As I said, I'm going to speak on three issues today. The other two are the decision to give responsibility for environmental assessment of energy projects to the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and finally I'd like to talk about the perceived bias in the system.
Sierra Club Canada believes these issues are linked and that forces are afoot trying to lay waste to Canada’s natural resources without thought or consideration for future generations. Today’s profit is the only consideration, and our only protection against it is a strong, independent environmental assessment process. I fear we are headed in precisely the wrong direction. I hope this committee will be allowed to make appropriate changes to the act to remove the mistakes of the last few years.
Government and industry have no fear of good, sound environmental policy and assessment. Doing things right creates jobs just as well as doing things wrong, and it doesn't give us the same environmental, health, and social impacts as doing things in haste and badly.
Just to provide a short bit on the Sierra Club, Sierra Club Canada is part of the Sierra Club, which is the largest and oldest conservation organization in North America. We have been involved in conservation issues in Canada since 1963. A major part of that involvement has been participating in environmental assessment processes across the country, including participating in hearings on oil sands, pipelines, mega-dams, and nuclear power plants, as well as smaller, local issues, and we've done it with federal and provincial assessments.
In 2009 Sierra Club Canada challenged the legality of changing CEAA through a regulatory process. In 2010 the government apparently agreed with our interpretation and used the budget bill to redo the changes. In 2011 the government paid our costs. This is an example of haste making waste. Please don’t make any more hasty decisions concerning environmental assessment.
This committee will be hearing from a number of lawyers, including my predecessor at the Sierra Club, who is an expert in the act. Therefore, my comments will be more on the philosophical and experiential nature of my own and the Sierra Club's experience with participating in environmental assessments and what kinds of things we think could make them better.
I’m sure you will hear from industry that the process of environmental assessment is a great burden and needs streamlining. In my 30-plus years of experience in this work, “streamlining” is a code word for weakening. The act should be strengthened and the scope of assessment broadened. Canada has signed binding treaties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect biodiversity. Environmental assessment is critical to living up to our international commitments as well as the passing on of heritage to our children and our grandchildren.
Sierra Club Canada sees the announced intention to cut red tape and other changes buried in the budget bills as a plan to fundamentally alter the way environmental assessment is conducted. This is part of a wider anti-democratic campaign to marginalize and eventually silence the voices of the environment in Canada. This is one voice that won’t be silenced.
The built-in review of CEAA—the purpose of this session—is the democratic way to revise the act. There was no documented need to alter the act prior to the review. The only reasonable explanation for using the budget bills to change environmental protection in Canada is fear of public scrutiny.
Previous reviews included consultation with stakeholders by Environment Canada.
This is where I'll make it relevant.
For 29 years the federal government worked with the Canadian Environmental Network, a body formed solely to assist the federal government in gathering advice and insight from 600 environmental organizations across Canada. Most are small groups of volunteers working to preserve our natural environment. These are the real-life, local volunteers who participate in environmental assessments, and they have far more to contribute here than I have to offer. The CEN did a tremendous job and made a huge contribution to ensuring that we had good environmental assessment legislation in Canada.
There has not been consultation with the stakeholders this time. The decision to stop consulting environmental organizations and withdraw support for the CEN at precisely the time CEAA is being reviewed clearly is no coincidence. It sends a clear signal.
The federal government has a complex environmental mandate and a relatively limited ability to gather input from all stakeholders. It does not make any sense to cut off a vital source of advice.
The decision to give authority for energy projects to the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was wrong. The fox has no business in the hen house. These bodies, along with the offshore oil boards, are too close to industry to provide the government with sound, unbiased advice. There is an inherent conflict of interest.
I have a document here. When I first saw it, I thought it was Bruce Power's annual report, but in fact it's the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's annual report, and it says clearly on the front, “Fact: Nuclear in Canada is Safe”. I'm not going to dispute that here today, but that is quite questionable. If it had said, “Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission: Regulating to Make Nuclear Safe,” it would be acceptable, but this is propaganda for the industry on behalf of the regulator. Isn't it the business of the industry to promote itself, not its regulator? On seeing this, isn't it reasonable to conclude that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is biased? They have now been given authority to determine whether or not we're going to build nuclear power plants in Canada.
The primary function of both of the NEB and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission of was to set standards for everything from pipeline valves to radiation that a member of the public can be exposed to. In order to accomplish this kind of regulation, the agencies must work closely with the industry and expertise becomes mobile. It's not unusual for individuals and consultants employed by these agencies to have spent much of their careers in the industry, which they look forward to returning to. This is particularly true of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
The role of the environmental assessment is much larger, requiring greater scope and enough separation from project proponents to be unbiased adjudicators. Panels require a wider expertise than understanding the technical issues surrounding proposed projects. The environmental impacts go beyond the project’s fence. Economic and social impacts for local communities, and whether or not there is a better alternative to a project, all have equal weight in the process.
Often during hearings the conclusions of the regulator are called into question by public submissions, and it is the regulator who is making the ruling. This is clearly an inherent conflict of interest and creates an impression of bias. For example, last year the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission granted permission to Bruce Power to export 1,600 tonnes of nuclear waste to Sweden for recycling. This consisted of 16 steam generators. Only after a vocal campaign by the Sierra Club, dozens of municipalities, and aboriginal organizations did the CNSC even decide to allow public submissions.
Bruce Power’s plan to refurbish the Bruce generating station had undergone an environmental assessment in 2005. At the time, Bruce Power specifically stated that the 16 steam generators were to be kept at the Ontario Power Generation waste facility. It's the view of the Sierra Club and several others that the fundamental changes from an approved project should trigger a revisiting of the environmental assessment, and that this decision should be made by a body independent of the regulator. When I raised this issue at the CNSC, the president responded by asking me if I was anti-nuclear, and then asked his staff if they were wrong not to recommend a revisiting of the environmental assessment. You can imagine what they said.
The CNSC focused only on issues surrounding the transport of waste, and rightly so, as a regulator. But it ignored the wider issues that would have been the concern of an environmental assessment—things like how this project fits into Canada’s long-standing policy of storing waste at reactor sites and not allowing contaminated materials to circulate in the environment. Effectively, the CNSC allowed Bruce Power, a private company, to change Canada’s nuclear policy and ducked its responsibility to properly assess all the issues. This would not have happened if the roles of regulator and assessor were separate, as they should be.
I would also like to raise the issue of bias in the choice of panel members for hearings. Who is qualified and how should a panellist be chosen? There's no public input. A panel is announced and a few months later a list of individuals is released. There is no consultation, no nominating of panellists, yet the decisions they make can have implications for Canadian law and society no less significant than judges.
I don’t wish to impugn the reputations of members of any panel; I’m sure all the people who have participated have been admirable individuals. However, I just want to give you my experience of the last time I appeared at an environmental assessment. It was—