Environmental groups say the Liberal government is giving up its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) through proposed amendments to the federal Impact Assessment Act (IAA).
“We are concerned that the government is not fully living up to its responsibility to protect Canadians and the environment from the climate impacts of major projects,” the groups wrote [pdf] Wednesday in an open letter to cabinet.
“The federal government’s renunciation of jurisdiction over nationally significant GHG emissions under the Act would seriously set back climate action in Canada,” stated the letter, signed by 14 national or regional environmental organizations, including two environmental law groups.
“Major projects captured by the Impact Assessment Act can cause extremely high levels of GHG emissions,” the groups added. “Most obviously, oil and gas projects are massive contributors to national GHG emissions. While some projects’ emissions may be regulated elsewhere, federal authorities can—and must—retain the ability to say no to GHGs that would occur at a scale that would hinder our ability to meet our climate targets.”
The changes, which are included in the government’s legislation to implement the 2024 budget, are a response to a Supreme Court ruling in October that said the act ventured too far into provincial jurisdiction, The Canadian Press reports.
The decision was one of two big court losses for the Liberals on the environment over the last year, the other being a Federal Court decision in November that found Ottawa overstepped by declaring all plastics to be toxic, rather than individual plastic types.
This week’s proposed revisions to the IAA would require an assessment for projects with “a non-negligible adverse change” to the environment. But the groups say the government has gone further than the Supreme Court required.
The amendments would remove federal impact assessments for projects that would cause air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions, that crosses provincial boundaries. Instead, those assessments would only be necessary for projects that had an impact on federal lands, areas outside Canada, or interprovincial waters.
“The federal government has a strong case for jurisdiction over serious cross-border air pollution,” Ecojustice lawyer Josh Ginsberg told CP in an email. “They should be making that case, not running away from it.”
“The Supreme Court of Canada took issue with how the federal government asserted jurisdiction over climate under the Impact Assessment Act, but not the fact that they could do so,” Anna Johnston, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, said in a media release Thursday morning. “Instead of a simple fix, the government is throwing the baby out with the bath water.”
“The role of the federal government is crucial in protecting the public interest,” added Jamie Kneen, national co-lead at MiningWatch Canada. “Beyond the uncertainty created by a patchwork of inconsistent provincial requirements, the provinces are simply not equipped, or not willing, to take environmental assessment seriously.”
CP notes the government has been under withering and sustained criticism from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and multiple premiers on environmental policy, in particular the federal price on pollution.
And with Poilievre’s Conservatives enjoying a healthy lead in the polls, the political landscape is dramatically different than when the act became law in 2019.
Neither the NDP nor the federal Green Party support the proposed amendments.
“My NDP colleagues and I are deeply concerned that greenhouse gas emissions will no longer be considered in impact assessments,” MP Laurel Collins (NDP-Victoria) wrote in a letter to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May called it a “quick and dirty” fix to the law, one her party cannot support.
Guilbeault, himself a former environmental activist, said the changes were made to ensure full compliance with the high court’s decision.
“I respectfully disagree with my ex-colleagues of the environmental movement,” he said.
A spokesperson for Guilbeault didn’t respond to an email asking how the government would regulate GHG emissions under the revised Act.
Stewart Elgie, director of the University of Ottawa’s Institute of the Environment, said the government is taking a “big step backwards” on environmental law, ceding ground to the provinces on cross-border pollution that Ottawa has been regulating for decades.
Even the environmental assessment law passed by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which reduced its scope and expanded ministerial discretion, still covered cross-border pollution, he said.
“So they are doing less than the Harper government did on environmental assessment,” he said, adding that he meant only as it pertains to cross-border emissions.
But other laws have come into effect since the IAA was originally passed in 2019, Guilbeault said.
“We didn’t have methane regulations in Canada, a zero-emissions vehicle standard, a clean fuel standard in Canada,” he said.
“All of these things have been developed since the Impact Assessment Act was adopted.”
The main body of this report was published by The Canadian Press on May 2, 2024.
