern Territory, what somebody else’s opinion says doesn’t count for much.
Senator Cordy: Ms. Krause, this bill tries to be a balance between environmental concerns, energy concerns and Indigenous concerns. You have done a great job of telling us about foreign investment in environmental groups having an influence in Canada. I think that was your point.
When I look at the Fraser Institute, for example, there’s a significant amount of foreign investment in that institute. Just to name a few, many oil companies are partially owned or have funding from outside of the country.
I was left with the impression that you don’t think environmental groups should have any say in this legislation.
Ms. Krause: Absolutely not, no. I do think they should have a say. I just think that there should be transparency about what is actually going on. They are funded to act in concert and funded to be coordinated. They’re funded for things like harmonization of their expectations. Even the First Nations, as part of this, are funded to speak as one voice.
As they say, all voices should be heard. What has been missing in the debate is transparency about what the agendas actually are. I think it is important whether the money is Canadian or from anywhere else when the amount of money is so big. When one foundation is funding everybody around the table, it’s not as if the views you are getting are entirely independent.
Mr. Helin: Before we leave, could I have a chance to add something to that?
The Chair: Very short, please.
Mr. Helin: This isn’t just a problem with American funds coming into Canada. An independent study was done by a congressional committee on the impact of Russian monies coming into the U.S. to suppress or impact the American oil industry. That group concluded that monies were being funnelled from Russia into Canada through some of these environmental groups. It’s an independent study of the U.S. Congress.
Senator Simons: I have some questions for Mr. Helin to start. As an Albertan, I am keenly aware of how divisive this legislation is.
I was very intrigued to hear you speaking about creating a corridor. Could you tell me where in your group’s planning would this corridor run? Would it be a corridor where we could also run high-voltage interprovincial power lines or liquefied natural gas lines? How are you imagining that this corridor would work, and where would it be?
Mr. Helin: The corridor would run from Fort McMurray due west to roughly north of Fort St. John. Then it would go north of Fort St. John, over Williston Lake, and then down to the coast.
Currently, the planning for the corridor is for two 48-inch LNG pipelines. Right now we have a soft commitment from a super major LNG company that wants to run an LNG pipeline and two 48-inch crude oil pipelines that would ship upgraded bitumen.
For six years we have been planning to do this in the greenest way possible. We would like to use alternative energy for cooling the LNG, which is huge. If there were carbon credits available for a pipeline project like that one, the project would qualify for about $20 billion in carbon credits per year.
We are seeking to hammer the carbon credits. As well, we are looking to use existing, proven, advanced technology for taking the oil directly out of the ground and pumping it. By heating the pipeline, you can pump upgraded bitumen straight out to the coast.
You could solve three major problems. First, you’re not creating a lot of CO2 because the process is very simple. You are just taking the oil right out of the ground. Second, since you’re leaving all of the carbon in the inert geologic structure of the ground, you’re not creating tailings ponds.
Senator Simons: Yes. I can tell you, being from Alberta, that they are a huge problem.
Mr. Helin: It solves all of those problems. We have completely nailed this. It was done because the direction given to us by the chiefs was to create the most advanced project in the world.
Under the current regime, we are shipping our LNG and our gas down to the Gulf Coast, either by pipeline or by railway. Then it is being shipped out on ships through the Panama Canal to Asia.
We’re currently multiplying the CO2 carbon footprint by five to ten times, while we’re getting skinned on our most valuable commodity. It makes little sense. In all of the meetings we have had with major oil companies from around the world, they’re scratching their heads and basically asking, “What the hell is wrong with Canada?”
Senator Simons: It occurs to me though that under the terms of Bill C-69, as it’s currently written, it might actually be easier to get approval for such a project. I guess Bill C-69 would give you credits in the credit column for a project which does reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It would also give you credits in the credit column for close connections with Indigenous groups along the way.
I am wondering if the issue that you have is less with Bill C-69 and more with Bill C-48. Under your plan, the LNG would be able to move. It would be the oil that would be locked in. I don’t quite see where in Bill C-69 you think it would be a problem for this project, which seems to be one that Bill C-69 might actually expedite.
Mr. Helin: There are maybe three things, two specific and one overarching.
The first issue is giving people standing, whoever they are. What happened when the pipeline was proposed down the Mackenzie Valley corridor and it was killed? Nellie Cournoyea, the chair of the Inuvialuit Development Corporation that represented a lot of the First Nations in the area, made a speech to the committee that was hearing the project. She basically asked why the committee was ignoring the interests and needs of the people up in the northern part of the Northwest Territories and was giving, in her word, all the weight to people from Toronto who were secure in their economic well-being when we had nothing. That was one issue.
The second issue is what the First Nations have looked at and don’t feel comfortable with. They understand it to be at the discretion of government ministers in deciding various parts of the bill. The overarching concern is the lack of trust in the government. There’s a big suspicion that this bill will basically suppress their ability to do anything economically.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We need to move on.
Senator Duncan: Thank you to the presenters this morning.
My questions are for Mr. Helin. Regarding the accord you mentioned with the western provinces and two northern territories, were you referring to Yukon and Northwest Territories?
Mr. Helin: Yes.
Senator Duncan: Are you familiar with the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, which is also federal legislation?
Mr. Helin: Not at all. I am familiar with the fact that the federal government basically controls the resources of the territories.
Senator Duncan: If I may, the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act is part of chapter 12 of the umbrella final agreement with Yukon First Nations, Canada and Yukon. It’s not perfect legislation. It has been around since 2005. It’s in charge of the approval of major projects, all projects going forward in Yukon.
It is not perfect legislation. It has been amended several times. However, it does work. Have you specific recommendations with regard to Bill C-69 and how it might be improved to meet some of your concerns?
Mr. Helin: I would have to caucus with not just our group but with the Indian Resource Council. Another independent group of First Nations chiefs has arisen in response to their concerns about, about what they see as alienated government action for some reason. Actually, I have it here somewhere.
The National Coalition of Chiefs and the Indian Resource Council have passed resolutions opposing Bill C-69. I think we would get together specifically with them in relation to this bill because they would be our partners in a natural resources accord.
Senator Duncan: If I might, Bill C-69 will not impact on Yukon because of the Environmental Assessment Act we have in place, which is also federal legislation. It is in concert with the recognition and is part of the umbrella final agreement with Yukon First Nations.
I suggest it as a model of federal legislation that can work in terms of environmental assessment legislation and socio-economic impacts on First Nations.
Senator Woo: Thank you, witnesses, for being with us today. I would like to follow the chair’s admonition to be very specific to Bill C-69 in relation to the current regime CEAA 2012.
My first question is for Mr. Helin. I am appreciative that you articulated the three areas where you are unhappy with the bill: the standing test, ministerial discretion, and then a more generic lack of trust.
Both of the first two items are the same in the current legislation, so I would like you to help us understand why getting rid of Bill C-69 would improve the situation. It wouldn’t actually change your two principal concerns. If it’s simply a lack of trust, it’s a broader more difficult issue to resolve. I want to be very specific in terms of the legislation.
I would like you to comment on a third issue, which you did not mention. In your sense of how Bill C-69 deals with the issue of Indigenous consultation, do you see that to be an improvement or a step back relative to the current legislation CEAA 2012?
Then I have a question for Ms. Krause as well.
Mr. Helin: I think specifically spelling out more First Nations consultation is a good thing, but the fact of the matter is that I think —
Senator Woo: Does CEAA 2012 spell out the need for Indigenous consultation? Does the current legislation spell out the need for Indigenous consultation? Are you satisfied?
Mr. Helin: Not as far as I know. That would be a good part of it. If you trashed the rest of the bill and left that, it would be great.
Senator Woo: Ms. Krause, again, being very specific to Bill C-69, the theme in your presentation is that foreign money is tainting the process of our lawmaking.
Could you tell us specifically which parts of Bill C-69 have been tainted by foreign money? I am referring specifically to sections of the bill. Could you tell us further which source of foreign money has tainted those tainted aspects of Bill C-69?
Ms. Krause: Sure, I will answer the question.
I think one of the parts that concerns me is the rules around public participation.
Senator Woo: Who has tainted that? Which foreign money has tainted that decision?
Ms. Krause: Let me give you an example. In the NEB review process on Northern Gateway, one environmental group —
Senator Woo: Could I ask you about Bill C-69?
Ms. Krause: I am just answering your question with an illustration.
In that case, one environmental group took credit for generating more than 90 per cent of the 4,000-some comments that were sent to the NEB. They do this deliberately to try and slow down the process.
Senator Woo: How does that translate into Bill C-69? Which aspects of Bill C-69 have been written in such a way that they reflect undue influence from foreign sources?
Senator Patterson: She didn’t say that.
Senator Woo: I am asking her if she feels that.
Ms. Krause: If you allow me, I’ll answer. It has nothing to do with the origin of the money. This would be just as troublesome whether it was a Canadian source or any source.
The bill needs to guard against, and it doesn’t, one of the strategies activist groups are using to sabotage energy projects. They are trying to jam the system with thousands and thousands of submissions.
I gave you an example of how this was done to sabotage the Northern Gateway review process. What I am suggesting is that Bill C-69 needs a mechanism to prevent that from happening, so that the people who have a legitimate say will have that say. Then you won’t hear thousands of times over and over from people who are participating in the campaign not to have a say in the project to improve it but just to get it stopped.
The Chair: I want to ask a couple of questions myself.
Mr. Helin, I was very touched when you said that we don’t visit you, that we don’t know you and your people, and that we make decisions.
For Bill C-69, was your group consulted during the House of Commons study or during this one? Have you submitted a written statement and a position? Have you made amendments, observations or recommendations?
Mr. Helin: I have been to so many hearings that I can’t remember which ones we have been to. We have definitely been to the house for Bill C-48, and we are appearing this week.
I can’t remember, actually, to be honest with you. We have been to many.
The Chair: Could you please give us that information?
Mr. Helin: Sure.
The Chair: It may be redundant, but it will be important.
Mr. Helin: Sure.
The Chair: Ms. Krause, I agree completely when you say that we need transparency. Transparency is very important.
I was reading in Forbes that only last year $200 million were put in by different petroleum companies in order to influence climate change legislation. This was not revealed by the petroleum companies. This was revealed by an inquiry or an investigation, a newspaper investigation.
Senator Patterson: In which country?
The Chair: Let me finish my question.
Senator Patterson: You’re giving evidence, but there’s no —
The Chair: I am sorry, senator. I am asking my question.
I was wondering if, in your looking for transparency, you had studied the money that is put by the industry into lobbies or into influencing climate change legislation in Canada.
Ms. Krause: I try and do things that haven’t been done and things that no one else is doing. I do this as a citizen. I am not a journalist. The reason I do it is because no one else is doing it.
In the case of tracing the funding that is coming from the oil industry, there are already lots of people doing that. There’s no need for it to be done. It has been done.
Furthermore, industries have lobbyists and they need to register. Their lobbying activity and their expenditures are already very clearly reported.
In contrast, the way that activist groups are spending money is not transparent and is not reported. I have had to go to American tax returns to find out who is getting funded to influence the laws in our country, because we lack the transparency that they have in the United States.
The Chair: In terms of the amount of money, you are comparing a few million with hundreds of millions. I understand that —
Ms. Krause: No. Quite frankly, I think there’s a common perception that the oil industry outspends the activists, but activism isn’t what it used to be. There is now, for instance, the group of funders. The group of foundations that funds activism in Canada has $70 billion in assets, and they give away $3 billion a year.
You know, a tiny, miniscule percentage of that comes into Canada, but we are not where we were 20 years ago when activists had no money. Now activist groups have big budgets. In Vancouver, for example, you could take the top five environmental groups and they would have combined revenues of $50 million and 500 employees.
Activism has changed, and that’s why the rules and regulations around how activism influences public policy and legislation need to catch up.
The Chair: In case you have the information and a comparison about how much money the industry put into Bill C-69, in lobbying for Bill C-69, and about how much money environmental groups put into lobby Bill C-69, I would appreciate if you would send the data to the committee.
Ms. Krause: You have just made my point, which is that it’s impossible to know. With the way activist groups report their spending, it’s impossible to trace that.
Furthermore, for them lobbying is “so last century.” That’s not the way they influence public policy and legislation anymore. It’s not by what they call lobbying on the inside. It’s by what they call grassroots mobilization on the outside; in other words, influencing government through what’s in the media and through public opinion.
Our whole system of tracking the influence that activism is having is inadequate because we don’t capture that. We don’t capture the expenditures. Even if we look at the reporting CRA requires under the Income Tax Act for charities, for example, there’s no requirement to say for what purposes the money will be used. In the U.S. there is, but not in Canada.
Mr. Helin: Even in the U.S., if you don’t mind me adding, there’s a provision where they can anonymously donate the money. Typically that is what they do, if I get all these terms right. George Soros is known for doing this.
Ms. Krause: The donor.
Mr. Helin: Yes, he donates the money and it goes into an organization. Because he donates it under a certain category, his identity is kept secret. Then they use what they call “astroturf” organizations or organizations that are made up, with the help of ENGOs, to put a front of appearing to be a citizens-led campaign to try to get changes to suit whatever it is they’re doing.
The term has emerged out of U.S. jurisprudence called “dark money,” where they give money and nobody knows actually what’s going on or where that money is coming from.
In my own community, when the group involved with Petronas and their LNG pipeline was trying to get their project through, one of my cousins from my community was the guy camped out on Lelu Island, the island that was at the heart of the environmental protest, claiming he was a hereditary chief.
Everybody in our community knows he isn’t a hereditary chief. He was taking money from Wilburforce and I think the Moore Foundation. That money was being put through SkeenaWild, and they were paying all of the activists there. The result that had in our community was to create huge division.
