Environment Committee on Nov. 15th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Colleagues, I call this meeting to order.

I want to thank the witnesses for being with us here today.

We have a translation service if you want to avail yourselves of that.

Each witness or witness group will be given up to 10 minutes to present.

We will begin with Madam Arlene Kwasniak, for up to 10 minutes.

You may proceed. Thank you.

[Professor Arlene Kwasniak, Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

Thank you.

First I wish to thank you for the invitation to address this committee. I am happy and honoured to be here.

What happens to the CEAA as a result of this committee's deliberations will strongly influence the kind of federation we in fact have in Canada and the kind of environmental and social legacy we leave to our children and their children. As you know, you have a lot of responsibility to the citizens of Canada--the common citizens--and their children and your children.

In my submission I will largely make and substantiate a plea that in this seven-year review, the federal government, for the sake of the public interest and the sake of Canadian democracy, reverse its retreat from its role and responsibilities in federal environmental assessment. Instead it should strengthen and improve federal environmental assessment presence, processes, and legislative authority.

To these ends, this submission will cover the following few relevant areas.

First is why we need strong federal environmental assessment in Canada. Second is why we should avoid the myth and trap of overlap and duplication rhetoric. Third is why a federal project approach will not work in the Canadian federal democracy.

Finally, I will make a very brief comment on the Keystone project, because I think it teaches us some lessons about doing environmental assessment right the first time.

Why do we need strong federal environmental assessment? As we know, in Canada the federal government may assess a project when it falls under its constitutional jurisdiction and some other conditions are met. The constitutional jurisdiction is exclusive in Canada, meaning that if the federal government has the exclusive right to regulate something, no other level of government may do it. The areas that are most important in environmental assessment are fisheries, navigation, migratory birds, federal lands, aboriginal interests, nuclear facilities, and interprovincial and international matters.

Having the exclusive right to regulate in these and other areas, only the federal government can in fact, law, and from a political and moral perspective do an effective job in assessing these impacts.

It's “in fact” because it's only the federal government, which has to do the regulation in the end, that knows what it needs in order to regulate; knows what it needs in order to set out monitoring provisions; to do follow-up; and to put in any adaptive management provisions.

It's “in law” because only the federal government is accountable for its areas of jurisdiction. It cannot delegate its matters to the provinces. The provinces simply cannot do it. If the federal government doesn't do it, it will not get done.

It's “from a moral and policy perspective” because only the federal government, again, is politically and morally accountable to the people with respect to these resources. As the federal government retreats from this, I would say that it also retreats from its responsibilities under our constitution, and our federal democracy is thereby eroded.

I'd like to say that this is not missed. In Calgary there are discussions about the federal government retreating from its federal responsibilities, not just among the people who are occupying Calgary but also among intelligent academics and others.

Moving on to overlap and duplication--I've written about this in my submission and elsewhere--I basically want to address the fact that we always hear this rhetoric about overlap and duplication: we have to get rid of it, so let's get rid of the federal government.

Well, as a matter of fact, overlap is not a bad thing. Under our constitution, there are bound to be overlapping issues that are of interest to both the federal and the provincial governments because of the way our division of powers work. There may be a fisheries issue with respect to a project, and there may be all kinds of provincial issues. So overlap is not bad in and of itself. It just is. Unless one is complaining about the constitution, one really shouldn't complain about overlap.

Duplication, of course, is something different. That's when a proponent or someone is asked to do something more than once, perhaps in different formats, and so on. Duplication is something that can be dealt with. I think the federal government and the provincial governments have tried to deal with duplication. I think there are more things that can be done, such as better harmonized agreements, a new federal coordination regulation, which we've been promised for eight years, and effective dealing with late triggering within the federal family to deal with federal duplication.

The fact that there is overlap and duplication should not be a reason for the federal government to recede from environmental assessment or make environmental assessment less effective. There are ways of dealing with that duplication. Overlap just is.

