THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, December 9, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met with videoconference this day at 6:31 p.m. [ET] to study the subject matter of those elements contained in Divisions 32, 40, 41 and 42 of Part 5 of Bill C-15, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on November 4, 2025.
Senator Joan Kingston (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: My name is Joan Kingston, and I am the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
Before we begin, I would like to ask all the senators to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. Please make sure to keep your earpiece away from the microphone at all times. Don’t touch the microphone. Activation and deactivation will be managed by the console operator. Finally, please avoid handling your earpiece while your microphone is on. Earpieces should remain on the ear or placed on the designated sticker at each seat. Thank you for your cooperation.
I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
Now I would like to ask the other senators to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Verner: Josée Verner from Quebec, deputy chair of the committee.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
Senator Aucoin: Réjean Aucoin from Nova Scotia.
[English]
Senator Lewis: Todd Lewis, Saskatchewan.
Senator Fridhandler: Daryl Fridhandler, Alberta.
[Translation]
Senator Galvez: Rosa Galvez from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Arnot: David Arnot, Saskatchewan, one of the best oil-producing provinces in the whole country.
The Chair: Along with other things, minerals; you name it, right?
Senator Arnot: Keep going.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. I would like to welcome everybody here today and those who are listening online at sencanada.ca.
Today, pursuant to the order of reference received from the Senate on November 26, we are well into our study on the subject matter of those elements contained in Divisions 32, 40, 41 and 42 of Part 5 of Bill C-15, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on November 4, 2025.
I would like to welcome Mark Winfield, Professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University. Thank you for being with us tonight and for coming online a little earlier than was planned. You might hear bells in the background. It’s not a ringing in your ears. There are bells here for something that is happening in the Senate that likely won’t interfere with anything we’re doing here.
I welcome you, and if you would like to get started with some brief remarks for about five minutes, that would be great, and then we’ll move into questions.
Mark S. Winfield, Professor, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University, as an individual: Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank you and the committee members for the opportunity to speak to you this evening.
I am speaking to you from Tkaronto on the treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. I also note that the territory I am on in southern Ontario is subject to the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region.
As mentioned, I am currently a professor of environmental and urban change at York University, but in previous iterations, I was involved in the development of the current version of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA, going back to the original CEPA review in 1995, including its provisions around equivalency and administrative agreements. I’ve also written extensively on federal-provincial relations around the environment, and currently I am co-editing a volume entitled Carbon Federalism: Climate Governance for Canada in a Disrupted World for the University of Toronto Press.
I have been asked to speak to you this evening regarding the proposed amendments contained in Bill C-15, the Budget 2025 Implementation Bill, to the equivalency agreement provisions of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, specifically to amend CEPA Part 1, Section 10, regarding equivalency agreements with other levels of government in Canada.
Under agreements made through this section, regulations made under CEPA regarding CEPA Schedule 1 substances — that is the list of toxic substances — environmental emergencies, environmental management on federal lands and international air and water pollution do not apply in the jurisdiction with which an equivalency agreement is made, provided that the jurisdiction has laws in place considered equivalent to the CEPA regulations in question.
There is also a requirement that the jurisdiction in question have provisions similar to those in CEPA in its own environmental legislation, permitting members of the public to request investigations of alleged offences under the relevant jurisdictional legislation.
The amendments in Bill C-15 would add the words “equivalent in effect” to section 10(3)(a) of CEPA. The implication would be that the regulations of another Canadian jurisdiction would only need to be equivalent in effect rather than equivalent in specific requirements to the CEPA regulations in question.
The equivalency agreement provisions of CEPA have always been an area of concern. Specifically, there have been long‑standing concerns that the provisions are seen, potentially, by other levels of government as offering a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card with respect to federal regulations made under CEPA. There have been specific concerns around the possibility of “paper compliance” — that jurisdictions may adopt regulations similar in language to the relevant federal regulations in order to obtain an agreement but then fail to engage in effective enforcement.
There are also concerns that the federal government loses any direct perspective on what may actually be happening in the field in the areas covered by the regulations, and that could include identifying areas where there are needs for updating or modification.
The use of equivalency agreements was initially quite limited. There was one with Alberta, principally related to pulp and paper regulations dating back to the 1990s, but we have now seen a new round of agreements related to climate change, specifically around the federal methane release regulations and the greenhouse gas emission regulations for electricity, particularly the coal-fired electricity phase-out regulations and the Clean Electricity Regulations.