Our community members started to get the feeling that we understood what CIA or FSB destabilization programs were like, when you have outsiders infiltrating your community and creating nothing but turmoil to suit their ends.
Senator Patterson: I have a point of order.
The Chair: Yes.
Senator Patterson: Madam Chair, with the greatest of respect, as a neutral chairperson, I don’t think it’s appropriate that you should introduce evidence with unspecified details, like the reference to the Forbes article that you made, with figures, without the committee having a chance to get the source or get details.
That is my point of order.
The Chair: Point taken.
[Translation]
Senator Carignan: I was looking at the funding level. It seems there was a peak period in 2015. Is this funding directly related to environmental groups that are opposed to energy projects, or was there also a part, in your opinion, that had an electoral aim? After all, there was an election campaign in 2015. Did you do an analysis, or is it possible to do one with respect to funding distribution?
Ms. Krause: In 2015, they received over $37 million. That amount is higher because they received US$10 million for the protection of wild salmon.
Moreover, in 2008, the foundation dealt with marine resources planning issues. The process ended in 2015 or 2016. So that was the last portion of funding. There is also another factor. Some organizations, especially indigenous organizations, asked the federal government for money for programs funded by the foundation. I think that explains why there was a slight drop.
Senator Carignan: That explains the drop.
Ms. Krause: One program has already received $25million, but those funds come from the federal government and not from the American foundation.
Senator Carignan: In your opinion, how could we best structure the consultation process? My question is addressed to both witnesses. In environmental studies, participation has to be structured through consultations with those who are legitimately affected by the decisions. We have to avoid instrumentalization. If the number of people to be consulted is small, groups could get together to try and “buy” those who are directly affected. They come and try to turn those people into “instruments,” as it were. Is there some way of avoiding that risk, in your opinion?
Ms. Krause: It’s really a problem that cannot be avoided, I believe. However, we could ask for information on the funding. For instance, organizations could be asked if they are part of a joint campaign? Because there are about a dozen organizations that take part in the Townsend Campaign. You have heard about that campaign 10 times from 10 different organizations. Obviously, each one has its own point of view with an objective, a plan behind it. In the United States, for example, people must fill out and provide forms when they appear before a committee. I do believe we need more transparency.
I’ll give you an example involving the marine planning program. In 2012, the federal government decided to stop participating in this program with the Moore Charitable Foundation. Afterwards, the foundation continued to spend another $80 million. That just shows to what extent that foundation had goals it wanted to achieve. It wanted to produce plans for the north shore of British Columbia. It spent several amounts. The committees and the public were never informed. In fact, we get the impression that these are individual organizations, but that was not exactly the case. I don’t know whether I am explaining it well.
Senator Carignan: Yes, very well. I have another question, this time for Mr. Helin. I find your energy corridor proposal extremely interesting. That could involve various energy sources — including hydroelectricity — that would go through the energy corridor. Do you suggest that an extensive consultation be held for the entire corridor and that, afterwards, less demanding criteria be addressed with regard to the transportation line entrance of the pipeline or another line within the corridor? Will you conduct a broader specific consultation to determine the base of the corridor and then adopt a much simpler approval process when it is time to authorize the energy source within the corridor base?
[English]
Mr. Helin: Thank you. My French isn’t as good as Ms. Krause’s.
Just to give you an example, when we started the Northern Gateway Project, the consultation they had with our community was to send a $5,000 cheque to the community. They never even came to visit. When you look at the territory that our community traditionally occupies, it was conceivably a really important community. Then, on top of that, the project would pay to the communities, on average, something like $70,000 per year. It’s nothing. You couldn’t even buy a pickup truck these days with $70,000.
First Nations communities had various concerns, but they were most concerned about the environmental impact. What we did, with the support of the potentially impacted communities, was that we met with all of the communities. We listened to all of their concerns. We built an environmental model that we thought was the most robust in the world. We paid particular attention to protecting the coast. We will voluntarily comply with the standard of coastal protection that greatly exceeds the proposed Canadian Environmental Protection Plan.
On the question of consultation, a lot of the people that the government seems to choose to listen to are people who have nothing to do with the traditional territories of the people in the North. If they do, they’re protesters that I say are used as props for environmental groups. They’re on the payroll. None of that is disclosed, and they don’t really have representation.
On the LNG project, our community voted 75 per cent to support that project. Yet the protesters on that island were saying that everybody is against it, and the bad news gets out in the media.
One of the important principles is that consultation with the people who have Aboriginal title in the traditional area counts most.
When it comes to environmental groups, and Vivian Krause has alluded to this, the way I think of it is, “follow the money.” Unfortunately I am both a failed commercial fisherman and a recovering lawyer. Whenever there is a problem in the law business, you follow the money. When you look at the business model of these environmental groups, they make money when they have a cause that they can basically use to extract money from the public or from these foundations.
A good example of how Indigenous people were horribly impacted was when Greenpeace took the anti-sealing campaign and basically killed the market in Europe. In that process, they completely impacted the traditional lifestyle of the Inuit people in Northern Canada so that the annual income from a household went from something like $60,000 down to about $5,000 per year.
In conjunction with that trend, the suicides in the community, with the lack of employment and a meaningful way to make a living, created huge destruction in the community. It took Greenpeace something like 30 years to even acknowledge they had that impact.
Real people are being affected by these decisions. It’s important to understand that. A lot of the chiefs see the ambitions of environmental groups in the world being imposed on their traditional territories. It has impacts on families.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Patterson: Thank you both for being here. I would like to ask Mr. Helin first about Indigenous consultation in the bill.
Bill C-69 currently provides for a panel to be struck to review all of the projects on the elusive project list. This panel requires that the majority of its members not include the lifecycle regulators. It also provides a guaranteed seat for a First Nation, an Inuk and a Metis member.
I heard your concern about people not from your territory making decisions that affect your lands and respecting the Aboriginal titleholders when looking at standing. Would you have any comments about having a guaranteed Inuit and Metis member involved in deciding something for a territory in your region that they don’t have a stake in?
Mr. Helin: That’s a big concern. Without being specific, some Indigenous people are opposed to all development. That doesn’t bring into account the holistic balance of people up in those territories who are being impacted when they decide whether to give a green light to a natural resource development project.
You have to give most weight to the people who are impacted. If you’re from some other place, usually from some big city, and if you’re secure in your economic future, it doesn’t help anybody in the northern community who is continuing to go through the Great Depression economically.
Senator Patterson: Mr. Helin, you talked about the environmental activists who bragged about dreaming up the Great Bear Rainforest in an Italian restaurant in California. Could you talk a bit about the spirit bear? Was that also part of a logo or a symbol created by environmental activists, or does it have a tradition on the West Coast?
Also, would you or Ms. Krause would talk about whether environmental activists have bragged about their impact on other energy projects to date in Canada?
Mr. Helin: The spirit bear is a genetically unique bear, but it has a confined area where it’s found in. It’s largely not found in our traditional area.
Environmental groups have found that the spirit bear, like the polar bear, rings their cash registers because they can make emotional appeals to people about what they would like done.
I can’t remember the exact name of the group, but recently they were paddling somewhere up in the Arctic. They came across a polar bear that was dying in the middle of the summer. They took a video of it, and they posted it on social media. They got millions and millions of responses, both in actual responses and in dollars I am assuming. Some of the Canadian biologists from the Arctic said, “Hey, wait a minute. First of all, there’s no ice in the summer anyways up there and, second, the Canadian government is saying there are lots of polar bears.”
The local Inuit mayor from Iqaluit got on CBC saying, “Bears die for all kinds of reasons, and this one probably has nothing to do with climate change.” Then the environmentalists started attacking the Inuit people saying, “Oh, you guys have a hunt up there and you’re making so much money from it.” The mayor pointed out that only 10 per cent of the bears hunted are for sport reasons. The rest of the reasons are for food and security.
People don’t have any food up there. It’s hard for somebody in the city to understand that people still live in the natural environment and need to eat animals, just like we eat animals in the city, except we don’t see it. There are lots of unintended consequences from ideology at the end of the day also driven by —
The Chair: We have to wrap up. There’s one last question by Senator MacDonald.
Senator MacDonald: I had a couple of questions, but I will ask Mr. Helin this question, then.
In your area of northern British Columbia, with the proposed Eagle Spirit route, what is the unemployment rate there? What would be the impact in terms of employment, both in the construction phase of a line through there and the long-term employment potential of a line through to the West Coast?
Mr. Helin: Right now, it’s pretty accurate to say there’s at least 90 per cent unemployment. With the policies that have been put forward, when you see $100 billion not being invested in the energy industry or the natural resources industry, it impacts everybody.
A lot of Indigenous people are very entrepreneurial, and they’re having to close down their businesses. You just need to go up to Prince Rupert and walk down the street to see all the old shuttered buildings. It’s devastating. To be doing this, when we have one of the best regulatory systems in the world, is to say that it’s okay to be shipping oil from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria into Canada and that we can’t ship our own out. It just does not make any sense.
In some ways, we’re the laughing stock of the energy industry in the world because we’re making room for all of our competitors, and we can do this in the greenest way possible.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your testimony, and thank you for the questions and answers.
We will now welcome from Teck Resources Limited, Sheila Risbud, Director, Government Affairs, and Mark Freberg, Director, Permitting and Closure; and from First Nations Energy and Mining Council, Robert Phillips, First Nations Summit Task, Group Member, First Nations Leadership Council, and Karen Campbell, Counsel.
You have five minutes. I am sorry I let the previous witness talk for 10 minutes. I cannot do that.
Senator Patterson: Why?
The Chair: Well, because we go out too much, and I have my deputy chair telling me that we have to keep the time.
Senator MacDonald: I didn’t say that.
The Chair: Okay.
Senator MacDonald: I didn’t say you couldn’t have the witnesses speak.
The Chair: Who is going to speak first?
Senator MacDonald: You have to let everybody speak. We have a time limit.
The Chair: You’re going to speak first. Go ahead.
Sheila Risbud, Director, Government Affairs, Teck Resources Limited: Madam Chair, honourable senators and fellow witnesses, good morning.
[Translation]
It is an honour to be here today to share Teck’s comments on Bill C-69.
[English]
My name is Sheila Risbud, and I am the Director of Government Affairs. I am accompanied by my colleague, Mark Freberg, Director of Permitting and Closure at Teck.
Proudly Canadian, Teck is a diversified natural resource company that employs over 8,000 people in this country.
[Translation]
Teck is proud to employ more than 8,000 people in Canada.
[English]
Operating in Canada for more than 100 years, Teck has substantive experience with federal environmental assessment processes, as nearly all of our mining activities have or will be impacted by them.
Our evaluation of Bill C-69 is based on this experience. On that basis, and in comparison to what currently exists, we believe that Bill C-69 can potentially provide a clearer way forward for mining projects in Canada by striking an acceptable balance between various societal interests.
For instance, we support the intent of the proposed early planning phase as it is currently written. We see the introduction of this phase as an improvement over the current EA process because it could result in clearer direction to proponents and greater coordination with provincial and Indigenous governing bodies.
In British Columbia, the new provincial Environmental Assessment Act mirrors many of the elements found in Bill C-69. As a proponent of future development plans in this province, improved coordination between federal and provincial jurisdictions to avoid unnecessary duplication is crucial. This is how we will achieve the goal of “one project, one assessment.”
[Translation]
To ensure the effectiveness of the process, coordination between the provincial and federal governments is paramount.
[English]
We also welcome legislated timelines because they would introduce greater certainty into EA processes. Without these essential impact aspects, and the improved certainty and predictability they introduce for all parties involved, it would be significantly more difficult to achieve the bill’s main intentions.
Improvements to our regulatory processes are critical at a time when investment into Canada’s mining sector continues to decline. With the right regulations supporting Bill C-69, this legislation has the potential to help begin the reversal of these trends, and also provide a different way forward to restore the regulatory excellence that Canada was once known for, and inspire more investor confidence into Canada’s mining sector.
We appreciate that some senators and stakeholders want the legislation amended for a wide range of reasons. While Teck is not proposing any additional amendments, we support the Mining Association of Canada’s amendments and we urge that this committee and the Senate of Canada to be thoughtful in adopting amendments to ensure that the improvements we see in Bill C-69, from a mining perspective, do not get lost.
This legislation will regulate the assessment of a wide range of projects from different sectors with different sizes. It is essential that the final legislation work for the entire spectrum of projects without losing its ability to address issues associated with any one type of project.
The coming into force of legislation requires supporting regulations and guidance materials that are as important as the act itself. If the intent is for Bill C-69 to be in force before Parliament dissolves later this year, we are concerned that there will not be enough time for thorough analysis and consultation to develop regulations and guidance materials. For this reason, we recommend that this committee and the Senate consider the amendment proposed by the Mining Association of Canada, and others, to delay the legislation’s implementation to allow for an appropriate amount of stakeholder consultation on the regulations.
I’ll conclude my remarks by emphasizing that regulatory processes in Canada must be rigorous, predictable and timely. Succeeding at all three elements benefits our environment and Canadian jobs and quality of life.
[Translation]
As Canadians, we have to meet those three objectives to preserve our environment and our quality of life.
[English]
Once again, we appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today, and would now invite your questions.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Phillips.
Robert Phillips, First Nations Summit Task Group Member, First Nations Leadership Council, First Nations Energy and Mining Council: [Editor’s Note: Indigenous language spoken].
My name is Robert Phillips. I am from Canim Lake of the Northern Shuswap, the Secwepemc te Qelmucw people. I give the acknowledgement to the Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Musqueam, the meeting that we’re having today. I thank you, senators, as well for meeting with us and doing the good work that you’re doing.