With respect to a project list approach, I understand that the federal government is looking at a project list approach to replace the trigger approach, which we now have. I would like to say that I don't think this is going to work. Because of the way our constitution works, there are projects that fall under federal jurisdiction unless, for example, it's completely on federal lands or a couple of other exceptions. Even if you had a project list approach, you would still need a trigger, so why do away with the trigger in the first place?

Only looking at projects of national significance or the like, such as under the NEPA in the United States or under the Australian legislation, just doesn't work here because in both of those countries their constitutions are different. They don't have exclusive legislation over important things like fisheries and navigations seated in the federal government. There's more of a concurrent type of power, where the federal government will prevail if there's a conflict. I think you have to take into account these constitutional differences when you're thinking about a project-based approach. I would be happy to talk about that more.

Finally, I have a couple of comments on the Keystone pipeline. As we know, President Obama recently announced that he is going to delay that decision, and he wants to study the environmental, social, and health impacts on Americans. As I'm sure everyone here knows, the environmental impacts of that project have been studied quite extensively both in Canada and in the United States. However, the environmental assessments—especially the one under the National Environmental Policy Act in the United States—were very roundly criticized by not just environmentalists, but by farmers, ranchers, and a lot of other common people because the route around the Ogallala aquifer just wasn't seriously considered. Industry's evidence was pretty much just taken for the way things were, and so the assessment was determined on the basis of the pipeline going through the aquifer.

What we've ended up with now, because of the incomplete environmental assessment, is the mess we have. Not only do we have the decision being delayed—some people like that, some people don't—but we also have this turning into a major battle having to do with climate change and dirty oil. I think if a proper environmental assessment had been done in the first place without the shortcuts, the Keystone pipeline would have been a done deal and it would have avoided the Ogallala aquifer, which is probably going to happen, but probably not for two or three years.

I'm finished. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you so much.

Next we have Mr. Peter Usher, for up to 10 minutes.

[Dr. Peter Usher, P.J. Usher Consulting Services, As an Individual]

I'd like to thank the committee for asking me to participate in this work.

I've had the honour of serving on review panels for over eight years and have participated in review processes for forty. My written submission has addressed what major project review panels are intended to accomplish and the challenges they face, the critical role of monitoring and follow-up once a project is approved, and the scientific framework and resources required to ensure the success of both.

My concern is with outcomes and what you as legislators can do to improve those outcomes.

Major projects are elevated to a panel review precisely because they are not routine. The core questions a major project review should address are these. Does the project require the application of technology and methods that are novel or are untested in the receiving environment? What are the risks of accidents or malfunctions in terms of probability of occurrence and severity of consequences?

A major project review, then, is not simply a planning approval hoop. It provides guidance to proponents and regulators on how to ensure that the objectives of the CEA Act are realized over the life of a project, from the time a shovel goes into the ground until decommissioning and abandonment, and it ensures public input in doing that. It must also consider the cumulative impacts of a project with other developments, and applying a contribution-to-sustainability approach ensures that its economic and social benefits are taken into account--not only short-term benefits, but durable and lasting ones.

Now, as the CEAA representatives have already told you, panels have the statutory obligation that was made clear by court cases to fulfill all the requirements of CEAA, and it's for them to be satisfied in each case that they have all the information they need to report back to the minister.

There are other obligations concerning both product and process that a panel must meet by law. I invite you to be aware of those with respect to the three questions that you've already been asked to consider, one of which is whether there ought to be mandatory time limits. I have to tell you personally as a panel member that I would have welcomed anything that would have allowed me to return to my family, my home, and my work sooner rather than later. I'm sure that every panel member with whom I have served would heartily endorse that view; however, it is a public process and its participants have both legal rights and reasonable expectations that must be addressed.