There have been long-standing concerns about the lack of clear criteria for the establishment of equivalency agreements, not just in relation to the provisions of the provincial or jurisdictional regulations but also whether there is capacity to actually administer and enforce the equivalent regulations. There have also been long-standing concerns about the quality and detail of reporting activities under these agreements. The reporting in the annual reports under CEPA, for example, is very minimal.
In this context, I would argue that the proposed amendments to section 10 of CEPA to add the words “equivalent in effect” would actually widen the level of discretion around the use of these agreements under CEPA. The current wording assumes the provisions of subnational governmental regulations need to parallel the substance of the provisions of the relevant CEPA regulations. A standard of “equivalent in effect” is much looser, and it could encompass a very wide range of provisions, which may or may not be as effective as regulations made under CEPA. I would not support the proposed amendment for that reason.
More broadly, I concur with the long-standing recommendations from the House of Commons committee, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development and various other academics that these provisions need to be strengthened in terms of criteria but also in terms of reporting requirements.
I see my time is about done, so I will leave it there. I would be pleased to respond to any questions members might have regarding my remarks.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Arnot: Thank you, Professor Winfield. Under the rubric of equivalency agreements versus environmental integrity, from your research, what major risk does this pose to maintaining consistent national environmental protection standards, especially considering variable provincial capacity and political pressures?
Second, how should legislation ensure that environmental regulation remains adaptive and responsive over time, and particularly in the context of evolving scientific understanding and increasing climate risk?
I also have three additional questions, but I’m going to have them communicated to you by the clerk. I’m going to ask you to put them in writing please, sir, to the clerk if you have the time to do so. I would like you to verbally answer those first two questions if you can, please.
Mr. Winfield: Thank you. The risks here are multi-fold. They are long-standing. These are things that were identified in the original CEPA review 30 years ago. There are concerns about the level of rigour applied where provincial or territorial regulations — at this point, it has all been provincial; there are no examples of equivalency agreements with territories or First Nations — whether or not the provincial regulations are actually equivalent to the CEPA regulations.
There are also questions around this get-out-of-jail-free-card dynamic. This means the CEPA regulations don’t apply in the province in question, but there have been long-standing questions about whether the provinces then effectively enforce their own regulations, and that can be a consequence of a mixture of political will and capacity.
There are concerns, too, already, even with the existing language, about whether this can be a way to modify nationally applicable requirements. There will remain the concern that simply the reporting is very thin. If you look at the CEPA annual reports, they just say, “Well, the province in question gave us a report about what they did, but it doesn’t say anything about what that report contained.” So there is a range of concerns in relation to these agreements in a sense that it creates a potential dynamic of more of a patchwork, depending on the standard or rigour being applied.
On adaptive and responsive regulation, this is a more complicated question in many ways. Part of the problem, I would argue, is that in some ways we’ve gummed up the system so much with regulatory management requirements that you get a kind of ossification happening. Even where we know a change needs to happen, it can take so many memoranda or trips to cabinet, that things don’t happen. I remember the executive director under CEPA at Environment and Climate Change Canada, or ECCC, telling me, “Regulating a toxic substance under CEPA involved at least 13 trips to cabinet.” That’s going to make responsiveness very difficult. We’re talking time frames of years as opposed to months or less.
Senator Arnot: I really appreciate that. I have three additional questions which the clerk will send to you. I really appreciate it if you could answer those questions as well. Thank you for your time.
Senator McCallum: I have a speech to make at 7:10; that’s why I’ve asked to be moved ahead. Thank you for your information and your comments.
If the government has been given the ability to disregard the majority of laws, do we need these amendments? Can you comment on the need to consider customary laws of First Nations, some of which are based on natural law? Because environment is not under federal or provincial regulation, but customary law has always had environment as the main priority.
Mr. Winfield: Thank you. On the first question, I’m presuming it’s in relation to the provisions of Bill C-5, Part 2. At one level, yes, because of the extraordinary scope of discretion given by that legislation to the cabinet, they in some ways can do almost anything in relation to projects in the national interest. I’m not sure I’m in favour of that. It’s better that these sorts of arrangements be structured through a more specific legislative enactment, as is the case with CEPA, where precisely clearer rules about when these types of what are effectively a kind of exemption to federal regulations under CEPA can be granted. That is a clear set of rules and also reporting requirements.
