Evidence of meeting #11 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nations.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa
Your five minutes have expired.
Ms. St-Denis, you have five minutes.
NDP
Lise St-Denis NDP Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
My question is directed to the witness from the James Bay Advisory Committee on the Environment.
If it turned out that it is impossible to include in the act the representation processes of the Cree Nation that are outlined in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, you said that you would recommend separate legislation to implement the processes under clauses 22 and 24 of that agreement. However, if for various reasons it were impossible to pass distinct legislation, could the Cree consider including more general consultation processes that would be less specific in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act?
Environmental Analyst, James Bay Advisory Committee on the Environment
Thank you very much for the question.
Just to quickly put it into context, no federal legislation other than the.... Let me just be sure of my title. Since 1978, no federal legislation was actually put in place to give effect to the James Bay agreement, and it was just in a general manner. That is the James Bay and Northern Quebec Native Claims Settlement Act of 1977. On that note, though, in the event that the recommendations cannot be made, yes, we do recommend that separate legislation be put in place to at least give credence to those representative mechanisms.
I just would like to point out that Quebec's Environment Quality Act already recognizes those particular representative and participatory mechanisms and so can serve as an immediate example of what can be done within the CEAA. That exists already in the province of Quebec. If that can't be done within the act, then yes, federal legislation would be useful.
The point is that the JBNQA is an agreement that is protected by the Constitution of 1982. So whatever happens, CEAA must be made to clearly respect those provisions in the act, full stop.
I hope that answers your question.
NDP
Lise St-Denis NDP Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Thank you.
Should we consider the rights of the Cree Nation granted by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement as essential to the development of that community and its environmental integrity?
Environmental Analyst, James Bay Advisory Committee on the Environment
I would have to say, yes, most definitely. What is in the convention itself represents the culmination of years and years of discussion and negotiation. Back in 1975, there was an element of conflict during those negotiations. But I would definitely have to say that what is included within the agreement itself definitely represents culturally important guidelines that definitely could be useful for all environmental assessment agreements.
The principles are fairly general and are fairly straightforward. I don't think people would have problems understanding and agreeing with them. They're all readily available within the convention and within our brief.
NDP
Lise St-Denis NDP Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Let me follow up on the question I asked earlier. During a visit to Wemotaci, an Atikamekw community, Mr. Boivin, the chief, expressed his concern regarding the difficulty remote First Nations have integrating some governmental practices such as recycling. Do you believe that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act sufficiently takes into account the collateral impacts of industrial projects in remote areas? They are often forgotten.
Environmental Analyst, James Bay Advisory Committee on the Environment
Exactly. Just quickly, we have to be quite clear about what we're looking at with environmental assessments. Environmental assessments are project specific and site specific. I think we can all probably agree that cumulative effects that stem from those particular projects might not necessarily be best evaluated, or even mitigated, by project-specific EAs. There's a growing sense of the need for strategic environmental assessments, cumulative impact assessments, and all these different sorts of assessments.
I believe, and it is the position of the James Bay Advisory Committee, that, no, cumulative effects cannot—
NDP
Lise St-Denis NDP Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
I believe Mr. David would like to answer.
Unfortunately, my time is up.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa
Mr. Morin, unfortunately, time has expired. Five minutes go so fast.
Mr. Albas, five minutes.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thanks to all of our witnesses for being here today.
I actually was at an opening of a construction site for a new mine in my riding of Okanagan—Coquihalla. It's a small silver mine, and when it's actually up to production levels, 30% of the jobs will be for first nations, so certainly a lot of the issues today are very pertinent to what's happening in my riding.
There were some earlier comments, both from a few of our witnesses as well as from our committee, in regard to federal-provincial...so I'll start with that.
In 2009, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment recommended the addition of substitution provisions as a means to manage federal-provincial overlap and duplication. I'd like to focus on that.
Some provinces and industry associations have also suggested the addition of provisions to allow the federal process and decision-making to stand down if there is an equivalent provincial environmental assessment. So my question to MAC is, should substitution and equivalency be included in the act?
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
I ask both of you gentlemen, can you please provide an example specifically of a project that would use the equivalency that may be appropriate?
President, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
I can talk about that in the context of oil sands mining, where often the federal trigger is legitimately triggered by a relatively small issue, some impact on water course, for example. That invokes federal involvement in the process. There's a very, very extensive provincial review of those projects. That would be an example of one, from my perspective.
I want to clarify, though, that when we talk about substitution or equivalency, we talk about best-placed regulator. I think this is a very important principle: this is not always about a province or always the federal government; it's about figuring out which regulator is best positioned to look at the issue and then substituting on that basis. I think sometimes we get drawn into it being all provincial or all federal. That's not the approach we take. We use very deliberately the terminology “best-placed regulator”.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Mining Association of Canada
I would agree, and I gave the example earlier of British Columbia, where the province had the federal government do the environmental assessment for ports. Again, it speaks to the issue of best-placed regulator.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Do you have any other suggestions on how best to reduce or avoid duplication? We'll start with MAC and then move back to CAPP.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Mining Association of Canada
You're probably used to having groups like us come and complain and demand lots of change, but in light of the 2010 amendments, we're not doing that as much. Because of the amendments, federal and provincial governments on environmental assessments are working much more closely together, and they're in sync. So the irritants that we would have had two years ago around the fact that the federal government was typically a year and a half late—and the duplication of process was a major irritant because of that—have now gone. So it's less of an issue for mining than it used to be.
But again, I would emphasize what I said earlier as well. We're the lucky ones, in the sense that the amendments addressed comprehensive studies and panel reviews, but there's a whole other layer of screenings that might affect pipelines, that might affect oil and gas projects, or other parts of the economy that aren't benefiting from this, and that's also where the issue around best-placed regulator comes in.
President, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
Very quickly, I think we've talked about most of them, and they'll be addressed further in our submission, but the equivalence and substitution timelines, addressing the aboriginal consultation issue, and I think, very importantly—and I come back to reinforce this—the question of positioning CEAA in a broader context and being clear about what CEAA is and is not is really fundamental to the work you're doing. This ongoing issue of scope creep and duplicative regulation or legislation is key to actually making the system work better.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
Following up, what is your experience with provincial environmental assessment processes? In your opinion, are they as rigorous as federal environmental assessments?
President, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
My view is they're very rigorous, and these projects are subject to extensive scrutiny. There is not a marked difference between the two.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC
I have about 20 seconds left, by my guess, so Mr. Gratton....
President and Chief Executive Officer, Mining Association of Canada
We used to joke, when I was with the Mining Association of British Columbia, that the federal government—this is pre-2010 amendments—would take the provincial comprehensive study, change the cover page, write an executive summary, and call it their own—but they'd take about three more years to do it.