The process, once begun, has certain required steps. The rules of procedure must be within established guidelines and legal norms. Motions on procedure or substance must be given due consideration. If a proponent chooses to postpone the proceedings, the panel cannot compel it to do otherwise. If there is a court-imposed injunction on the panel proceedings, the panel must abide by it. If the panel does not fully address its mandate, it may be subject to challenge. If such challenges occur--and they have--then whatever time and money was saved taking shortcuts may be more than expended in the courts later on.

Is there room for improvement? Absolutely, and I've mentioned some improvements in my submission. The point is, I don't think you can accomplish any of them by simply imposing a time limit. I think those are matters for the agencies and responsible parties to deal with as a matter of their own policies and procedures.

You've already heard submissions on the need for review processes that go beyond the project-specific, such as strategic level and regional level reviews, and that may be a good idea, not least if it reduces the burden on panels for project reviews. If you go in that direction, I would caution you to provide substantial clarity on the distinction between strategic review and project review, and that clarity should address matters of how a review panel is constituted, how it should go about its business, and who would pay for it.

Recently, the NEB and the CNSC have been assigned greater authority over the environmental review of projects within their jurisdiction.

With due respect to their competence as regulatory bodies, it is not clear whether either of them, in their mandate, culture, or scope of expertise, has the means to consider cumulative impacts or project contribution to sustainability. They are in the business of regulating industrial operators, not making recommendations to governments. Therefore, the NEB and CNSC can add to but not substitute for major project review panels as they now exist.

I want to talk about monitoring and follow-up. They are crucial to ensuring that impact predictions are verified, prescribed mitigations are of demonstrated effectiveness, unanticipated adverse effects are detected and addressed, and there is a prescribed course of action to correct for significant adverse effects as they occur. Those are the fundamental means of ensuring that the review process actually produces tangible results with respect to environmental integrity and sustainability.

If effective monitoring and follow-up do not occur, the public benefit of reviewing major projects is much reduced. Effective monitoring and follow-up are a science program at their core. A similar base of data, information, and analysis is required by both a review panel and the agencies that will later be responsible for monitoring and follow-up over the life of the project. The science programs required for both purposes, especially to determine cumulative impacts, must by their nature be continuous over time; regional if not national in scope; and meet high, consistent, and recognized standards of measurement and analysis.

So who generates the required information, how does the science get done, and how does it get put on the table? There's no reason to expect individual proponents to conduct baseline scientific research or ongoing monitoring programs at a regional level. Proponent monitoring is properly limited to its own compliance with permitting and contractual conditions. But once government adopts a review panel's recommendation on mitigation, monitoring, and follow-up, it is government that must ensure it has the resources and can take the necessary follow-up action to improve the quality of future environmental assessments, as the act calls for. If governments can't do that, there's no basis for expecting the desired environmental quality outcomes or improvements specified by the CEA Act to be fulfilled.

Most of the time that our EA system has been in place, which is nearly 40 years, both review panels and the responsible authorities have relied heavily on the federal government's in-house science capacity to provide baseline monitoring, impact assessment expertise, and the scientific infrastructure for monitoring. Canada has for a long time maintained an internationally recognized standard of excellence in this regard, and we should be proud of it.

Unfortunately, much of this is now at risk. As a result, Canada's system of environmental review will be of decreasing effectiveness,. Government, on behalf of its citizens, must set the objectives and standards for scientific research and monitoring programs, and design them. The private sector, the universities, and citizen organizations can each contribute to that design and conduct much of the work, but none of those actors have the interest, incentive, or capacity to design and maintain permanent research and monitoring programs of national scope.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you, Mr. Usher.

Next, from the Canadian Construction Association, we have Mr. Barnes and Mr. Atkinson for 10 minutes.

[Michael Atkinson, President, Canadian Construction Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be giving most of my time to Mr. Barnes.

Good morning, and thank you very much for the invitation to appear. My name is Michael Atkinson. I'm the president of the Canadian Construction Association. I'm accompanied today by Mr. Jeff Barnes, who is a senior principal with Stantec Consulting Inc., a member of our association. Mr. Barnes has over 30 years of experience in environmental assessment across Canada and internationally, and he will be outlining our position on the CEA Act.