So I would prefer this happen within the framework of CEPA than through the Bill C-5 frameworks, because they are so broad and so unlimited.
On the second question around the role of Indigenous law and customary Indigenous law, I’m not an expert in this field. I have colleagues who work in this field more directly. This is clearly an evolving area of law and of governance practice.
In the context of CEPA, one of the gaps here is we haven’t really engaged with how those two legal systems will interact around the types of issues that arise around CEPA. We are evolving potentially in that direction. We’re seeing some of this around impact assessment, for example, less so in relation to things like toxic substances, which require capacities which are still in the process of emerging and being developed within First Nations communities. But one would hope that as things evolve, we see more of the capacity to administer in these types of areas on the part of First Nations communities themselves and Indigenous communities. But at this stage, we are not there yet. This has been an area, again, going all the way back to the original CEPA review when Mr. Caccia was leading it that these issues came up. And we’ve not been able to make more progress than we have in these areas.
Senator McCallum: The reason I brought that up is because I met an international lawyer. I was looking at the environmental stuff, and I was reading a book. He said, “I work in South America, and I urge you to tell First Nations in Canada to use customary law, because that’s what they’re doing in South America and they are winning their court cases.” That was why I brought it up.
Mr. Winfield: Yes, this is a very actively evolving area of law in Canada, and I think the courts are wrestling with some of these very questions as things move along.
Senator McCallum: Okay, thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Mr. Winfield, you are quite critical of provincial and municipal accountability when it comes to equivalency agreements.
Can you explain to me how removing the word “provision” in relation to equivalent in effect rather than using “equivalent provisions” . . . You say there is little accountability; do you really think removing or adding a word like that will make a difference? You seem to be making a much broader criticism of the issue; am I wrong?
[English]
Mr. Winfield: My own view on this is that, given the context within which these amendments are appearing — and I’m thinking, in particular, about some of the language in the Canada-Alberta MOU, where you see the “in effect” language being used — that’s part of the source of concern. The “in effect” language changes the standard of equivalency and provides what could be described as more flexibility, although flexibility can be a very flexible thing, depending on the context that we’re talking about.
From the viewpoint of all provinces, particularly those that may have relatively strong environmental management regimes in place already, there are strong reasons to want the bar to be relatively high in terms of who is effectively allowed to not comply with the federal regulations in terms of their own regulations. We don’t want to create a situation where there is potentially effective downward pressure in terms of what the actual standard is.
That’s really the concern: What counts as equivalent in effect? Does that mean law and regulation? Does it mean something like a carbon pricing regime instead?
The current provisions would seem to imply to me that to be equivalent, it needs to be a regulation or a legal instrument that has a compulsory aspect to it. “In effect” could open the door to all manner of different things. Without clear criteria, that would concern me greatly in terms of where this could lead us.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: So you gave the specific example of the Alberta-Canada MOU. You are concerned that an equivalency agreement on carbon pricing, which is expected to come into effect on April 1, 2026, will not be binding, and that these regulations are too loose, is that right?
[English]
Mr. Winfield: I think “loose” would be a good word in terms of what the standard to which, in that particular case, Alberta would be held to in order to be considered equivalent to the federal regime, particularly in that case. Alberta, in the last few days, has actually significantly weakened its industrial carbon pricing regime relative to what it was before, even within the province itself. So one has to be worried, then, about what standard will ultimately be applied there. We’re in a zone of great discretion as it is. We’ve already had this happen around carbon pricing for the industrial carbon pricing regimes.
So we need to be very careful about how much variation and rigour we allow, because what we don’t want is some provinces to have weaker regimes than others. Particularly in the case of Quebec, for example, it’s tied to their California relationship, as well. That provides a certain grounding. But that’s not the case necessarily in other provinces.
So, again, one would want a relatively rigorous standard to be applied before the federal government steps back, because, otherwise, there is this risk that, in the course of negotiation, the standards may not be what we want them to be.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: I will continue on the same point. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it more rigorous, because the term “equivalent in effect” may remain in the bill? If the legislation or regulations could be rewritten to ensure there is a way to measure equivalency, would you have any suggestions on how to make it more rigorous?