The First Nations Leadership Council is a political executive of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the First Nations Summit, and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. I am an elected member of the First Nations Summit and part of the First Nations Leadership Council, which represents all 203 First Nations in British Columbia. As well, I am here today on behalf of the First Nations Energy and Mining Council that provides technical support to recommend key changes to the bill to meaningfully advance more reconciliation with the Indigenous people.
I observe, and I can’t help but respond to Mr. Calvin Helin say that First Nations, Bill C-69 is highly obstructionist. It is to the contrary. First Nations Leadership Council is here to recommend constructive improvements to it. This bill is better than the status quo, and I want to be very clear that we want to see it pass and strengthen it to better advance reconciliation.
As part of the reconciliation between Indigenous people and the Crown, Canada has fully adopted United Nations declaration. Canada’s Prime Minister eloquently articulated that in the General Assembly on September 22. In his speech, the Prime Minister stated that over time programs and services would increasingly be delivered by Indigenous people as part of their move toward true self-government and the full implementation of the United Nations declaration.
Better advancement of the UN declaration can be seen as well on Bill C-262, which I also understand is before the Senate. While today’s discussion is on Bill C-69, it is important to recognize the critical importance Bill C-262 as a step toward true reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada.
British Columbia has been ground zero in many of the failures of CEAA 2012. From poorly planned LNG sites, to mines, to pipeline concerns, many long-standing controversies surrounding the environmental assessment in British Columbia have been exacerbated by CEAA 2012.
The First Nations Leadership Council’s position is that we need an assessment law consistent with reconciliation for Indigenous peoples. The Impact Assessment Act can be improved to better advance reconciliation.
We are here today, in front of a very important Senate committee, not to support or oppose the bill, but to provide practical improvements to achieve an important step toward Indigenous self-determination.
Despite Conservative opposition and pushback, this bill is actually intended to reduce litigation and establish investor certainty. If we stay with existing CEAA 2012, we will see more litigation, not less. There will be more investment and certainty, not less.
We find it very interesting that changes to the new provincial Assessment Act did not receive the same criticism as the federal counterpart, Bill C-69, despite the fact that B.C.’s new act has even more Indigenous commitments than the federal bill.
In B.C., we have seen cautious optimism that the new provincial act will build better projects, not stop them. Free, prior, informed consent is not something to be feared. The sky will not fall. It’s not about the veto. It’s a new standard of working together and better consultation with Indigenous First Nations, who are the Aboriginal titleholders in B.C.
The legal context in B.C. has changed, given the recent passage of B.C.’s new Environmental Assessment Act, which commits the B.C. government to support First Nations to participate in decisions where their rights are affected through representatives chosen by themselves. In fact, Premier Horgan and most of the cabinet today are meeting with my colleagues, the First Nations Leadership Council, to discuss the UN declaration and bring forth legislation to be implemented in B.C. This law and subsequent act would signal a seismic change in the way that environmental assessment will be done in the province.
Given that the principle of “one project, one assessment” underlies all major project reviews, we will see greater involvement of Indigenous peoples in environmental assessments in B.C. Federal impact assessment will address this new reality both directly and indirectly. We have three simple amendments that will help advance reconciliation and provide the investment certainty that could help us get good projects. I will now turn to highlighting these three amendments. To be clear, we have many concerns, but recognizing the Senate’s important role in this process and in the spirit of cooperation we have narrowed it down to three necessary amendments.
First, in order to recognize jurisdiction, the act needs to amend the definition of jurisdiction to include Indigenous governing bodies. Doing so would be a practical recognition of Indigenous governance. It means the act would see First Nations as jurisdictions, regardless of whether there’s a treaty, a self-government agreement or an agreement with the minister. It would mean that nations have an opportunity to determine for themselves whether they are a jurisdiction for the purpose of impact assessment.
Second, in order to align with the new B.C. legislation, the Impact Assessment Act would include a reference to an implementation of the UN declaration in the purposes, not just in the preamble. I articulated in the introduction the importance of this tool and our expectations now that Canada fully supports the UN declaration. This reference would parallel the language of the B.C. act, which is to support the implementation of the UN declaration. Our recommendations are found at page 3 of the brief.
The third amendment is required because substitution has become a practical reality in Canada. There has been an EA substitution agreement in existence between Canada and B.C. for the past six years. With the principle of “one project, one assessment” and the government’s commitment to implement the UN declaration, the substitution agreement must be negotiated on a tripartite basis to recognize Indigenous jurisdiction.
This last amendment would require, where an Indigenous jurisdiction intends to proceed with an impact assessment, that the minister must agree to allow the nation to do so. Further, this change should be extended to both agency reviews and panel reviews.
Again, there is a practical reality here. Both the new federal and provincial laws anticipate Indigenous-led assessments. In practice, these are becoming a means of accomplishing impact assessment. There have been two full assessments conducted in B.C. in the past five years in which proponents participated in public government, and the public government has relied upon the results to make decisions with respect to projects. This trend will continue.
First Nations in B.C. have the interest, skills and commitment to their territories, lands or resources to undertake their own assessments. These changes are straightforward and would significantly improve the ability of this law to support reconciliation. We urge you to implement them.
Thank you for your attention. If I may, Madam Chair, allow my legal adviser to make a few statements, it would be appreciated. [Indigenous language spoken]. Thank you.
Karen Campbell, Counsel, First Nations Energy and Mining Council: I am a lawyer who works with the First Nations Energy and Mining Council on federal impact assessment matters. I am grateful for the opportunity to be here today and to provide a few comments in addition to what Robert Phillips just said.
There are two points I want to address: the substitution issue and the B.C. Environmental Assessment Act issue. First, I will speak briefly about impact assessment substitution. The amendment we’re recommending would ensure, in situations where an Indigenous jurisdiction seeks to conduct an assessment, that the minister is obliged to do so. In our view, this would also include Indigenous governing bodies because with the first amendment we recommended they too would also become jurisdictions under the act. All of this would help toward advanced reconciliation.
The 2013 memorandum of understanding between Canada and B.C. establishes the process whereby the two public governments, B.C. and Canada, may agree to substitute the B.C. environmental assessment process to meet federal requirements. The memorandum is the practical implementation of “one project, one assessment.”
At the end of 2016, 14 projects had been granted substitution status. It’s the emerging status quo. The federal impact assessment requirements were fulfilled through the B.C. process, although the federal decision was still made.
There are also important examples of Indigenous governments in this region that are now designing and implementing their own assessment processes. These are intended to operate in parallel or as a substitute for the Crown-administered processes.
For example, the Squamish Nation conducted its own review and approval of the Woodfibre LNG Project in Howe Sound. They established their own set of conditions for the approval of that project. The Crown assessment was conducted under the substitution agreement, and the subsequent federal and B.C. approvals were informed by the Squamish assessment.
Another example is of Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc Nation’s assessment of the KGHM Ajax Mine near Kamloops. That review was also thorough and included a community hearing during which B.C. stopped its clock on the assessment process for that five-day hearing. The nation government in that case rejected the mine proposal. The project was also ultimately rejected by the federal and B.C. governments. In both cases the Crown decisions were informed by the Indigenous decision making with respect to the project.
The substitution amendment sought would ensure that the law better recognizes this practical reality and better protects against a patchwork of environmental assessment regimes. It would also need to apply across the substitution provisions in the act. It would apply to section 33, as well as to section 31.
I would like to speak briefly about is the changed legal landscape in B.C. with respect to environmental assessment, just to follow on what Mr. Phillips has said. The new act in B.C. will come into force this fall. It has been passed and comes into force this fall. It has woven through it the intention to seek to achieve consensus with Indigenous nations in project assessment. This includes matters such as whether to proceed with an assessment, the process order for an assessment and the recommendations as to whether the project should be approved. The ultimate decision in that case, made by ministers, must expressly consider the reconciliation purposes in that act.
Also, the B.C. act does not achieve full recognition of jurisdiction and consent as anticipated by the UN declaration, but it establishes a clear framework and a clear foundation to work to achieve it. Notably, it does not narrowly define Indigenous jurisdiction in the way that Bill C-69 seeks to proscribe it. The B.C. legislation doesn’t define Indigenous nation, which more clearly enables nations to choose for themselves the role they want to play in an impact assessment.
The second amendment we seek would support a much more harmonious application of the federal regime with the B.C. regime. These realities in B.C., both substitution and B.C.’s new legal framework, will have practical implications for the implementation of Bill C-69 and merit deep consideration by this committee.
Finally, from a drafting perspective, it may be that adjustments to other provisions are required to give effect to our proposed amendments. We would be happy to provide additional detail if that’s helpful to the committee.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Could you provide the details to the clerk?
Ms. Campbell: Yes.
The Chair: Thank you so much.
The deputy chair has given his spot to Senator Neufeld.
Senator Neufeld: I thank all of you for being here and for your presentations and the information that you brought forward.
I would first like to ask Ms. Risbud about the early planning stage. I know Teck well, so normally they would have been doing early planning in any event on any large project they were to take on in British Columbia or anyplace else. Would that not be correct? It is laid out in a timeline now of something that has been in practice for as long as I can remember.
Mark Freberg, Director, Permitting and Closure, Teck Resources Limited: That’s true. In our view, the activities of the proponent would take a best management practices scope. It would have included a lot of the early planning. Even under Bill C-69 that would still have to continue, given the timelines that are available.
Senator Neufeld: It gives the minister discretion at the end of the early planning process to say yes or no. In my own mind, I don’t know whether you can get all the scientific information in that period of time.
Do you believe that you can get all the science needed for a project to get the green light to go ahead with the rest of the process in that short period of time?
Mr. Freberg: In the early planning, I don’t think you will have the full scientific package available, no. The intent is to develop tailored guidelines to determine what needs to be included in the application that is submitted at the next step. It is important, to the maximum extent possible, to have clarity on that and on all of the issues identified by the communities, the Indigenous people and all the different government agencies.
This has been a problem in the past. It would allow a proponent to move forward and prepare an application to addresses, to the maximum extent possible, all the issues that have been raised. That’s one of the things we see as being a positive change over where we are now. A more extensive effort to gather information from across the entire gamut needs to be considered in an application.
Senator Neufeld: I know my time is running out, but thank you for the amendments you have provided. They are good food for thought.
I have one question for Mr. Phillips. UNDRIP, the United Nations declaration, actually has some people on either side of the process. I am sure you’re well aware of that, but I would like to know what you think is consent. That seems to be the issue that is most discussed. What does consent actually mean? Is that a veto or not?
I have heard both sides from people who know a lot about it, but I am not sure. I would like to know your point of view.
Mr. Phillips: Thank you for the question, senator. I always joke around that the work we do as the First Nations Leadership Council kind of reminds me of the Conservatives, the NDP and Liberals working together.
You know about the history. When our three organizations work together in B.C. it’s about the highest human standards that are very important for Indigenous people. When I look at free, prior and informed consent, one of the first things I think about is consultation or accommodation. When corporations come into our traditional territories, they have dialogue with the First Nation and with the Indigenous peoples there. Through that dialogue and discussions, they look to find remedies.
We’re not opposed to business in British Columbia, but it’s not at all costs. They have to go through all the standards that are there, have dialogue with the First Nations, and seek free, prior and informed consent.
On a personal level, that’s why I say it’s not about the veto. It’s not about stopping at all costs. It’s about having that dialogue and searching for that consent. I didn’t know if Ms. Campbell wanted to add a few things in regard to that, but that’s how I look at it.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much for being here this morning. It’s very helpful to our study.
Ms. Risbud, you spoke about coordination between the federal government and the provincial governments. With Bill C-69, is it better, worse or the same?
Ms. Risbud: We believe it’s better because of the early planning phase. It allows more time for those discussions to happen and for bringing the federal government into the process earlier than it typically has been in the past.
Senator Cordy: Will this early consultation stage or planning stage be helpful for getting a proposal and putting it forward? Will you learn more by having that early planning stage?
Ms. Risbud: We think so. As I mentioned in my comments, particularly here in B.C. where the provincial environmental assessment process mirrors very closely what is being proposed in Bill C-69, allowing for those conversations and that alignment to happen upfront should result in a tailored impact assessment guideline that is more streamlined between the two jurisdictions.
Senator Cordy: We hear your concerns about regulations, of course, because they don’t come out until after the bill is passed. I think you have made some good comments about the needs.
Senator Patterson: Not necessarily.
Senator Cordy: Not necessarily, but in my 18 years in the Senate it has been after the bill has been passed. I understand about delaying implementation if there are some amendments. That was a good point to make.
Mr. Phillips, thank you very much for coming forward with why the bill will work well for the groups you represent. I would like to get a bit more information on the impact assessment substitution. I am not sure who said it. It was either you or Ms. Campbell, but so far 14 projects have been granted or have been passed with using the substitution process. Could you just go into that a bit and make it a little clearer for me?
Mr. Phillips: I have never made a presentation that would probably take about a half an hour in 10 minutes before. Just to let you know, I rushed through it. I usually try to make eye contact, but in terms of EA substitution I will defer, if you don’t mind, to Karen Campbell, the expert in the field.
Senator Cordy: That’s great.
Ms. Campbell: Yes, the substitution agreement in place is between the two Crown governments, between B.C. and Canada. It’s our position that substitution agreement needs to be renegotiated on a tripartite basis, recognizing the reality of Indigenous-led assessment.
To speak to the substitution agreement, it is a memorandum of understanding that works at an administrative level between the two governments. Again, it is now becoming the reality because there are at least 14 projects that have been through this process.
The Woodfibre project in Howe Sound was conducted by the Squamish Nation on their own. The decisions made by the Squamish Nation were ultimately considered through that substituted process as well.