The Canadian Construction Association has some 17,000 member firms from coast to coast to coast across Canada, working primarily in the non-residential construction industry. As an industry, construction employs over 1.25 million Canadians and accounts for just under 7% of Canada's overall GDP.

I mention this to provide you with some context and to emphasize that when planned projects experience issues of uncertainty, unpredictability, and unnecessary duplication in relation to the environmental assessment process, our members and the economy of Canada are both adversely affected.

CCA members remain extremely supportive of environmental assessment and believe it can be an important contributor to sustainable development in Canada. But our membership is greatly concerned about matters relating to the efficiency and effectiveness of the administration of the CEA Act, and the uncertainty and unpredictability of its implementation. That is why our association fully supports the amendments the government made to the CEA Act through clause 20 of Bill C-9 and the issuance of the establishing timelines for comprehensive studies regulations. We are therefore before you today to provide some additional recommendations on the CEA Act for how it can be further improved.

I will now turn to Mr. Barnes to outline the position of the CCA, as outlined in more detail in our written submission.

[Jeff Barnes, Member, Board of Directors, Canadian Construction Association]

Thank you, Michael.

The CCA believes the Government of Canada should continue its effort to improve administration of federal environmental assessment, recognizing that substantial legislative reform is necessary.

We believe this committee should consider the following interrelated factors: the way in which the environmental assessments are triggered; the entrenchment of duplication, and the lack of reciprocity with and substitution by the processes of other jurisdictions; inherent process uncertainty and issues of timeliness; the wasted resources applied to the assessment of inconsequential projects, or those that have minimal environmental risk.

With regard to triggering, it's important to note that self-assessment remains a key principle of CEAA screenings. The triggering mechanism for environmental assessment remains a fundamental problem with the act. The act is presently triggered by one of four mechanisms, wherein the federal authority is responsible to undertake an environmental assessment if it's the proponent; will transfer land to facilitate its implementation; will provide funding; or issues a permit or authorization pursuant to a variety of legislation under the law list regulations.

The process to determine which federal authorities must undertake an environmental assessment as triggered by these mechanisms results in a gross waste of time and resources and offers no value from an environmental protection perspective. Further, the assessment of projects by different agencies leads to an unnecessary diffusion of responsibility and inconsistency in application of the law.

Thus, the recent amendments making the agency responsible for the coordination of comprehensive studies are excellent. This should be done for screenings as well, in our view, provided that overall, fewer of them are done.

We believe that coupled with centralizing responsibility, a list-based approach to deciding which projects require assessment and at what level--analogous to the approach of international financial institutions and several provinces in Canada--would improve both efficiency and consistency and eliminate the bureaucratic wasteful process.

The second related matter of interest to our members pertains to duplication and the limited ability to recognize reciprocity and substitution between jurisdictions. As an organization, CCA feels it does not make sense for a federal environmental assessment to be triggered if a comparable environmental assessment is being conducted by another jurisdiction; if it is triggered based solely on the issuance of a permit, or the transfer of land or funding to another jurisdiction; if the project is of little environmental consequence and unlikely to result in significant environmental effects; or if it will have no significant transboundary environmental effects.

For example, a simple Fisheries Act authorization for a small component of a project, such as a culvert on a road to a mine, or a federally funded project, such as a highway, that is otherwise being fully assessed by a province should not result in a broadly scoped duplicative federal environmental assessment. There is no value in the federal government duplicating the effort and mandate of other jurisdictions.

CCA members believe a solution to this challenge of duplication would be the development of a national framework for environmental assessment. The federal government needs to work with provinces, territories, and other jurisdictions to ensure equivalency, reciprocity, and substitution, to facilitate it across Canada to minimize duplication. The fundamental objective would be one project, one assessment.