[English]
Mr. Winfield: Yes, I think there are a number of things that could be done to set a more rigorous standard. I’m actually looking at the 1995 report of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, and there are actually provisions here already suggesting quite specific language. I’m looking around Recommendation 126:
That provincial environmental quality standards or release limits must be at least equal to the federal standard. The measurement and test procedures need to be comparable to those developed under CEPA. Standards must be enforced in a comparable manner to CEPA.
So these would be more specific requirements. One of the issues that consistently came up and has come up is the provincial capacity to enforce these types of regulations. In a larger jurisdiction, like Ontario, Quebec or British Columbia, that may not be such a problem, but when some of these provisions were written, some provinces were engaging in enormous budget cuts to their environmental agencies. So there are serious questions about whether we are handing off to nothing in terms of provincial capacity when we’re doing this. So there needs to be some test there.
We could be much more specific in terms of the reporting requirements, as well. If you look at the annual reports under CEPA, all it says is that we received a report from the province about their enforcement activities, but it gives absolutely no information about how many inspections there were and what resources might have been dedicated to ensuring these rules at the provincial level were being followed.
So those sorts of things could be helpful in providing for both a more rigorous standard of equivalency and also greater accountability and transparency so that once an equivalency agreement is in place, it doesn’t become a kind of black hole where we don’t know what’s happening in that space anymore.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: How would removing the automatic five‑year expiry of administrative agreements and equivalency agreements affect the accountability mechanism? What would be the potential impact on public transparency and opportunities for public comment if there is no longer a time limit? Should this be reviewed after five years?
[English]
Mr. Winfield: Eliminating the time limit would be very problematic for a variety of reasons.
First, one of the earlier questions was raising questions about circumstances changing, situations evolving, our understanding of problems becoming better or clearer, or new problems being understood better. You need to have some kind of review and a renewal process around this to make sure that you’re keeping up with what’s happening.
Second, the five-year limit is there for a reason. It probably means you cover an electoral cycle, so you can account for the possibility of a change in government in a province or a territory. You may have a very different attitude toward the enforcement of these rules by an incoming government compared to the one that might have signed the original agreement.
Again, it would be very important to be able to go back and review the situation to make sure that the provincial partner on this doesn’t simply walk away from whatever rules there were or from their enforcement.
I would say the five-year rule is probably quite a good one in terms of making sure we’re staying on top of what’s happening at the provincial level but also staying on top of how the world is changing and how we might need then to revisit this arrangement and the rules that the arrangement exists around.
Senator Aucoin: Thank you.
Senator Galvez: Professor Winfield, I heard you talk and I saw your CV. I would like to pick your brains and have an overall view of what is happening here today with this bill we are studying.
You know that we have amendments to the Red Tape Reduction Act, that we have amendments to CEPA, two types of amendments, but then there are also amendments to the Competition Act in order to retract the greenwashing provisions.
If I give you some lenses, how will you see these changes? I am a little bit tired of studying things in silos. Because we are senators, we have to see the unintended consequences. I want to have an overview of what is happening here. If you use the lenses of lack of transparency and accountability, the undermining of the safety measures on the public interest, the erosion of parliamentary oversight and the risk of legal challenges, what is your opinion with respect to the amendments proposed in this bill, with respect to the points that I just mentioned?
Mr. Winfield: The situation has to be concerning on multiple fronts. The amendments contained in the bill affect a wide range of legislation and, in some cases, in fairly profound ways. But having it all together in a budget omnibus bill makes it very difficult to give the legislation appropriate scrutiny. It makes it difficult for members of Parliament to ask questions specifically around things or even to challenge or oppose certain provisions. From that macro perspective or procedural perspective, it is concerning already.
In terms of the substance and where we’re going, one has to be concerned around all the things you mentioned, senator: around transparency, accountability, the protection of the public interest. There are some very serious concerns about where the red tape reduction legislation, for example, is going. There is a scope of exemptions that can be provided there around things that have very direct impacts on human health and the environment — food, drugs, pesticides, chemicals. Almost everything within the federal jurisdiction that the federal government regulates from health, safety and environmental perspectives potentially falls under these exemption provisions, around which the rules seem to be very thin.
One has to be very worried both in terms of the weighting of the public interest versus private interest that is being moved forward here and also in terms of the implications around transparency and accountability, because, given the proliferation of special arrangements that could arise out of these provisions, it will be very difficult for parliamentarians, for the Auditor General and for members of the public and the media to even keep track of what’s going on.
