Thank you.
Permitting and authorizations are an important feature for industry, and they are already provided for in the legislation. CAPP agrees with and supports the key issues that are raised—and you will hear about them today—by the Canadian Hydropower Association and the Canadian Electricity Association as well as the Forest Products Association of Canada, specifically in relation to conservation agreements about which we will not specifically speak, but they are important to us as well.
The five years of experience we've had now with the legislation convinces us that the existing permit and authorization system—the exemptions systems for incidental harm—are not working effectively. These exemptions and authorizations include permits and agreements under sections 73, 74, and 78, as well as the section 83 exemptions. Authorizations should be available on a multi-species and ecosystem basis and should be more accessible under existing approval processes. So when the legislation was first drafted, we were thinking entirely in terms of specific individual species, and I think we're finding we have to look at a broader spectrum of activity in an ecosystem.
We've done a considerable amount of work on trying to understand and to make the permitting process work. In fact, we started in our meetings with the department, and we set the B.C. Hydro example, which you may hear a bit about later, as the prototype of how to make this permitting process work. Unfortunately, three years later and after extensive discussion, in fact to the point where everybody agrees on a solution, when that is presented further up the line here in Ottawa, I understand the response we get back from the Department of Justice is that the act is not clear and does not provide the certainty that we're able to implement this permitting process the way everybody agrees to it. So we think there are some simple amendments required to enable the permitting process to work effectively.
This is very important to us and our industry for major projects like the Mackenzie gas project and for all oil sands projects. We have not implemented these yet, because we're at the approval stage, but we're truly looking for the first out of the gate, the B.C. Hydro example, to work for us. And as I say, in three years it has not been able to work. We think we understand why it's not working and we believe legislative changes will fix that. You will read about those in our detailed submission.
The timelines set out in SARA are unrealistic for larger, long-term industrial projects. Resource development projects often have a life span of twenty to fifty years, and a simple three- to five-year cycle both is inefficient and fails to provide the regulatory certainty that industry requires to make major capital investments. That short-term cycle, I think, initially had in mind specific scientific research type projects, and we've taken that concept and tried to apply that to a wildlife management legislation, which has become now a regulatory regime for all activity in the wilderness and simply doesn't apply to major resource development projects.
So again, a simple reconsideration of those timeframes would help that part of the act work effectively.
Finally, the stewardship activities you've heard about from agriculture are also very important to resource developers and should be the focus of our efforts under SARA legislation. In particular, conservation agreements must be available to us and be utilized to deal with creative solutions, but at the same time, then, they must offer an opportunity to ensure compliance with the legislation itself. We believe, as agriculture does, that species at risk will benefit more from voluntary measures from all directly affected parties than from an enforcement-based approach.
Speaking about recovery planning, again, five years of experience with the act has taught us that the original design of the act, the command and control, legalistic, enforcement-based approach, will not achieve the objectives of the act. The unreasonable and unattainable goals that were set in the legislation for the government to write recovery strategies for each and every species in a very short time period have been a major subject of frustration to all parties and to the government itself in these first five years.
Neither the science nor the resources existed to reasonably accomplish these goals in the timeframe that was set by the legislation. This reality has resulted in frustration on the part of all parties and in difficulties for industry in obtaining project approvals. I think when we got into seriously considering this challenge, we realized that a legislative model based on individual species is not workable. Though it is convenient, clear, and legally enforceable—and this is what I say is the very simplistic command and control model—and very efficient from a legal point of view, it is just not workable because it does not reflect the complexity of ecosystems and the interface among species. This requires, we believe, a minor amendment to change the focus of the legislation from individual species in recovery planning to an ecosystem approach and a multi-species approach.
Finally, many species are listed both provincially and federally, providing an opportunity for the efficient use of resources to specifically allow for the use of provincial recovery documents in the administration of SARA. What we have seen over the years is that the courts have interpreted the legislation to require discrete processes for each statutory decision-maker to exercise his or her responsibility. It will simply take an amendment to legislation to enable a more collaborative, efficient process.
I think the economic realities of the day that we've seen in the last year or so compel us to be much more creative than we have been in the past. We have to recognize that this legislation was drafted five years ago, but it really started 10 years ago, with a mindset of a completely different economic reality. What we are proposing today is that we be much more creative, much more efficient, and much more collaborative in the way we administer this legislation and this program.
Thank you.