Such a practice would simplify scoping, improve the timeliness of assessments, and permit governments to better employ limited resources where they are needed most. A list-based approach would also ensure that federal environmental assessments, when triggered, are respectful of the existence of other tools for the achievement of sustainable development, including policy, strategic environmental assessment, legislation, guidance, environmental management systems, and codes of practice.

At CCA we remain concerned that the bar for requiring federal environmental assessment is currently very low. We are doing thousands of environmental assessments under CEAA every year, many of which are for projects that are inconsequential or will have minimal environmental effects.

For example, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, in a study entitled “Federal Screenings: An Analysis based on information from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Registry Internet Site”, found that of 2,259 screenings reviewed in 2004, “over 90% dealt with projects that appeared unlikely to cause more than minor adverse environmental effects or pose more than minor environmental risks”.

I would like to make a point that is obvious, yet unrecognized by most. The birth of environmental assessment in the 1960s and 1970s arose from the recognition that society needed to include environmental considerations when planning projects. It was a broad-brush tool, aimed at addressing a significant societal problem. Since that time, society has supplemented this early measure, passing environmental laws and developing environmental standards, codes of practice, and a range of tools like strategic environmental assessment, environmental management systems, environmental protection plans, pollution abatement technology, and environmental guidelines.

Consequently, we now have four decades of experience in managing project-related environmental effects. I would argue that the need for environmental assessment has been largely eclipsed for many of the projects subjected to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Many EAs conducted today under CEAA have become mere checklists for legislative compliance and not true environmental assessments, as originally intended. Not recognizing this is a key contributing factor to the persistent pursuit of unnecessary environmental assessment now entrenched in CEAA.

The parliamentary review should therefore, in our view, consider very carefully the number of current environmental assessments triggered and ensure that the number of projects triggered is reduced to ensure that only aspects not presently dealt with through other statutory or regulatory requirements and not duplicative are in fact assessed. The CCA believes that this will free up federal resources to tackle projects that may have greater environmental consequences or a requirement for unique mitigation.

Michael.

[Michael Atkinson]

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the Canadian Construction Association strongly suggests that the committee propose significant changes to federal environmental assessment by recommending that the Government of Canada adopt a leadership position in establishing a national framework for environmental assessment that minimizes duplication and assures “one project, one assessment”.

We believe that federal resources should be focused on those projects that would benefit from environmental assessment--namely, those projects that have the risk of high consequence environmental effects, or for which standard mitigation and environmental legislation may not effectively manage potential environmental effects. We also believe that the triggering mechanisms for environmental assessment must be simplified by adopting a list-based approach, which will also improve the timeliness of the assessment process. Lastly, consideration should be given to the principle of self-assessment and how it contributes to the overall diffusion of responsibility and a general lack of efficiency and effectiveness.

In short, we seek environmental assessments that are certain, non-duplicative, and not overly delaying projects that have already gotten a green light. The most frustrating thing our members see, when there is a green light for a project to proceed, is when the light goes amber or red because of confusion or uncertainty or duplication with respect to the environmental process.

Once again, thank you for inviting us to share our members' views on the CEA Act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you very much, Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Barnes.

Next, from the Canadian Hydropower Association, we have Mr. Irving and Mr. Wojczynski. You have together up to 10 minutes.

[Jacob Irving, President, Canadian Hydropower Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Jacob Irving, and I am the president of the Canadian Hydropower Association. With me today is Ed Wojczynski of Manitoba Hydro. He is the chair of our board of directors and also the chair of our regulatory processes working group.

The Canadian Hydropower Association is the national voice of the hydro power industry. We represent the generators, manufacturers, engineering firms, and construction companies who help make Canada the world’s second-largest hydro power-producing nation. Providing over 60% of Canada’s electricity, hydro power is our single largest generation source and it makes our electricity system one of the cleanest and most renewable in the world.