In a sense, you have an emerging tripartite governing approach to impact assessment in British Columbia. The position we’re putting forward is that reality needs to be reflected in the legislation. This is why we’re looking for amendments that will kind of put in law what is happening in practice.
Senator Simons: Thank you, witnesses, for great presentations this morning.
I want to start with a question for Mr. Phillips and Ms. Campbell. I understand how a model such as the one you’re suggesting could work for a mine or a fibreboard factory, but what about a linear project that crosses into many different First Nations territories?
How on earth would that work if you were trying to approve a pipeline or a power line that wasn’t in one location? How would you imagine that system working?
Ms. Campbell: Admittedly, the approach that would need to be adopted for that is not as straightforward as when you’re dealing with a mine on one Indigenous territory. The best recommendation I could make is that there would be an expectation the nations would come together and sort out a governance process.
In many respects that happens on a regular basis. Nations routinely work together in their communities on shared territories and in some cases where there is concern about overlap. This happens on a regular basis, but it has not happened, to my knowledge, with the very large pipeline projects. I think those are in a different category. Those will also be treated by Bill C-69 separately because major linear projects will be subjected to the Canadian Energy Regulator Act as well.
To speak specifically to the impact assessment provisions, there is definitely work to be done. We’re here to say that this is the emerging reality. It’s the new direction.
Senator Simons: Would recognizing First Nations as jurisdictions legally have implications outside of Bill C-69? Would there be a domino effect through other sources of legislation?
I know some First Nations I have dealt with in Alberta don’t like the idea of being considered on par with municipalities. How would the legal definition of jurisdiction affect the legal definition of a First Nation?
Ms. Campbell: The position of First Nations is that they are not stakeholders. Municipalities are creatures of statute. They have the rights given to them by statute. Nations have inherent rights and inherent governance. That’s what the United Nations declaration actually does. In effect Bill C-69 already recognizes Indigenous jurisdictions.
Senator Simons: Yes, it does.
Ms. Campbell: It says, “an Indigenous nation is a jurisdiction,” but it really is clear to say that you’re only a jurisdiction if you have a co-management agreement, if you have a land title agreement, or if you have an agreement with the minister that allows the minister to recognize you as a jurisdiction.
The recommendation that we have for you is that it’s not adequate. What we need is a situation that actually recognizes the inherent jurisdiction of nations to decide for themselves what role their governments want to play in impact assessment. Interestingly, the new British Columbia act does exactly that. It does not define and place limits on how an Indigenous nation is described. It leaves it undefined, which is a much fairer way for nations to make those decisions for themselves, and it is more consistent with the United Nations declaration.
We’re looking to have this legislation recognize that Indigenous nations would be jurisdictions for the purposes of environmental assessment or impact assessment, but that would be within this legislation. It’s not a constitutional principle yet, but it will come with time.
Senator Simons: All right.
[Translation]
Senator Carignan: My question is for the people from Teck. I was looking at your report on declining investments in Canada, and on where Canada ranks in terms of the time frame for obtaining a permit, compared with other countries. What are the specific causes of this? What is Canada not doing that other countries are doing? Or vice versa. What are other countries not doing that Canada is doing that would cause such great disparity? I will make a comparison with Australia. Because Australia is so similar to us, in terms of its system, its legal system, and as a developed country. Why is the process so quick in Australia and so slow in Canada?
Ms. Risbud: Thank you. I will ask my colleague Mark to answer specifically the question on Australia. As for Canada, a number of factors come into play in our environmental assessment processes, including the time it takes for a project to be approved. My colleague Mark worked in Chile on environmental assessments and I think he has some experience with the Australian system. So I will ask him to answer the question.
[English]
Mr. Freberg: I actually don’t have a lot of experience with the Australian system, so I can’t comment fully on that. The amount of time that an impact assessment takes depends on the complexity of the project and the complexity of the environment that the project is operating in. I wouldn’t say that parts of Australia and many parts of Chile have simple environments. They’re desert environments, and they don’t have the same issues with water.
A lot of the things associated with an impact assessment in Canada because we have a lot of water involves managing water quality and ensuring we don’t unacceptably impact water quality. That is probably one of the reasons, but I don’t know the Australian system well enough to be able to give you a fulsome answer. I am sorry.
[Translation]
Senator Carignan: As you worked in Chile, what are the legal framework aspects that make Chile faster than Canada? I assume that the process is faster in Chile. You have investments in Chile. You have investments in Peru. You are very familiar with those processes. How long does it take to obtain a permit in Chile and Peru and what are the distinctive elements other than those stemming from the legal framework?
[English]
Mr. Freberg: In Chile, the system is very similar to Canada’s in terms of what needs to be studied. I don’t think it would be fair to say that they take consistently less time. Chile is at an early stage of understanding and working with Indigenous people. I’d say early in comparison to Canada. They are probably where Canada was perhaps 20 years ago in understanding it. They’re working through a lot of legitimate issues that have to be sorted out, so projects can take quite a while to go through the Chilean process. It is a very prescriptive process, almost an extreme, and they’re in the process of revising some of the legislation having recognized that they have gone too far.
Peru is somewhere less intensive but still thorough. The requirements that have to be submitted are probably less detailed than either in Chile or Canada, but all of the elements are still there. Overall, I don’t think I would say Chile is much faster than Canada, in general.
[Translation]
Senator Carignan: You are a public company. You are a responsible company. Your website sets out your policy on the respect for the environment and for consultation. You seem to be very proactive. So I assume that your projects in Chile and Peru are not less respectful of the environment and people’s rights than those in Canada. How long does it take to obtain a permit in Peru and Chile while applying those same principles of respect for the environment and for group consultation?
[English]
Mr. Freberg: You’re quite right. The approach we would take in terms of how we assess a project and how we plan a project is common throughout the world. In jurisdictions that don’t have as high standards as Chile, Peru, or even in Canada, we would apply the same approach. When we think about aspects such as closure, we bring the same lens to a project regardless of where we are in the world. Our willingness and commitment to work with communities and Indigenous people is the same no matter where we are.
Within Chile, as I said, I don’t really think that process is a lot faster. In Peru, at times, the arrival of permits can be quicker, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all of the issues that accrue with a project are resolved before they go ahead. Las Bambas mine has been in the news. If you watch that part of the news, it has been under a blockade from communities for about four months now. They have recently reached an agreement that all of their employees can get back to work. Their shipments from the mine have been stopped for a long period of time. We’re familiar with that mine. We anticipated that it would have these challenges when it was going forward. They hadn’t been worked out well enough in advance.
Senator Patterson: I am going to try and get in three questions, so I would appreciate brief answers and I will try to make my questions brief.
The first one is for Teck. You talked about the spectre of regulations being developed without consultation or, worse, the regulations and guidance being developed in a rush during the life of this Parliament. Have you had any indications in your interface with the Government of Canada on whether they will allow this process of consultation on regulations, or whether they intend to establish regulations and guidance in a hurry without consultation during the life of this government?
Ms. Risbud: The government has been consulting on pieces that will inform future regulations, and we have been involved in those consultations. Our concern now is that that clock is running out for future consultation on those regulations once they’re issued. We want to make sure that there is time to go back to the people who have provided input.
Senator Patterson: The second one is for the First Nations Energy and Mining Council. I haven’t had a chance to look at your amendments on substitution, but I would like to ask you about what is in the bill right now.
As you know, a panel is to be struck for reviewing projects on the project list. It requires a guaranteed seat for a First Nation, an Inuit and a Metis member. You have talked about the merits of Indigenous-led assessments, which you would like us to get to. I understand that, but would you describe as tokenism the present wording to have just one member of your First Nations organization on a panel?
I have one more quick question.
Ms. Campbell: I believe you’re referring to the Indigenous Advisory Committee. There is the Minister’s Advisory Committee, which is to have Indigenous representation. There is an Indigenous Advisory Committee, which also has distinction-based Indigenous representation. Then there are also panels when impact assessments are happening. One of our concerns that we did not bring to this committee but we happen to have is that the law does not mandate that there be an Indigenous representative on panels for actual assessments when they happen. That’s a long-standing concern that we had hoped to see remedied at some point.
With respect to the Indigenous Advisory Committee, I don’t know how many members will be on it. I know that is in the works. One would have to look at the representation overall, but it’s certainly hoped that there would be a broad representation of the spectrum of Indigenous interests and Indigenous governments.
The Chair: Last question.
Senator Patterson: My last question is for Mr. Phillips.
You have told us that FPIC should lead to a new process for decision making where the consent of First Nations will be sought. I understand and applaud that. That sounds great. However, what I want to ask you is about the part that we haven’t heard. What if, despite all best efforts, that consent is not received? Giving meaning to the word “consent,” would the project then not go ahead?
Mr. Phillips: Yes, that’s a very theoretical question. I know in all the arrangements with the First Nations when it comes to treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements, that is one way of working together with Canada and British Columbia.
When it comes to business in our traditional territories, it’s very important. I had mentioned very generally about dialogue. It has to get down to very detailed discussions on the project. What we have seen in the past wasn’t that at all. For example, there was a mine in my area many years ago. They did tons of mining, and there was hardly any input at all from Canim Lake. That’s the past. We are looking at now, with the UN declaration and free, prior and informed consent, is the dialogue, the discussion, the process and the details that would get right down to whether it can work out.
On a personal level, consent would be necessary to try all remedies possible to get to an agreement between the corporation and the Indigenous peoples on the area. It’s a very theoretical question, but there would be many answers for whatever area it is.
Senator Woo: Thank you, witnesses. I want to start with colleagues from First Nations leadership.
I am trying to understand a bit better the way in which your amendment for substitution would be different from what we currently have. My understanding is that substitution is permitted, of course, if the minister agrees and there’s a need for some public input, consultation and so on.
I am setting aside the governing body issue. I understand that issue. If we have time, I will ask a question about that as well. Assuming we have the definition that you want for Indigenous jurisdiction, how would your proposed amendment change the way in which substitution is currently envisaged? Is it that it would be mandatory? Is that what you’re saying?
Ms. Campbell: Yes, it would be mandatory.
Senator Woo: Mandatory, okay.
Ms. Campbell: Where a nation seeks to do it, the minister will grant it.
Senator Woo: Okay.
Ms. Campbell: Not the minister may consider it, think about it and have a change of mind.
Senator Woo: No public consultation and no public input, which is currently written into the legislation.
Ms. Campbell: I don’t think substitution provisions engage public input in the same way. Our particular recommendation is that if an Indigenous jurisdiction seeks to conduct an assessment —
Senator Woo: They should have it.
Ms. Campbell: — they should be able to do that. There are conditions that need to be met in section 33.
Senator Woo: Yes. I have a secondary question. Presumably you want this if there is a change in the definition. That’s sort of a precondition. If you have a governing body, rather than the narrower definition of treaty co-management and so on, what if there are disputes among First Nations on who is in fact the governing body? As we know, there have been from time to time.
I know in the B.C. legislation there’s a dispute settlement mechanism which helps to resolve this issue. We don’t have that in the federal legislation. You haven’t proposed a dispute settlement mechanism. Would this not potentially cause a lot of possible delay and lack of clarity in the impact assessment project, if we were to go down that route? Do you understand my question?
Ms. Campbell: I do.
As Mr. Phillips said, in some respects that is theoretical, but in some respects it isn’t. Our own sense is that the early engagement provisions that will be in place should help to do that. The early engagement is designed to head off disputes, ensure communities understand the nature of projects, and allow proponents to adjust their projects so that they are consistent with community needs and values, including Indigenous needs and values.
In terms of situations where there is more than one nation, again there are ways to do that. Guidance is now being developed by the agency. In fact, nations in British Columbia have already been attending forums that the agency has been offering to talk about how to develop that guidance and how to make sure that the act will be implemented in partnership and in real collaboration with nations. Again, nations work together in communities. Practically speaking, they work together. There are ways to do that together.
The fact that the B.C. process also sets in place that dispute resolution mechanism means there will be a parallel track of nations at the B.C. level starting to work to solve those problems.
If you look to see how the implementation of this act will unfold, you will see, practically speaking, in British Columbia that nations will be solving those problems. They will be doing it through the dispute resolution process in the B.C. law.
Senator Woo: The next question is for Teck. Thank you for being here.
Just to clarify, you’re not only a mining company but also an oil and gas company because of your oil sands assets. On the point about the need for some understanding consultation on the regulations, and presumably policy guidance on some of the key issues, could you list a few of the key areas where you feel the industry and stakeholders need more clarity on regulations and policy guidance? Could you give us some sense of whether these discussions are already happening?
Ms. Risbud: Thank you, Senator Woo. Yes. As I mentioned, the government has been consulting on aspects that will inform future regulations. These include timeline management. We have had some discussions about the early planning phase and what that might look like. What we think is required, going forward, is more concrete discussions in these areas.
We have raised the implementation or the application of the declaration on Indigenous peoples as part of the impact assessment process. The government has spent three years consulting on this process, and now we’re at the regulation stage or closely coming to it. When those regulations are ready, we want to make sure we have a chance to look at them again because that’s where we believe a lot of the details and clarity need to be.
Senator Woo: Are any other issues that you want to put on the list? What about timeline management?
The Chair: I am sorry, Senator Woo.
Senator Woo: Thank you.
The Chair: There are two last questions from Senator Duncan and Senator MacDonald.
Senator Duncan: Thank you to the panel for the presentations.
My question is for Ms. Campbell, and I would like to invite you to submit the response in writing, as it might be a little easier. What I am seeking is clarification. You made reference to Indigenous involvement. What I heard you say, and perhaps I heard it incorrectly, was that reference included those First Nations with settled agreements and those without. That’s what I heard you say. I am just wondering what the process is, then, as outlined in the B.C. legislation for all-encompassing involvement.
