Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Pam Schwann. I'm executive director of the Saskatchewan Mining Association. I'm very pleased to be here today to present to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in respect of the review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
I am joined today by representatives of two of our member companies. They are Ms. Tammy Van Lambalgen, vice-president of regulatory affairs, and corporate counsel for AREVA Resources Canada; and Mr. Liam Mooney, vice-president for safety, health, environment and quality, and regulatory relations, with Cameco.
In the brief submitted to the committee, we have identified four areas in which changes to environmental assessments can immediately improve the process while ensuring the integrity, intent, and spirit of environment assessments.
I'll quickly go over these four reforms and then go into a little more detail, if time permits.
Incorporating the following reforms to the CEA Act will be beneficial, we believe.
The first one is eliminating multiple environmental assessments so that there's one project and one process. This would give the federal authority the ability to designate another jurisdiction's assessment of a project as equivalent under CEAA. This will reduce the duplication and overlap of federal, provincial, and local environmental reviews that our companies experience.
The second reform suggested is to rationalize project triggers. Administrative decisions should not trigger an EA. Expanding the exclusion list regulations to reflect a more common sense approach would end costly and unnecessary reviews of a great number of minor projects.
The third reform would be to better integrate environmental, social, and economic considerations. When considering environmental mitigation measures, it is important to identify what is technically and economically feasible and to factor in the economic and societal benefits of projects to Canadians.
Fourth would be to establish environmental assessment cycle times. The stated goal of the Major Projects Management Office or MPMO is to complete an EA within two years. Much could be gained by requiring that federal authorities set and follow timelines mandated by legislation or the federal environmental assessment coordinator.
Last—and this really has more of a Saskatchewan focus currently, but has national implications further down the road—is to ensure that positive reforms to CEAA are extended to projects that are primarily regulated by other federal authorities, such as the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
The 2009 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development cited a number of the problems with the CEAA process, noting that the federal environmental assessment suffers from systemic delays and a lack of coordination, and focuses on expensive and frustrating processes without being able to demonstrate value to the environment or to society.
We would like to compliment the Government of Canada for taking some positive steps toward improving the federal EA system through amendments brought forward in the 2010 Jobs and Economic Growth Act. However, we believe that more change is needed.
We'd like to emphasize at this point that the changes we are proposing are not aimed at lowering environmental standards or removing any area of industrial activity from regulatory scrutiny. They are simply intended to improve the efficiency, timeliness, and predictability of the EA processes. The SMA believes these changes will help to strengthen environmental protection by enabling regulators to focus on the areas that are of greatest environmental concern rather than devoting precious resources to projects and activities that have little or no environmental impact.
We'd like to further elaborate on these four proposals specifically. In the brief, we have specific wording addressing each of these proposals.
The first one is to eliminate multiple environmental assessments and adopt a one-project, one-process model. The principle of one project, one process is often not observed by responsible authorities administering CEAA. There are structural reasons for this. The CEAA process is predicated on the assumption that all projects that have federal involvement require some form of federal EA, except those that are specifically exempted by regulation.
This approach is inherently inefficient and inconsistent with provincial EA regimes, which provide for agreement of a single EA process or the exercise of discretion as to whether a formal EA is needed, based on an initial project description.
In the view of the SMA, the concept of equivalency offers the best path forward for redressing deficiencies in the current system. Subsection 12.4(1) of CEAA presently enables the responsible federal authority to cooperate with other jurisdictions in discharging EAs. We would urge the government to implement changes to CEAA that would instead enable the federal responsible authority to designate another jurisdiction's assessment as being equivalent to an assessment under CEAA.
Such a duplication of effort among multiple regulators often results in lengthy delays to projects without any additional benefit to the environment whatsoever. Instead a single, thorough process undertaken by one level would be accepted to satisfy both the federal and the provincial requirements. We understand that this practice is already being applied to certain projects in British Columbia.
The brief that we submitted proposes specific wording to an amendment to sections 12 and 54 of the act that would address the one-project, one-process equivalency.
The second reform is to rationalize project triggers.