Strong as we are, it is still surprising to many that we could more than double our current hydro power capacity and that this potential is spread across the country in every province and territory. This provides Canada with an outstanding opportunity to fight air pollution and climate change while securing a sustainable energy future.

Our presentation today will focus on some of the recommendations from both the Canadian Hydropower Association and the Canadian Electricity Association and will complement those presented to you by my colleague from the Canadian Electricity Association, Ms. Sandra Schwartz, who presented to you on November 1.

I would like to call on Ed Wojczynski from Manitoba Hydro, chair of the Canadian Hydropower Association, to continue our presentation.

[Ed Wojczynski, Chair, Board of Directors, Canadian Hydropower Association]

Continuing to supply safe, reliable, and economic electricity while reducing greenhouse gases and air pollutants requires large investments in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. For example, hydro power developers alone are planning to invest over $50 billion in Canada over the coming decade to help generate the electricity and meet this challenge.

To make these investments, though, the electricity sector requires regulatory efficiency and predictability. Unfortunately, the current federal environmental assessment regime, especially when combined with authorizations under other federal statutes and provincial environmental assessment legislation, causes considerable duplication, delays, and uncertainty. These problems jeopardize Canada’s capacity to modernize and expand its electricity infrastructure.

The major projects management office initiative and the 2010 amendments to the CEAA have brought some improvements, and we are thankful for that. However, much more needs to be done to make the process really efficient, timely, and predictable. Deeper changes to CEAA need to be made and will have to be accompanied by changes to some of the other acts that CEAA interfaces with.

Please do not misunderstand me or the CHA members. Environmental stewardship is a priority concern for our industry. Both the CEA and CHA support the principle of rigorous environmental assessment; we're not trying to get rid of it. We cannot successfully develop and operate our projects without a social license to operate. It's more than getting a legal permit; we need a social license. This needs to be earned and maintained through hard work with the first nations, local communities, and a wide range of stakeholders.

We believe that well-designed changes to CEAA can not only bring greater improvement in regulatory efficiency but can also enhance environmental performance by allowing more focus on the priority environmental issues.

Our main recommendations are laid out in our submission, but in brief, they are: reduce duplication through process substitution, delegation, tighter scoping, and avoiding triggering the environmental assessment process when it does not bring added value; improve consistency between the environmental assessment and the authorizations that follow; improve timelines, especially in screenings and panel reviews; and take into account positive environmental effects in the assessment of the projects and have all project benefits recognized in the final decision under CEAA.

Going into a bit more detail, all hydro power projects and many other electricity sector projects are subject to both a provincial and a federal environmental assessment. A clear and efficient environmental assessment is one where duplication is avoided, where one project is subject to one assessment only, and where the assessment is led by the best-placed jurisdiction. Currently, despite the coordination agreements that have been signed, there is still considerable overlap and redundancy between the federal and provincial EA processes. If coordination means only that two similar processes take place at the same time and look at the same things, it still leaves much duplication. This is a waste of public, government, and corporate time, effort, and resources.

To really reduce duplication we need to recognize that CEAA is not the only process capable of delivering a robust EA. The provinces all have sound processes too. When projects are subject to a full provincial EA, CEAA should allow the federal minister to recognize these processes by using the provincial output to inform the federal decision-making. To ensure consistency between the assessment phase and the authorization phase, federal authorities such as the DFO should be required to participate in the provincial EA process when process substitution occurs.

These changes to enable substitution can be made while respecting the jurisdiction and the constitutional separation I was referring to earlier of the two levels of government. In all cases the federal government would still retain its ultimate decision power under the CEAA, the Fisheries Act, and other legislation.

When substitution cannot be granted--and in many cases, that would be the case--CEAA already provides a partial form of substitution called delegation; however, CEAA should be modified to enable delegation to be more flexible. This delegation provision should be used to ensure that all environmental assessment tasks not primarily in areas of federal jurisdiction are delegated to the provinces whenever the two levels of government assess the same project.