The reason I am asking is that there are 11 of 14 First Nations in Yukon that have comprehensive land claim agreements. There are those who do not. I would like to hear how the B.C. legislation, which involves all First Nations, would work. How would it deal with environmental assessments and so on for those who do not have settled land claims?
Ms. Campbell: I will speak very briefly, and then I will prepare something. Thank you for that opportunity.
The very simple answer is that the B.C. legislation references Indigenous nations and it doesn’t define it. In a sense, it’s actually leaving it open to self-determination. There are mechanisms in the legislation to deal with what might not work out perfectly. Those are also being developed. There is also a structure in place that encourages nations to work together and then work with the Crown governments.
The Chair: You have one minute.
Senator Duncan: That would include the transboundary issues and dispute resolution as well.
Ms. Campbell: In terms of a Yukon/B.C. situation, the B.C. legislation applies within British Columbia. There are nations in B.C. whose traditional territory actually passes over both sides of those provincial Crown borders. I’ll give some thought to that.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator MacDonald: I’ll finish off with some questions for Teck Resources.
I understand you’re involved in the oil sands and a member of CAPP. A lot of companies involved in the oil sands are strongly opposed to Bill C-69. CAPP told the committee that the investment was about $41 billion last year, or about half of what it was four years ago. This is at a time when global demand for oil and gas is actually increasing at a dramatic rate, yet nothing is going on in Canada.
CAPP also told the committee that Bill C-69, in its current form, is more complex than the previous one. It does not give clarity for people who want to bring good projects forward. There are a lot of legal vulnerabilities in the bill. If past experience is to play out, we would expect those who want to disrupt the Canadian economy and kill projects in Canada to use these legal vulnerabilities.
You’re a member of CAPP. Do you agree with these assessments or not?
Ms. Risbud: As I mentioned in my opening remarks, our experience and our assessment of Bill C-69 are based on our understanding of the current process and our experiences with the current process under CEAA 2012. I can’t speak to the experiences of other CAPP member companies, but our assessment led to a different conclusion than that of other CAPP members.
Senator MacDonald: Yes, but I am not asking you about the previous bill. I am asking you about the impact of this bill in terms of legal openings for people to shut down projects. A lot has been made of a shorter timeline in terms of some of the decision making. If people have the ability to pursue endless litigation, these timelines don’t mean anything. Have you looked at that in terms of its impact?
Ms. Risbud: Our assessment of Bill C-69 is that it legislates best practices in environmental assessment. We think that those best practices should actually reduce legal challenges in the future.
Senator MacDonald: All right.
The Chair: Thank you all very much for your testimony.
We now welcome from Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of British Columbia, Tim McEwan, Senior Vice President, and from the BC Chamber of Commerce, Val Litwin, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Baxter, Director, Policy Development, Government and Stakeholder Relations.
You have five minutes each for your opening statement, followed by a question and answer period. Go ahead, please.
Val Litwin, President and Chief Executive Officer, BC Chamber of Commerce: The BC Chamber of Commerce is the most broadly based and largest business association in the province, representing over 36,000 member businesses from every sector and corner of British Columbia. We are staying congruent with our national body, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, by making a formal submission of six amendments and accompanying recommendations for Bill C-69.
Canada’s resource sector remains a vital driver of our economy, helping to create jobs and economic prosperity, not just for those who work in the sector but also for millions of Canadians across the country. However, the BC Chamber has deep concerns with Bill C-69, as it is currently drafted, because just like CEAA 2012 before it, it contains flaws that would seriously disadvantage specific sectors. Unless these issues are resolved, the proposed legislation will increase regulatory uncertainty for many of Canada’s resource sectors and their related industries. This uncertainty will deter investment and undermine economic growth and job creation.
While the B.C. economy is made up of multiple sectors from high tech to tourism, B.C. is still a resource-driven economy. The prosperity we all enjoy is supported by our ability to extract and trade our resources with the world. In B.C., the natural resource sector accounts for 11 per cent of provincial GDP, and over 100,000 direct jobs. The resource economy goes beyond the rural communities in close proximity to the mines, the gas wells, the forests and the sea, out of which our resources come.
Today, it is estimated that 56 per cent of all resource-related jobs are located in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. This highlights the truly symbiotic relationship that exists between urban and rural B.C. communities when it relates to the natural resource sector.
In B.C., our ability to access global markets is hindered, not just by our limited ability to move resources to market but also by our inability to extract resources from the ground. Recently in Canada, we have failed to get to yes with resource projects in a clearly defined, timely and economically feasible fashion. Attempting to deal with the diversity of projects covered by the legislation with a one-size-fits-all legislative solution is doomed to fail. To achieve its intended purpose, Bill C-69 must be flexible enough to address the unique circumstances of all our resources and infrastructure projects.
The following are our six amendments which, if implemented, will help provide greater flexibility and clarification.
The first is ministerial discretion. We believe that ministerial discretion should be spread across the cabinet table, adding the Minister of Natural Resources Canada and an economic minister to provide a broader scope of decision-making authority. Additionally, economic benefits of a given project must also be considered, a practice adopted by other G7 nations.
The second is public participation. Bill C-69 must include a mechanism that defines the nature and scope of public participation.
The third is a federal backstop. Indigenous communities and companies would be compensated when a project cannot proceed due to errors made by the government in its assessment, its duty to consult, or both.
The fourth is clarification of new project criteria. Criteria for project assessment should be defined such that it will be consultative, transparent and functional, and not simply serve as a mechanism to obstruct projects.
The fifth is project list clarification. Clear language should confirm which projects require assessment, along with the defined list of projects that will be exempt from assessment.
The sixth is table regulations while Bill C-69 is reviewed by Parliament. We believe that regulations proposed to address gaps within the legislation must be presented to the business community and others while said legislation is being tabled.
The BC Chamber of Commerce thanks the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources for the opportunity to share our thoughts. We would be pleased to provide further information on any of these issues discussed in this submission. Thank you.
Tim McEwan, Senior Vice President, Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of British Columbia: By way of background, the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association is the leading construction industry trade association in British Columbia. We have been active for 43 years. We represent more than 2,100 members and clients who collectively employ over 50,000 people in our province. Our association advocates for its members in support of a vibrant construction industry, responsible resource development and a growing economy for the benefit of all British Columbians.
Bill C-69, if passed into law in its present form, will substantially change the policy framework for evaluating many Canadian natural resource, energy and infrastructure projects. When applied, the legislation will determine whether major projects advanced in a timely fashion have far-reaching consequences for the livelihood of communities and Indigenous nations throughout our country.
Construction industry work and employment opportunities are often derived from large scale growth catalyst projects that generate activity which cascades throughout the economy. Each and every day, 250,000 British Columbians wake up, put on a hard hat, and literally build our province and our country.
Over the past decade, ICBA has become increasingly alarmed at the inability of proponents to get major resource, energy and infrastructure projects permitted and approved in a timely fashion. Our nation’s regulatory process has become increasingly cumbersome, which has led to forgone investment in Canada and the loss of talent, opportunity and thousands of well-paid family supporting jobs.
A recent review by the World Economic Forum of global competitiveness found that while Canada places 12th for overall competitiveness among 140 countries examined, it ranks 53rd for the overall regulatory burden. As a consequence, since 2014 outbound flows of foreign direct investment have been significantly higher than inbound flows. Ground zero for the difficulties in major project development in recent years is the acute challenges of permitting major linear infrastructure in Canada, especially pipeline projects in the energy sector.
Instead of fixing these problems, in our view, Bill C-69 essentially doubles down and may entrench the regulatory gridlock that we have experienced. As we stated in our submission to the Standing House of Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, in Bill C-69 we have policy which seems to assume that both Canadian and international companies seeking investment capital can be taken for granted, that their financial resources are bottomless, that their patience with our country’s regulators is infinite, and that they have no choice but to place their investment capital in Canada. As I mentioned, our outbound flows since 2014 have outpaced the inbound flows of investment capital. That is largely attributable to challenges that we have had within our energy sector.
We encourage members of the standing committee to think about this as you review some of the core deficiencies that have been brought forward to you by other industry associations and that are within our brief as well. We respectfully request that you consider the consequence to Canadians of not getting this legislation right in the past.
Together with many other associations you have or will hear from, ICBA is seeking workable solutions to the challenges within Bill C-69. In this connection we wish to associate ourselves with the submissions of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
Within our submission, and I won’t go through them in any detail here for purposes of time, we outline seven core deficiencies that exist within Bill C-69, but I’ll highlight three as being kind of the core of the core, if I can put it that way.
The first is the factors that are assessed in the new Impact Assessment Act. Absent from Bill C-69 is any explicit reference to economic effects of a project as an express consideration. Economic consideration should be added to clauses 22 and 63 of the bill by defining “sustainability” to explicitly include environmental health, social and economic factors. We also suggest that clause 22 of Bill C-69 be streamlined to pare down the set of factors that must be considered in an impact assessment.
The second core item I would like to highlight is public participation and the potential for politicization of the process. In this regard, the lack of a standing test in Bill C-69 opens up impact assessment to causes and concerns which do not have a direct interest in the merits of a given project. In our view, public participation ought to be scoped to interested parties who can speak knowledgeably about the environmental, scientific and technical merits of a given project, or local interests that are directly affected. In the absence of a standing test, the impact assessment process will be rife with interest group politics rather than a clear evaluation of project merits and local impacts.
The third item I would highlight is ministerial discretion. Throughout Bill C-69 there are a number of places where the Minister of Environment has discretion over impact assessment process. Inevitably, there will be increased exercise of ministerial and cabinet discretion as interest group politics take hold, due in large measure to the absence of a standing test. It is critically important that the Impact Assessment Act limit ministerial and cabinet discretion and that the process be governed by a procedurally fair, independent, quasi-judicial regulatory process. We also question whether the Minister of Environment alone is the appropriate final arbiter of major project approvals. In this regard, we simply ask the question: Why is the Minister of Natural Resources or another suitable economic minister not involved in the final decision-making process?
With that, we thank the committee for the opportunity to speak today. We want to close by noting that Canada is fundamentally a small, open market, trade-dependent economy. This means that public policy choices that government takes matter a great deal. We urge the Senate committee to adopt the package of amendments in their entirety being proposed by the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in an effort to make the bill workable. I am open to any questions you may have.
Senator Neufeld: Thank you, gentlemen, for being here and making those presentations and information available to us.
I have a question for the BC Chamber of Commerce. I know that you represent all the chambers across British Columbia. I also know that British Columbia changed their environmental process just recently to more or less mirror Bill C-69. Do you think that will have a double-whammy effect in British Columbia, so that British Columbia will have a hard time getting projects through and Canada, where responsible, will have a hard time getting projects through? Would you say a few words about that?
Mr. Litwin: Thank you for the question, senator. I will defer to our Director of Policy, Dan Baxter, if I may.
Dan Baxter, Director, Policy Development, Government and Stakeholder Relations, BC Chamber of Commerce: To drive right into that question, the short answer is yes. What we’re seeing here is a process that is not clear and not certain, and business thrives on certainty and predictability. A process at the provincial level that compounds uncertainty and unpredictability is definitely concerning. We would want to see a process like in past processes where there is obviously alignment and harmonization of reviews so that we don’t necessarily need to have two reviews for the same project. As much alignment between as possible between jurisdictions is obviously a key aspect.
The reason why that is important, senator, is what we’re seeing in our collective respective data. A survey of our membership, 36,000 businesses across B.C., shows a decline in confidence in the economy of 50 per cent. When you ask businesses, “Can we actually get projects built in our province or in our country,” only 65 per cent agree that we can actually do that. There’s a marked decline year over year in terms of that confidence to get these projects built.
Senator Neufeld: That’s fairly alarming, and it should be to anyone. We know that we’re losing lots of investment.
I have one question for Mr. McEwan. UNDRIP is part of Bill C-69. What’s your position? Does consent mean a veto or not? I couldn’t get an answer from the last two witnesses. Maybe you could give me an answer. What do you think it is?
Mr. McEwan: Thank you very much for the question, senator. You have keyed on a question of marked uncertainty within the bill in introducing UNDRIP. We can all support the precept of UNDRIP. It’s the uncertainly it will layer on the potential for litigation that it might bring, juxtaposed to what is a very robust duty to consult and accommodate already in the law as a result of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, and then successive case law, from Calder to Sparrow, through to Delgamuukw, Haida or Taku River Tlingit, and then on to Tsilhqot’in, more recently.
That is key. It’s the uncertainty around what UNDRIP will mean in practice, and the fact that there’s likely to be yet another wave of litigation.
Senator Neufeld: The Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Litwin: I would simply concur with my colleague. The opportunity to consult and give consent is not veto. It’s the opportunity to meaningfully consult, to mitigate and to make concessions where possible, but not to unnecessarily obstruct a project in the public interest from a social and economic perspective.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Neufeld: Just so you know, the dictionary describes consent as yes or no.
Mr. Litwin: Yes.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much for being here today. I think it’s important that Canadians understand, as you well do in your presentations, that we talk about this as being an environment, oil and gas bill. It has a great impact on business communities and construction. You have all made that point extremely well.
When the expert panel travelled around consulting for two years before this bill started, they came to the conclusion that cabinet ministers should be the decision makers. Canadians feel that at least they’re elected officials and, if they don’t like the decision, there are ramifications for that when the next election comes around.
You came forward with the idea that it shouldn’t just be the environment minister. I thought your points were well taken when you said that natural resources should be included and a minister who deals with finances. Could you explain your rationale behind that and why it would be important?