It starts to even raise questions around equal treatment before the law. There is a range of concerns being raised here about where this takes us and what sort of governance models we are moving toward.
Senator Galvez: Thank you so much. Just about the risk of legal challenges, if we give exceptions — as you are saying — then we will be choosing winners and losers before the regulations, rules, laws and international trade. What is the probability that this brings us to a high risk of legal challenges?
Mr. Winfield: That depends greatly on the context within which we are thinking. Our problem here, in some ways, is that both the equivalency provisions and the red tape reduction provisions of Bill C-15 in some ways raise similar questions around a level playing field — that there be a common set of rules for everybody and that there be no special rules set because somebody has access or connections, and other people don’t. We would tend to expect that economically powerful interests will have that kind of access and connection, not members of the public.
That’s an underlying concern. Specific avenues of legal challenge would be context-specific. In general, the way the international trade regime works is it is less worried about exempting people. It is more worried about establishing rules that control behaviour which may affect investment.
We would have to think about that. Ultimately, we are around certain sets of rules because of international obligations — less on the trade side and more on the environmental side. We have agreed to rules around endangered species, rules around hazardous waste and recycled materials and toxic chemicals. We would want to keep an eye on whether we are fulfilling our treaty obligations around those sorts of things. Again, this would be fact-, situation- and concept-specific in terms of actual legal risks.
Senator Galvez: Thank you.
Senator Arnot: Thank you, Professor Winfield. The clerk actually asked me to put these questions on the record for the public and my colleagues in the Senate. Sir, you’ve actually answered some of these questions, but if you feel you can, it would be really helpful to the committee if you would.
The last three questions are on transparency, public confidence and accountability. Under that rubric, what mechanisms, in your view, are essential to ensure transparent reporting, independent oversight and public access to enforcement and compliance data under delegated CEPA regimes to prevent regulatory erosion and maintain public trust?
Also, I should say that these questions will be given to the clerk, and she will send them to you electronically. We’re not expecting an answer tonight is what I’m saying, unless you feel you would like to tackle one, but I suggest maybe not.
Number 4 is on cumulative risk and industrial project oversight, sir. Many large-scale energy and resource projects — offshore petroleum, liquid natural gas manufacturing — may fall under agreements enabled by Division 42. How might delegated enforcement regimes affect oversight of cumulative environmental risks? What safeguards should be in place to ensure robust evaluation and monitoring?
Under the rubric of federal climate goals and regulatory coherence, in the context of Canada’s emissions reduction targets for 2035 and 2050 and climate commitments, does shifting environmental enforcement responsibility through equivalency agreements risk undermining national coherence?
The last question is this: What design principles would you recommend to reconcile delegated environmental regulation with Canada’s long-term climate and environmental objectives?
Thank you, Professor Winfield, for being here. Hopefully, you will be able to provide some written answers to those questions if you have the time. It would be greatly appreciated by the committee. Thank you very much.
Mr. Winfield: Yes. Thank you.
Senator Galvez: Professor Winfield, I find that some of these amendments may put the laws into incoherence or contradiction. For example, in CEPA, when we modernized it recently, we added the right to a healthy environment. Now that we are amending CEPA with Part 5, Division 42, how will these live together? Will they be in conflict?
Mr. Winfield: There is a risk of a conflict, certainly. This goes back to the question of whether when these sorts of delegations occur, there is the same result in terms of both legal requirements and national environmental performance. If we start to have a patchwork of arrangements where the effective result in different provinces is quite different, those principles that were added to CEPA around the right to a healthy environment are potentially going to be undermined.
That is part of the risk here — that we end up with what looks like a set of nationally binding standards around things, particularly toxic substances, which, clearly, by definition, pose a risk to human health and/or the environment, but in reality, we end up with more and more of a patchwork where some provinces may be vigorous about enforcing the rules, while others are not. That’s going to undermine the principle of some common sense that all Canadians are entitled to a healthy environment, regardless of where they live. Potentially a contradiction is being built in here, yes.
Senator Galvez: Thank you.
The Chair: There are no further questions, except for the ones that Senator Arnot has posed. They will be sent to you. Thank you very much for agreeing to give written responses to those. We appreciate you being here tonight, and we wish you all the best of the holiday season. Thanks again.
(The committee adjourned.)