Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today. I know that you've had a busy morning already, and we hope this will be an interesting session.
I should preface this by letting you know that I have spent my entire career as a regulator, as an academic, and now as an industry representative, and all of that time has been focusing on Canada as a world leader in regulation and environmental assessment, with a robust outcomes-based regulatory framework. I very much appreciate the opportunity to present to the committee today and offer my perspective and views on the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act review.
I have some brief context to frame my remarks, and that is that the group I represent currently, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, represents the companies that transport about 97% of all of the oil and natural gas produced and used in Canada. Our members operate about 100,000 kilometres of pipelines. We are by far the safest and really only feasible means to transport large volumes of energy over land. Our companies are major job creators, with significant investments on nationally significant projects. These energy highways are how we get around, how we heat our homes, manufacture goods, harvest crops, and get those products to market, so we take our role very seriously.
Now turning to the issue at hand, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, if I leave you with just one thought today, let it be this: CEPA and its members are fully supportive of the federal government's need for full and comprehensive environmental assessment of large-scale projects. We believe these assessments should be conducted by and related decisions must be made by a best-placed regulator.
For federally regulated pipelines, the best-placed regulator is the National Energy Board, in fulfilment with its mandate under the National Energy Board Act. For provincially regulated pipelines, the applicable provincial process for assessment should be accepted on the basis of equivalency with the federal process under CEAA, expressly limited to those aspects of the project requiring federal decision-making.
We see precedents for this already in Canada north of 60. The federal government has already acknowledged that CEAA is not the only piece of federal legislation that's capable of delivering comprehensive and robust EA in Canada. In fact, in the Yukon we have legislation that has displaced CEAA for the most part, and that model has various legislative platforms that we believe could be applied south of 60.
Why do I turn to the National Energy Board Act as the reasonable outcome for that proposal? It is that under its public interest mandate, the National Energy Board has the jurisdiction, and in fact has required an assessment that exceeds the scope of that required under the CEAA. Specifically, the NEB looks at a project through a wider public interest lens and incorporates environmental impacts, as well as social and environmental issues on a project. The NEB is fully staffed with technical staff who understand the role of pipelines, their impacts, and address on a full life-cycle basis what actually happens in the field, returning that into the project planning and future projects. It is overseen by a quasi-judicial board whose decisions are grounded on fact-based evidence, and it provides a fully public transparent process and provides funding for public participation where required.
The mandate of the NEB is fully consistent with and can facilitate the achievement of the EA for projects consistent with the protection of the environment and capable of delivering important decisions. In other words, by looking at projects through a holistic and wide lens through its public interest test, the NEB is the federal authority best placed to deliver decisions that are consistent with Canada's commitment to sustainable development, and this is in keeping with longstanding global principles on sustainable development, including those created in Rio almost 20 years ago.
I would like to say a word about self-assessment, because that is, at core, a fundamental premise of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act as it sits today. Quite simply, self-assessment requires decisions about projects that impact each and every federal decision-maker. Typically, a federal pipeline will trigger the need for assessment decisions under CEAA but also in fisheries, transport, NEB, migratory birds, and SARA. There are various mechanisms at the policy and administrative level to try to avoid any avoidable duplication in the preparation of the assessment. Frankly, attempts to coordinate have been very ineffective. We still face a high level of redundancy, which dilutes the ability to focus on environmental outcomes that matter most and is certainly wasteful of precious government resources and those of companies.
Why would the government continue to work within a system that was intentionally built around redundancies instead of simply finding more effective ways of delivering good outcomes on the environment and in the national interest? CEPA strongly advocates for one process and one decision-maker comprising regulators that have accountability for the full life cycle of a project. They would understand the impacts from the planning stage through construction, operation, and eventual retirement of that asset.
As an industry association representing the companies that operate and build critical energy infrastructure in Canada, these are our recommendations to you: continue to advance regulatory reforms that will allow for timely decisions; enhance the investment climate and build the economy; but absolutely retain the appropriate federal capacity to implement permitting requirements to ensure that the environment is well protected. You can achieve all this by allowing the delivery of assessment by the best-placed regulator.
I thank you for the opportunity to discuss this with you, and I look forward to your questions.