We heard last week from witnesses that they shouldn’t just be looking at the negatives when the impact assessments are taking place. They should also be looking at the positives in terms of job creation and financial impact on the communities. Would that be part of the rationale behind having not just one minister responsible but at least three ministers?
Mr. McEwan: Yes, Senator Cordy, that’s correct. It’s to make sure that you’re actually backing up the precept the federal government has spoken to repeatedly in much of its legislation that the environment and the economy go hand in hand. If they go hand in hand, it then follows, to me logically, that ministerial decisions around key projects should have both the Minister of Environment and an economic minister as part of the final decision-making process.
Senator Cordy: Do you have anything?
Mr. Litwin: The inclusion of those additional ministers around the cabinet table would help ensure economic benefits for the Canadian public at large and specifically for Indigenous communities. Many of them along these project right-of-ways are banking big time on the opportunity for this project to go forward and what that means for their communities. A broader economic mandate is absolutely vital. As our colleague noted, if the environment and the economy do go hand in hand, we’re remiss if we’re not including that decision making at the cabinet table.
Senator Cordy: Mr. McEwan, you said that you agreed with the CAPP amendments, of which we have copies. Have you given or would you give to the clerk the amendments you presented to us today?
Mr. McEwan: They’re in our brief.
Senator Cordy: Great, thank you very much.
Senator Simons: Mr. Litwin, when you listed your amendments, I think five of them dealt with issues that other groups have touched on before. The one that really jumped out at me, because I don’t think I have heard anyone mention it to date, is the idea of a federal backstop or an indemnity.
I am wondering how you imagine that would work because I can see the potential for litigation and huge costs to the Canadian taxpayers. How do we assign blame when a project isn’t approved? How would you imagine that indemnification program would work?
Mr. Litwin: I’ll perhaps tag team this with my colleague, Dan Baxter. Certainly there’s a bit more detail in our written submission. Like I mentioned as well, we’re staying congruent with the Canadian Chamber.
The most recent example would be the Kinder Morgan expansion, which is now the Trans Mountain expansion. Through no fault of the proponent, but due to an incredibly unclear regulatory process, a proponent that wanted to bring billions of dollars of investment into this country was punished. They couldn’t get to the finish line because there was a lack of clear process.
What we imagine is fair and think will help bolster investor confidence in Canada is a mechanism whereby some degree of responsibility is taken by the federal government when a proponent is doing everything they have been told to do and still cannot reach the finish line.
Senator Simons: Is the compensation based on sunk costs or on future potential profits? Premier Notley said today that she is absolutely confident TMX will be approved next month, which might be a week too late for her. How on earth would you calculate it? Is it what the proponent has spent in preparation of the submission, or is it on the lost cost of what might have been?
Mr. Litwin: Right, I will defer to Dan Baxter here.
Mr. Baxter: That’s a great question, senator. Those are some of the points that still need to be fleshed out and discussed a bit more.
Another one that is a bit more on point is the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project, where the ruling came out that their consultation process was not adequate, but through no fault of their own. The BC Chamber of Commerce has always been clear that the duty to consult is a Crown obligation. Business is happy to do it, but we need to have clear guidelines.
If I had to give a little definition in answer to your question, it would be more around the aspect of that project having a number of sunk costs. We could always talk about capping it, so that it doesn’t become a significant liability. If business gets out ahead and tries to do the consultation process and, through no fault of their own, ends up being inadequate, there has to be some mechanism in place and some recognition of the fact. That would create a partnership between the federal government and business. It puts some skin in the game. Sometimes the feds abdicate the responsibility to consult, for whatever reason, and put it onto business, but business just doesn’t have the necessary tools to do that consultation according to the standards laid out in case law.
Senator Woo: I thank you especially for being very succinct and clear in your comments on Bill C-69 and the changes you see necessary.
Let me start with the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. McEwan may want to jump in as well. My colleague picked up on the earlier question of ministerial discretion. It had to do with who was the appropriate minister to make the decision. You didn’t actually challenge the public interest test, which I thought was the direction you might want to go in. Instead, I think you maybe grudgingly accepted that there’s a public interest test, but you wanted a different set of decision makers to apply the test.
However, the public interest test is very broad, as is the public interest by definition. Whether or not you like it, the organizing framework for this bill is sustainability. It is the three-legged stool: the economy which is spelled out in the bill, the environment and other social health effects.
Given that we are working within a framework of sustainability, which has the three elements of economy, environment and other socio-economic health factors, would you then want to include other ministers such as the Minister of Health, the Minister of Indigenous Affairs, and a whole range of other ministers that touch on not only the core aspects of the bill but on the very specific factors listed in section 63 on public interest?
Mr. Baxter: Obviously, there are many ways a bill impacts on the community, so you could expand this out in multiple ways. From the business community’s point of view, the major point is that we want a streamlined process and we want to make sure that all viewpoints are heard. We have to keep in mind that the Minister of the Environment has a very specific objective. His or her job is to protect the environment. That is the core responsibility.
It’s like baking a cake. The first thought is not necessarily to add the economic ingredient once the cake is baked. If the sole focus is sustainability, you can’t include that ingredient after the fact. At the very least, we’re talking about resource projects. It only makes sense that the natural resource minister should be involved in the conversation. We recognize the fact that you could have multiple. You could have the economic development minister involved. You could have the finance ministers, multiple economic portfolios.
We’re not saying everybody because we would have too many cooks in the kitchen. We want to try to keep it streamlined a bit on economics and the environment, the two streams where there is natural tension, to use our colleague’s hand-in-glove perspective.
Senator Woo: I appreciate your point about having more emphasis on the economy. I think things could be done to strengthen the emphasis on economic impacts.
Let me turn to Mr. McEwan. You made the point that the clause 22 factors were, in my words, maybe too many or too extensive. I think you said they should be pared down. Which factors would you remove from the list of 20 in clause 22?
Mr. McEwan: When you’re looking at particularly linear energy projects, but other projects as well, there are things within the factors such as the intersection of gender and identity, and so forth.
Senator Woo: Yes, the identity factors.
Mr. McEwan: It’s a legitimate piece of public policy, for sure. I just question whether or not they should be scoped into this legislation. Also, the upstream and downstream effects of energy and climate change are other factors in the bill. If they’re already dealt with upstream, why are they being considered again within an all-linear project application?
Senator Woo: Can I just clarify? Are you saying that they should be taken out of the criteria of clause 22, or that they should be scoped for the specific needs of a project? The extent to which these factors would apply would depend on the individual project through the tailored guidelines of the early planning process. There are two very different routes we can go.
Mr. McEwan: Yes, and each has its merit. I guess where I land on this, senator, is that they should be pared down. That economic activity cascades through our members, and that’s why we’re here tod. What they are experiencing is the inability to get projects to yes. The more factors we layer into the legislation, the more uncertain it will be. That’s the concern.
If there’s one word that underpins our concerns with the bill, it’s “uncertainty” over a broad range of precepts that are introduced into the bill.
Senator Woo: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Carignan: I will ask my question in French. It concerns criteria set out in clause 22. I understand that you want the economic notion to be clearer, especially when it comes to the issue of sustainability in subclause (h). Do you not think that economic elements should be taken into account in other criteria? In subclause 22(1)(a), it says, “... changes to the environment or to health, social or economic conditions...” must be taken into account, and in subclause (d) it says, “the purpose of and need for the designated project;”. Obviously, a mining project or an energy project will have economic impacts that will have to be assessed. Is that not an aspect that should be taken into account despite your suggestion to make an addition to subclause (h)? Without an amendment, I would not want agencies to understand that economic aspects don’t have to be taken into account. I think that’s already there. As far as I understand, you want to add another layer concerning the economic aspect. I don’t know whether I am being clear enough. If necessary, I will repeat my question.
The Chair: Who is your question for, Senator Carignan?
Senator Carignan: For Tim McEwan.
[English]
The Chair: Do you have an answer?
Mr. McEwan: Yes, I think I understand the question. In our discourse here we are trying to get clarity that the economy, left, front and centre, is material to the bill. With the broad range of socio-economic factors that have been scoped into clause 22, the proverbial waters get muddy. In essence, we are doubling down on the precept that the economy needs to be really baked into the legislation.
[Translation]
Senator Carignan: Can I also get further clarification? What are the consequences of that uncertainty? It is being said that more certainty is wanted. For an entrepreneur, uncertainty impacts their decision on whether or not to get involved in a project. There is also an impact on sources of funding, on financing funds, on bankers who will decide whether or not to move forward. You can be a confident entrepreneur. You want to move forward, but if the banker thinks uncertainty is too high and does not give you the required resources, you will not be able to carry out your project. Can you provide clarifications on the negative consequences, for an entrepreneur, of that uncertainty, especially in terms of funding sources?
[English]
Mr. McEwan: I think I understand the question.
Over the last number of years, the challenge we have faced in Canada is that we’re having a very difficult time getting our resources to market, particularly our oil resources. If you look at the period between 2005 and 2015, $226.8 billion were invested in the oil sands. That was investment we landed, but we have trouble getting linear infrastructure built.
When we look at this bill and some of its precepts, we see more uncertainty that will lead to delayed or deferred projects which, in our realm, cascade through to less economic activity and job creation for our contractors that depend upon growth catalyst projects to earn their livelihood. I hope that answers the question adequately.
Senator Patterson: I am very impressed with the sense of alarm of the Chamber of Commerce about Canada failing to have a reputation for getting to yes. You have major concerns about the lack of explicit recognition of economic effects, the timeline loopholes, the wide-open standing test, the broad ministerial discretion, no project list and the overall lack of certainty. You say in your presentation that the cascading consequences of this legislation, if left unamended, will extend in a very negative way to your members. It’s a very alarming picture that you present to us.
You also talk about working with others on amendments. If the bill doesn’t get fixed in these six or seven ways you have mentioned, and I hope this committee will try to address these issues, what should we do with the bill? Is this the time to make changes in a very negative climate for the energy industry in Canada?
Mr. Litwin: My colleague Dan Baxter mentioned a couple of data points from our collective prospectus survey in the last year. I will mention one more, or reiterate one that stands out for us. Only 65 per cent of B.C. businesses believe that B.C. is a safe place for companies to invest, as opposed to 83 per cent the year before thinking that B.C. was a safe place to invest. That’s an almost 20-point decline in a single year.
We have a lot riding on getting this bill right. As our colleague pointed out, the recommendations or the amendments we have submitted in our package, they need to be considered as a package, as a collective. We can’t just pick and choose some of these elements. The risk of not adopting all of these amendments in one go, and having what we would consider a very deficient bill go through, would have horrible ramifications for the B.C. and Canadian economies.
Right now we’re looking at, not to sound overly cliché, a generational opportunity to get this right. Certainly significant improvements need to be made, especially on timelines when it comes to these projects. As Mr. McEwan pointed out, international investment is slowing down and even domestic investment is not being invested in Canada but is going elsewhere.
The consequences are great if we don’t get this right. Like I said, I would put to the Senate committee that what we have put forward needs to be taken as a package.
Senator Patterson: And if not?
Mr. Litwin: If not, we have missed that generational opportunity. Canada has great resource wealth. As we mentioned in our presentation, if we can’t tap that resource wealth and get those products to international marketplaces, we have lost a massive, massive opportunity. Governments across Canada right now are making huge investments in social infrastructure. We need to be able to pay for some of those progressive social investments. This is one of the ways we can do it. That’s one of the things at risk.
Perhaps my colleague Mr. McEwan wants to add to that.
Mr. McEwan: I would like to add to that. We have been kind of sleepwalking, trying to find fixes for things that have been building up for a number of years. Our energy sector is Canada’s golden goose or golden nugget. It’s what we have as a country. It’s imperative that we get this kind of legislation right and we get certainty for investors, most of whom don’t come from within Canada. They come from offshore or from down south.
As we get increasingly landlocked with our oil resources, we will need to build additional infrastructure to get our resources to tidewater. That has been very difficult for the last few years. When our association looks at this, it’s what can we do to enable more growth? The growth isn’t a means in itself. It’s for people. It’s for Canadians.
I know this is kind of an impassioned plea, but the Senate has an opportunity to work with the amendments proposed by the two leading energy associations, CEPA and CAPP, to get this right. I really implore you to take the opportunity and the time necessary to do that.
Senator Duncan: My question is about your highlighting the economy and the Economic Development Minister.
Is it possible that it could lead, as you have put it in your submission, to politicization of the process? It would become an economy versus the environment debate, as opposed to focusing on how a project could meet the needs of Canadians. Would it be better focused on ensuring that we meet the consultation needs in the legislation and ensuring that the economic and environmental concerns are addressed in the process?
Where I am coming from on this is the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment process. It’s an environmental and socio-economic assessment process. It’s federal legislation. It’s older, in that it was first introduced in 2005. At the time of its introduction, there was a hue and cry that we would never see another mine permitted in Yukon. In 2018, 73 per cent of the projects were approved and processed within 78 days.
Overall, as a generational opportunity, as you have phrased it, is it most important that we pass Bill C-69 and get on with the process? Considering your amendments, what I have heard you say is that those are the top three. You have outlined those three as the key amendments to the legislation. Is that correct?
Mr. McEwan: To whom is that directed?
Senator Duncan: It is for all three of the panellists, please.
Mr. Litwin: To your point about folding in the economic considerations of any project, the net economic benefits should be considered. Certainly that would be in lockstep with processes adopted by other G7 countries.
Our submission doesn’t explicitly address the socio-economic. We address the economic. We would stand by the assertion that we need to put that into the decision-making matrix when it comes to these projects. The larger question is whether it should stay within the single track of the environment minister. In many ways there’s some inherent conflict within that, in the sense that this is an economic development project. To simply look at one side of the equation, to look at potential negative economic impacts and not discuss the positive economic opportunity on the other side, would be to only evaluate 50 per cent of the equation in a very important conversation.