More focused scoping of the federal EA process would also contribute to reducing redundancy and making the process more efficient. For example, when provincial legislation adequately ensures that all project impacts will be addressed, focusing the federal EA on the triggering components of the project would help reduce duplication and inefficiency without reducing the effectiveness of the process. In order to facilitate a working solution to the 2010 scoping amendment to CEAA, further changes are required to the act. Those amendments were good, but they're not fully operational yet. This would mean that the project scope should be established before the assessment track is determined by the minister, and that the track decision would then be made on the project as the minister has scoped it.

Triggering the Canadian environmental assessment process only where it leads to an improved environmental outcome can also reduce duplication or excessive redundancy. Yes, we agree some redundancy is needed, but we think there's too much.

Today, the federal government and the provinces both have, in addition to their EA processes, legislation or regulations that protect important environmental resources. In this increasingly regulated context, the CEAA process should apply only where it brings added value. In other words, CEAA should not be triggered if significant impacts are effectively addressed through other federal or provincial regulatory means. This is often the case for smaller, more routine projects that are well-studied and better understood.

Sustainable development requires an evaluation of environmental, social, and economic factors, but CEAA is focused solely on the avoidance of negative environmental effects.

Environmental benefits like those that occur when a hydro power project creates new fish habitat are not taken into account in the assessment. They may only be used currently at the very end to decide whether significant environmental effects are justified or not. We recommend that positive environmental effects, not just the negative ones, be considered in the EA phase. This should be in addition to including an explicit provision that ensures all project benefits, social and economic as well as environmental, are taken into account in the final decision under CEAA.

To conclude, I’d like to stress the critical importance of timelines in the assessment processes and the authorizations that follow. For a large hydro power facility, a delay of one year may result in large losses. For example, a one-year delay in the $8-billion Conawapa generating station project that my company, Manitoba Hydro, is working on, would cause a loss of in the order of half a billion dollars in revenue, delay thousands of jobs, and result in increased greenhouse gases.

In summary, reducing duplication, ensuring consistency between environmental assessment processes and their downstream authorizations, improving timelines, and optimizing triggering and scoping are all achievable. None of these improvements would affect the assessment outcome, and they would greatly encourage investments in clean and renewable Canadian electricity generation and their associated infrastructure.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you.

Mr. Irving, you had closing comments and you have a minute.

[Jacob Irving]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just wanted to say that we can take questions in French and answer them in French.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you, Mr. Irving and Mr. Wojczynski.

I want to thank each of the witnesses for providing briefing materials for us well in advance of this meeting. It helped for each of us to be prepared.

Our first questioner will be Mr. Lunney, for seven minutes.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I want to thank you all very much for being here with us today. It's an important subject, and we're wading into how to make the system more efficient.

We have an environmental assessment act. It's been in place for a while. We know what the objectives are, and achieving those objectives is what this review is all about, as well as how to get a more effective process in place, if indeed that's possible.

Of course, the whole objective of this is how we can make the act more predictable and efficient. We've had numerous regulations and laws over the years, both at the federal and provincial levels.

I guess the first question that I might address, first to the Canadian Construction Association and the Canadian Hydropower Association, is with regard to having multiple authorities responsible for government assessment and environmental assessment. How does having multiple authorities affect environmental protection from your perspective?

[Jeff Barnes]

Thank you for that question.

In reality, we see really little environmental value added by multiple jurisdictions working on an assessment and time being spent on sorting out who should be doing the assessment, who has administration, and harmonizing different processes. To us, and to me personally, it doesn't really add a whole lot of value to environmental protection.

It's this that we're getting at: there's a lot of administration of environmental assessment, and those resources could be redirected in the ways that we suggested, towards perhaps focusing on key questions around technical matters, as Dr. Usher pointed out, around the science of environmental assessment, instead of the administration of process without achieving any positive outcome as a result of the efforts in harmonization, if you will.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I guess I could rephrase my question: how does applying varying and sometimes conflicting requirements affect the investment in projects?