We would continue to assert that folding in that economic consideration is vitally important.
Mr. McEwan: I would agree with what Mr. Litwin has said in terms of the need for the economy to come back into that final decision-making process in a much more equal way.
You heard testimony earlier this morning from Ms. Krause about the challenge economic interests are having in getting their voices heard because of the funding that is washing into other interest groups, twinned with the removal of the standing test. If we don’t have that counterbalance at the end of the process, if it’s wide open and there’s no standing test in the legislation, I am concerned that we will have nothing but interest group politic. As the testimony you heard earlier this morning starkly laid out, economic voices have had a difficult time getting their voice heard, juxtaposed with well-funded interests that are kind of the squeaky wheel that got the grease over the last while.
The Chair: Senator MacDonald, on the last question.
Senator MacDonald: I think I will direct my questions to the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association.
You mention in your testimony that Bill C-69 doubles down on existing aspects of the present environmental review, which in your opinion is already flawed. Could you specifically speak to what is problematic and how Bill C-69 does not address the problems that are there now?
Mr. McEwan: We have zeroed in on seven items in our brief as being the core deficiencies. Albeit probably well intended in terms of putting it into the legislation, Bill C-69 falls down on the politicization in the process, to use the broad term. When you’re dealing with projects of significant scope, I know as a former senior public servant in British Columbia who worked in that space that you really should have a guiding principle. It should be guided by a fair, independent regulatory process.
That’s what I think the act is trying to get to, but when you remove the standing test and open it wide to interests beyond the scientific, technical, environmental and local interests in the project, it starts to get unwieldy. If I had to sort of boil it down to one thing that I am deeply concerned about in this bill, it’s that. I could go on.
Senator MacDonald: I am just curious. What do you hear from your membership on these issues? What do you tell your membership about Canada’s competitiveness today?
Mr. McEwan: Our members are very concerned. They’re the construction contractors that earn their living, as I mentioned, through the cascading economic benefits from growth catalyst projects. They’re very concerned about the inability to get to yes on TMX. Ground zero for what’s wrong with the current regulatory process is that government had to buy an economically viable pipeline in the hands of private sector interests because we couldn’t get to yes in a timely way.
We see this path of opportunity cost, if I can put it that way. It’s the forgone opportunity. It’s what could be for people in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. We have members in Alberta as well, and it’s very concerning to them on a day-to-day basis.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
We welcome the fourth panel: as an individual, Ms. Jackie Lerner; and from the Gitxaala Nation, James Herbert, Regulatory Affairs Manager.
James Herbert, Manager, Regulatory Affairs, Gitxaala Nation, as an individual: I work for Gitxaala Nation on the North Coast, centred around Prince Rupert. Its territory leads from just south of the Douglas Channel at the tip of the Great Bear Rainforest, all the way up to the top of Digby Island in Prince Rupert harbour.
I am responsible for giving policy and regulatory advice to the nation’s leadership, including the elected chief and council and the hereditary table that felt it was more important for me to speak to this panel because of my particular experience with executing assessment processes under CEAA 2012. I led consultation on Bill C-69 for the nation. They send their regrets, but they thought it was better to hear from a technical person and someone with experience.
In that mind, I have spent the last 12 years working everywhere from field data collection on large federal assessment processes, to writing them on behalf of oil and gas companies and to reviewing them on behalf of First Nations. They felt that breadth of experience was important to have in front of you today.
The nation itself has about 2,000 members, mostly in Prince Rupert and Lach Klan, which is the Gitxaala village about an hour and a bit by boat south of Prince Rupert. As I mentioned, the territory stretches from south of the Douglas Channel.
The Chair: Excuse me just a second.
Mr. Herbert: Maybe I am talking too loud.
Senator Neufeld: No, I don’t think so. Something is wrong with the sound.
The Chair: I am sorry, continue.
Mr. Herbert: Because of the breadth of that territory, the nation has been through a lot of environmental assessments. At its peak, we had seven LNG facilities, all at some stage of environmental process. We had four LNG pipelines, and we had the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project. We have a number of section 67 processes, which are also included in CEAA 2012.
Personally, I have never worked for a nation and a leadership council that have more experience with environmental assessment. I have 47 hereditary chiefs. That number changes, depending, but we’ll roughly use that. I have never met a group of people who are more well versed in environmental assessments.
The nation has commented and been involved in Bill C-69 since its initiation when the NEB review panel came to Prince Rupert. We spoke to them. I am not here to make new amendments, but I want to say that in general the nation supports this legislation. They have asked me to speak about three specific projects. Listening to the conversation this morning, I feel like these three specific projects lead to a good case study for a couple of reasons. Specifically, there are questions about overlapping territory and what happens with jurisdiction because there is a lot of overlapping territory. There are also questions about poor scoping and the consequences of poor scoping. This is when an assessment is proposed, and the nation’s concerns are put forward and ignored.
With those three things in mind, I want to run you through it. The Enbridge Northern Gateway Project ignored the nation’s concerns that were voiced from the start. That project was successfully challenged by the nation. Eventually they were asked to go through the process again, and then they declined.
The Pacific NorthWest LNG Project, with which I am hoping most people are familiar, took a lot of time to come around to the request of the nation. In the end, it came around to the request of the nation and it got consent from the nation. The issue was that it took so long for them to get there that the process was delayed twice as long as it should have been, and again they had no FID.
The third project is LNG Canada in Kitimat. The majority of its shipping line is through the nation’s territory. It was very clear from the start about wanting to work with the nation. It wanted to address the concern of the nation in a way that the nation felt was transparent and met the concerns to the best they were able to do. That consent from the nation was at the end of the regulatory review process, and it went to its FID. The nation is particularly proud of the fact that the only one of those seven LNG facilities that went through is the one that approached the nation and worked with the nation.
We feel like these projects suffered from the ambiguous language in CEAA 2012. We feel like the original legislation doesn’t provide enough guidance to proponents that demonstrate to them what they actually need to do to get a project approved. We feel Bill C-69 moves us in that direction. It could be better but, from the points of view of a regulatory review process and a process that the nation would like to participate in, Bill C-69 is much clearer. It provides a better line of sight. That’s the message I was asked to carry forward to you today.
Jackie Lerner, as an individual: I would like to acknowledge that we’re on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish peoples.
I am extremely grateful and a little surprised for the opportunity to address you this morning. I am a senior consultant with ERM Canada. I have worked in the field of environmental consulting since 1997, engaged primarily in environmental impact assessments from mining clients in British Columbia. I also have a PhD that focused on impact assessment.
I am not here as a representative of a university or of ERM Canada. However, the comments I provide to you are my own based on academic research and years of experience in this area. My research focuses on a methodology for cumulative effects assessment. I don’t suggest that the act itself be amended to be prescriptive about methodological details. I understand that the guidance and supporting regulations to the act are currently in development. The issues I raise are perhaps best addressed there.
My remarks to you today concern the Impact Assessment Act portion of Bill C-69 and, very specifically, a part of that act that has been virtually unchanged since the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 1992, and the cumulative effects provision in clause 22. Clause 22 says, as one of 20 factors to be considered in an impact assessment, that the agency must consider any cumulative effects likely to result from the designated project in combination with other physical activities that have been or will be carried out.
That last part of the requirement, factoring in activities that will happen in the future, has always been a tall order. Project-level impact assessment is already a predictive exercise, evaluating the potential biophysical and human consequences of a project that is not yet built. To predict the future of development around the proposed project adds another layer of complexity to an inherently complex analysis. Perhaps, for this reason, consideration of that particular aspect of the future is virtually scoped out of almost every impact assessment.
Before I talk about what usually fills the relevant space, instead let me first talk about why we consider future development in impact assessment at all. The impact assessment process can help to refine project designs in response to the concerns of communities, regulators or subject matter experts, but the end point of impact assessment is a decision whereby a project’s benefits, usually economic ones, are weighed against its consequences. To be able to provide decision makers with an accurate evaluation of project tradeoffs requires considering the project in its real world context, where its impacts will almost certainly cross paths with the impacts associated with other human activities and with natural drivers.
This real world context is not static. The human activities that share the same landscape as the project will likely change and potentially multiply over time. Some of these future activities may be subject to the same assessment process, but many will not. As development spreads, the capacity of the natural and human environments to absorb the combined impacts of that future development may dwindle.
The act simply tells us to consider activities that will be carried out. The agency’s current operational policy statement advises that impact assessment should represent the most likely future scenario by including projects that are “certain” or “reasonably foreseeable.” The current criteria for identifying these two categories of future projects are closely tied to permitting. “Certain” projects have already received or are partway through the process of obtaining permits, while “reasonably foreseeable” projects have initiated permitting.
In practice, this has meant that considerations of the future of cumulative effects assessment tend to be short sighted. Typically, the only future projects dealt with substantively are those that will occur within the next two to five years, those projects that are currently in a relatively advanced state of permitting. In many cases, and particularly in resource-rich areas, that practice chronically underestimates the amount of future development that’s likely to occur.
As part of my doctoral research, I looked at historical development patterns in British Columbia for several different project types. For every project type, the mean number of projects actually built was equal to or higher than the predictions of the impact assessments by five years after the original project was certified. This shortfall was sometimes small and sometimes quite significant. There are ways to do it better.
The method that I developed as part of my research is more involved than our time this morning allows but, briefly, I found it is possible to model historical regional trends to produce scenarios of future development that are far closer to our likely future than current practice achieves. The objectives of this analysis is not to predict a certain future. Rather, it is to help mitigate the consequences of uncertainty so that the likelihood of cumulative effects under different future conditions can be better anticipated.
According to clause 6 of Bill C-69, part of the Impact Assessment Act’s mandate is for the Government of Canada, the minister, the agency and federal authorities, in the administration of this act, to apply the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle is recognized in policy both in Canada and elsewhere as important for any decision made under conditions of uncertainty. This principle guides decision makers to err on the side of risk avoidance whenever there are threats of serious or irreversible damage.
I suggest that current cumulative effects assessment practice is essentially geared toward avoiding a false positive. Because we’re not certain what projects will happen in the future, we incorrectly assume that very few will. I further suggest that we should be more concerned with avoiding a false negative and adopt the precautionary approach of including scenarios of future development in assessments of cumulative effects.
The Chair: Thank you very much for those opening statements. We will proceed now with questions.
Senator Neufeld: Thank you both for being here. It’s good to hear your proposals. A special thanks to Ms. Lerner for being here, not representing anyone but her own thoughts and processes. I appreciate that.
I will ask you a question about cumulative impacts. Perhaps you can help me here a bit. If you’re talking about cumulative impacts in forestry, it’s relatively easy to identify because you can see the trees. You know where it has been harvested and where it hasn’t. Where it gets a little more difficult, at least I think it does, is for the oil and gas industry. It’s easy to see the impacts in Fort Mac. That’s a different story. When industry is out drilling wells all over the place, they get highly confidential information about what is below the surface. How do you actually do cumulative impacts when they drill 10 wells? They might not find anything and away they go, but how would you do a cumulative impact there?
Until someone goes out and cracks some rocks, does some drilling in different places into the mountains or wherever they’re mining, you don’t know. There could be one big mine, and maybe a short distance away someone else might find some more minerals. How do you anticipate those kinds of things?
Ms. Lerner: To make sure I get the question right, you’re asking about how we would calculate the cumulative effects of more exploration.
Senator Neufeld: Yes. I don’t want to take too much time because I don’t have much time. If a company goes out, drills a bunch of wells and finds there’s nothing there, you have asked them to do a cumulative impact of what? How do you identify that? It’s easy to identify in forestry.
Ms. Lerner: Yes.
Senator Neufeld: I can go out and see the trees. I can’t see down in the ground.
Ms. Lerner: In most cases anyway, when a full-impact assessment is required, it doesn’t happen until people are actually proposing to put a project forward. A lot of exploratory activities are actually not subject to an impact assessment. I don’t know if that answers your question.
Senator Neufeld: No, it doesn’t. Actually, I’ll maybe move on.
Mr. Herbert, I have asked this question of a number of First Nations, and you may not be able to answer it. UNDRIP being part of the bill, with free, prior and informed consent, what’s your definition of consent or the definition of the group you are here representing?
Mr. Herbert: That last part was important. The definition of consent from the nation I work for is a yes or no. I would, however, add that getting to yes is the goal of the nation.
Senator Neufeld: Certainly, for everyone.
Mr. Herbert: For my nation particularly.
Senator Neufeld: Yes.
Mr. Herbert: Because consent is put forward, it clearly lines the objectives we already have for these proponents. When proponents come in and work with us to get to yes, they have had approvals. For the proponents that haven’t tried to get to yes for us, they have had approvals and have been stopped legally by our nation anyways. My nation would argue that we already have consent. It just costs us and everybody else a lot more time.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Herbert, you spoke about overlapping territorial jurisdictions. First of all, I am not quite sure. Do you mean within the Indigenous nations or do you mean provincial, territorial and federal jurisdictions? Could you expand on your comments? You have touched briefly on it when you were going through your presentation. What exactly do you mean and what are your concerns?
Mr. Herbert: Both. Because the nation is so marine oriented, we’re often at the confluence of overlapping jurisdiction between federal authorities and provincial authorities. We’re going through a process right now that is a full provincial assessment on a project that’s happening exclusively on federal lands that didn’t trigger a federal assessment. We are in a really complicated space where we’re doing an intense, deep-dive assessment for a project over which the regulator has no actual jurisdiction, probably because the regulations are so poor. CEAA 2012 is why that happened. That would be my opinion.