[Jeff Barnes]

It slows it down and increases the debate. I don't think it improves projects necessarily. Certainly debate does improve projects, but duplication of process or competing processes that are not really actually well harmonized, even when they're supposedly harmonized, do not really achieve very much in the way of environmental protection in themselves.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

You note that the construction industry employs about 1.25 million Canadians and accounts for nearly 7% of Canada's GDP. Looking at the Canadian Hydropower Association website, I understand that you represent more than 95% of the hydro power capacity in Canada with nearly 50 members, including producers, manufacturers, developers, engineering firms, organizations, and individuals who are interested in developing hydro power.

For the Canadian Hydropower Association, can you tell us approximately how many people are employed through hydro power projects?

[Jacob Irving]

I can give you a projection going forward. Our members have indicated that about 25,000 megawatts of projects across the country are currently being seriously looked at. That represents a direct investment of roughly $50 billion, and that in turn translates into about 150,000 jobs over the next ten-year timeframe. That helps give an indication.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Of course, hydro power is green power. It's renewable as long as we have water flowing. Where I come from, British Columbia, we have elevation. It seems to me as long as we have elevation and water....

We still have significant rainfall on the coast. On the west coast, we get about 10 feet of rainfall a year in Tofino. So we have elevation, we have opportunities for even micro hydro projects. It seems to me this is something that's very green, sustainable, and renewable; even with changes we're still going to have a lot of rainfall.

So we have green power there. We gave you an example, I think a Manitoba example there, of a delay. I guess the point would be that if you have a delay, how does unwieldy, lengthy, duplicative process impact the development of projects? What happens to people if you have a project for which you're anticipating a one-year review process and it takes much longer? How does that impact the employment of people both in the construction and hydro side, people who are waiting to move ahead?

[Ed Wojczynski]

I can give a good example of that. In Manitoba we just signed two power purchase agreements with Minnesota and Wisconsin that would result in about $15 billion to $20 billion of capital expansion where mainly what we would be doing is displacing thermal generation both in Canada and the United States, but more in the United States.

Our contracts have stipulated timeframes for deliveries, because they need to supply their load. If we have built in some buffer into those contracts so that if there are delays in construction, but more importantly on the regulatory side, that they can be accommodated...but there's a limit to those delays. If our process takes a lot longer than we're planning on, then those contracts would no longer be valid and they would turn to shorter-term alternatives.

The tendency is for thermal generation to have much shorter construction and regulatory times than for the hydro projects. So there would be a very explicit impact. They're not just delaying, but actually there could be a loss of those contracts, and a loss of those projects.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

One of the points you raised in your presentation--I think the fourth bullet--was to take into account positive environmental effects in the assessment of projects, and have all project benefits recognized in the final decision under the CEAA.

I think somebody made the point that it seems that CEAA focuses only on the negative impacts and creating a new lake, new fish opportunities, would be a positive impact on employment.

Are you talking about the socio-economic impact when you're talking about all the factors, and could you expand on that?

[Ed Wojczynski]

There are the two phases in the process that we're thinking of here.

One is the assessment phase. Let's just say it's a CSR, for the sake of discussion here. In that right now, the process only considers the negative environmental impacts, or social impacts that are caused by changes in the physical environment. It does not consider positive environmental impacts, and does not consider, say, social impacts that are not related to direct environmental changes.

For instance, there are negative impacts on fish due to hydro projects. We try to mitigate those, we deal with those, but there's no consideration given to the positive side. So we're saying if you're going to focus in that assessment phase only on environment, at least consider both parts of it.

The second phase is that if a project is found to have significant impacts, then at the RA or the cabinet level a decision would be made as to whether or not the project should proceed or not given the overall benefits. At that stage, all the benefits should be considered: environmental, social, and economic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Your time is up. Thank you so much.

Ms. Leslie, seven minutes.