The other one is that we share a lot of overlapping territory with nations. We have had projects both approved and not approved, or at least pulled out based on complications because of that overlapping territory.
Senator Cordy: The legislation is clear. There were concerns raised. The federal government will not go into jurisdiction of provincial responsibility. They will only stick to federal jurisdiction. The case you have given emphasizes that in fact it’s not clearly defined.
What happens in this case? The problem is on federal land, but it’s affecting provincial jurisdiction. Are you working together?
Mr. Herbert: We’re working with both the provincial and federal authorities in this particular case. It is a problem with section 67 under CEAA 2012. When you combine it with designated project regulations under CEAA 2012, there’s a lot of amorphic stretch for what is not a designated project. The problem here is that we actually asked CEAA to designate the project because we knew the process would be complicated, and the minister declined to get clarity.
We are much more comfortable working under an assessment process than the vague, amorphic, weird way section 67 is run, with five different regulators sitting around the table, all without clear designs on their authority. It makes for a complicated process. I would say, more so than overlapping territory, that process is a serious hindrance to project certainty.
Senator Cordy: Ms. Lerner, thank you very much for being here and speaking about cumulative effects. You have given us examples of things that will be carried out. I believe that is your concern. Should the language be changed in the legislation?
Ms. Lerner: I’ve thought of that. Right now you’re asking for the impossible, because nobody can tell what the future holds. I don’t have some wording to suggest. I think this might more properly belong in the guidance that’s developed later. It could be broadened to say likely a future development based on current permitting proposals or historical development trends, but at present it’s an impossible task.
Senator Woo: Perhaps I could pick up on that last point. We have already received some advice to change the wording to: “are likely to be carried out.” Apparently this wording has been used in U.S. environmental assessments in the consideration of cumulative effects for the last 30 years. If you have more to say on that, we would love to hear from you.
I read from your submission that you think we already covered off, despite the high hurdle that has been put in the legislation through the words, “will be carried out,” because the precautionary principle has been written in clause 6. This is a clarification question. If the precautionary principle is taken seriously, as it’s mentioned in the legislation, and if the agency were to carry out strategical regional assessments looking at cumulative effects of a particular region where there’s a lot of drilling going on and applying the precautionary principle, is it your view that it would allow them not to neglect the possibility of future activity on those lands?
Ms. Lerner: If the precautionary principle is applied to carrying out that portion of clause 22, then a broader approach is necessary. I agree that would more appropriately belong as part of a strategic regional environmental assessment.
We don’t have many of those. The majority of cumulative effects assessment that goes on is at the project level. I would have an interest in seeing it carried out at the project level, while that’s where most of our cumulative effects assessment takes place, but I think it would be ideal if it could be moved up as part of a more strategic framework.
Senator Woo: To be doubly safe, maybe we should change the wording as well as apply the precautionary principle on regional and strategic assessments.
Perhaps I could turn to Mr. Herbert. I am not sure if you were here for the previous panel, but there was some discussion on substitution. There are two parts to it. The first part has to do with the definition of Indigenous jurisdiction. Would you agree or would your council agree with a broadening of definition to essentially allow for self-identification of Indigenous governing bodies?
The related question is: Whether or not you agree with that, would you support a stricter and more definite requirement for substitution by First Nations governing authorities to take place whenever they ask for it, as opposed to it being part of ministerial discretion based on public consultation and so on?
Mr. Herbert: We would most likely, but I haven’t specifically run the wording of the amendment through my leadership.
Senator Woo: Fair enough.
Mr. Herbert: From my understanding of my leadership, the support for the substitution by First Nation jurisdiction would probably be universal across my leadership.
Senator Woo: Do you mean that they would support a broad definition?
Mr. Herbert: They would support a broad definition, yes.
Senator Woo: That would allow for traditional hereditary cases.
Mr. Herbert: Yes, 100 per cent. We would actively pursue MOUs with the federal government to give ourselves clarity on what that meant. That would be a choice of the nation. We’re currently doing that with the B.C. government, as it stands. Broadly speaking for First Nations, yes, they would most likely support that.
What was your second question?
Senator Woo: It’s related to whether you would ask for substitution to be mandatory whenever a First Nations governing authority asks for it to be.
Mr. Herbert: Yes.
Senator Woo: You would support this one.
Mr. Herbert: Oh, yes. That one I wouldn’t even have to take up with them. I can tell they would say yes.
Senator Simons: Senator Woo asked such a good question; it was the one I was going to ask. I will follow up, then, and ask: What resources would your First Nation need to conduct an impact assessment at the same level that a federal one would be done? If you’re going to substitute, it will have to be like for like.
A First Nation isn’t going to have the same resources as the Crown. What would you need by way of support to make that workable?
Mr. Herbert: Would we ask for an Indigenous-led substitution?
Senator Simons: Yes. That was the proposal from the First Nations Leadership Council. I am from Alberta, so I am used to people with treaty status.
If a nation or a territory wanted to assert jurisdiction to run its own impact assessment, impact assessments are huge undertakings. The Crown has much deeper pockets than any small Indigenous community. How workable would that be without being backstopped financially by a different order of government?
Mr. Herbert: It would have to come with capacity funding. It would have to come with support from governments if we were going to add that substitution. The nation I represent has a great deal of history, background and capacity to pull on for that. We have our own VCs. We have our own leadership council that’s well-versed in this kind of stuff. We have the ability to pick up this stuff and run.
Speaking particularly for Gitxaala Nation, the ability to run it wouldn’t be any more costly than, I would guess, the process we currently have to go through because we are reviewing EAs. I am sitting down and reading these things. I am sitting at working group meetings. I am attending everything that any one of the federal or provincial regulators are already going to. We are doing cost recovery both from the proponent and cost recovery from the regulators.
I think those same things would apply. I don’t imagine it would be any different from the process we’re going through.
Senator Simons: I have one follow-up question. A number of us who sit on this committee also sit on the Transport Committee, which is looking at Bill C-48. A number of us will actually be in Prince Rupert next week speaking about that there.
If Bill C-69 worked properly and provided rigorous impact assessments for both pipelines and new ports, would we need Bill C-48? Would Bill C-69 cover off those concerns because it would allow a nation such as yours to make that decision yourselves?
Mr. Herbert: That’s a good question. My understanding of the intent of the North Coast tanker ban is more of a planning exercise. It’s more of an understanding that this is something the vast majority of people up there, and the vast majority of people in Canada, want to protect. Instead, it would be more along the lines of: If it was done properly, you would have done a strategic regional assessment, looking at whether or not there was any risk tolerance for oil shipping in the North Coast. If that assessment had arrived at the conclusion that there was none, then you could legislate that in. Because that process didn’t exist, the legislation came first.
Senator Patterson: This is about the reference to the UN declaration and the rights of Indigenous people in the bill that you talked about, Mr. Herbert. We have been asking about whether free, prior and informed consent means a veto. As I understand it, a previous witness this morning and you said no, that it was not about consent; it was about a better process. You feel that Bill C-69 takes us in a better direction, a better line of sight you said.
You talked about Pacific NorthWest not starting out so well, but it came around and it got consent. LNG started from a very good place and ended up getting consent. The Northern Gateway started off very poorly and didn’t get consent.
Based on these criteria, who would decide whether the process is a good, respectful process or a very poor process?
Mr. Herbert: When we’re talking about consent, it is important that the word “veto” gets thrown round. It doesn’t get applied to the federal government or to the provincial government. This is adding a third level of regulatory approval. It is not a veto. It’s adding in a separate level of regulatory authority.
Gitxaala has always been very clear from proponents walking into the territory. They must respect Gitxaala governance laws and their role as decision makers. They must demonstrate, as Gitxaala law dictates, that you must leave more than you take. That is an easy definition of sustainability, but it’s part of Gitxaala traditional law. I will add that it counts for social and economic benefits. The nation is not anti-development and anti-jobs, but we want to balance those things.
The idea is that the process sets up this long-term relationship with the nation in the same way as it would with a government regulator. If they agree to a process and work through the process with us at the start, if they achieve the goals set up by the process, if they go through the threshold developments with us, and if they demonstrate to our lines that they will not have significant environmental effects or they are going to leave more than they take, then they get approval. It’s less of a whether or not we feel like it at the end.
The idea is you set up this process. It hinges on both the nation and the proponent to agree on the outcome. It’s important to think about it more like the nation as a regulator and less about the nation having a veto.
Senator Patterson: You have said that a long-term process will be set up and that it’s about good faith and respect. At the end of the day, who decides whether that has taken place?
Mr. Herbert: In our particular nation it’s run through hereditary. Our hereditary table is very strong and has a custom constitution. The trick to keep in mind is that they approve the process on numerous dates. If they get into it, we know what are the thresholds and we have a good understanding like we had with LNG Canada of what would be required for the project to receive approval from the nation. Just like they went after approval from the province and the feds, they went after approval from us and they met our guidelines.
In the end, it’s elected chief and council as directed by hereditary, but that is specific to this nation. The point is that the process was set up to allow for that to happen. I often refer to them as the senate.
The Chair: On the last two questions, Senator Duncan and Senator MacDonald.
Senator Duncan: My question is focused for Ms. Lerner. Your research work has been on impact assessment, as I understood it. If you wouldn’t mind, I would ask you to speak to the criteria for impact assessment. Perhaps you have examined legislation where the criteria have been spelled out specifically in legislation and where they may not have been. Perhaps the criteria has just been listed as sustainable. Would you speak to those criteria? Specifically, what has been the effect of spelling out the criteria and where it is not?
Ms. Lerner: Just to clarify, are these criteria for the conclusions of the impact assessment? Are they conclusions of significance in the current process?
Senator Duncan: Yes.
Ms. Lerner: The effect of that has been somewhat inscrutable for a lot of people. It’s a bit of a black box. In an impact assessment, typically in Canada anyway, you end up with describing and characterizing the effects of a project using a number of descriptors. Then, from those descriptors, the assessor comes to a conclusion about significance. Sometimes, in very few cases I would say, there’s an actual sort of threshold or guidance. Sometimes there is some kind of number that is exceeded which gives you a conclusion of significance and other times, most of the time, there isn’t. It’s a matter of professional judgment.
That has led to a certain amount of conflict about the conclusions of impact assessments because you will have very little transparency in deciding or in the description of how the impact assessor got from these impacts to the bottom line: The impact is not significant.
One way of dealing with that type of confusion would be to have it be a perfectly transparent process where you have not only the criteria for your conclusions defined, but you have a very explicit rationale for how those criteria were arrived at and potentially having those criteria be the subject of consultation.
Senator Duncan: Is it your recommendation that the criteria would be in regulation, then, or in the legislation itself?
Ms. Lerner: I think that would be quite challenging to do because it would very much depend on the context in which a particular project was being proposed.
Senator MacDonald: I will direct my questions about cumulative effects to Ms. Lerner. In your experience, how complex are cumulative effects, studies and practice? Second, do you think it is appropriate for cumulative effects to be assessed for every project, or would it be more effective if cumulative effects were considered in regional or strategic assessments?
Ms. Lerner: I think the answer to your second question is much more effective. It’s very challenging for project proponents to do this type of assessment on a project-by-project basis, but there simply isn’t much of a framework for doing that currently.
In terms of the first question, I would say it is so complex to assess cumulative effects that it’s done in a very perfunctory and vague way. The challenges are high. A lot of times the barrier is data availability. The practice of cumulative effects is that it’s not done well at all. It’s done much less thoroughly than the project-specific impact assessment.
Senator MacDonald: If it’s that vague and that difficult to assess, how can we put any faith in the end product? How do we know when the assessment has value?
Ms. Lerner: One way of doing that would be to do more post-assessment audits, comparing impact assessment predictions against outcomes. That’s done in some jurisdictions, but I don’t think it’s done consistently. There could be some very good findings from a process like that if we had an iterative process of comparing our predictions against outcomes.
The Chair: Senator Patterson, I think you have a supplementary question. We have a couple of minutes.
Senator Patterson: Yes, thank you. I wanted to make sure I understand what Mr. Herbert said about the importance of the successful consultation process. I totally understand that, and we wish that would happen in every case but it might not. It did not happen with Northern Gateway, as you have said, possibly because of the attitude of the proponent.
When people say it’s not a veto, that consent doesn’t mean a veto, the answer is that FPIC sets up a process that we are hopeful and even confident will work. If it doesn’t or if it’s not a win-win process, then the judgment of the First Nation leaders you work would be that the process failed and, therefore, the project should not go ahead.
I have a final supplementary question. If only win-win approaches should proceed, then it’s really the process that is the veto. Is that correct?
Mr. Herbert: I am not sure I understand, but let me see if I’ve got it for you.
The idea is that the process is supposed to be set up to allow good projects to go forward. With a process that allows for transparency and a proper understanding of what all three governments in our particular example would consider a good project, the process becomes the way to get to yes.
I am having a hard time with the processes of veto because they assume that all projects should happen and you just get to say no to them. Instead, what we should be doing is asking, “Which one of these projects is supposed to happen? Which one does the best? Which one provides the most benefits for the least environmental impacts? Which one appeals to a market condition better than others?”
We’re 20 or 25 years off some of the more extreme ways that some people, including myself, have suggested environmental impacts should go. Instead of being first past the post, it should be clumps. You should say, if there are five LNG facilities in the market, we’re going to give out three permits in the next five years. The best one wins, and make them compete. These are processes that allow the best to happen. That’s the whole point of an impact assessment as it’s done. It’s supposed to look at both social and economic benefits. You’re looking for good projects to go forward and poor projects not to go forward.
I don’t know if I am quite getting where you’re going or what you’re going for here, but I have a problem with the idea that all projects should happen unless they’re stopped.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your statements and your answers.
(The committee adjourned.)