Good morning, Chair, and committee members. Thank you very much for allowing us to present today on Pembina Institute's recommendations for Bill C-69.
My name is Duncan Kenyon, and I am the director of Pembina Institute's work on responsible fossil fuels. I'm here with my colleague Nichole Dusyk, who is a postdoctoral fellow with Pembina Institute.
The Pembina Institute is a national, non-partisan, non-profit think tank that has over 30 years of experience providing research and recommendations to inform energy policy and regulations in Canada. We have been actively engaged in the environmental law reform process for the last two years, and our submission to the NEB expert panel, a report entitled “Good Governance in the Era of Low Carbon”, was based on original research that involved interviewing 23 experts from around Canada and the world. Our comments today are largely based on that research, and in fact, as energy nerds, it's always a good day when we get to share our perspective on energy policy with decision-makers.
Our involvement to date has focused on mobilizing the National Energy Board, and our comments today will continue in that vein. We will focus our comments on part 2 of the bill pertaining to the Canadian energy regulator.
We believe that the Canadian energy regulator act is a good piece of legislation that will move us toward more credible review processes. It is clear that the government is aware of major issues that have been identified with the NEB and is seeking substantive reform that will address many of those issues. In particular, we support the revised governance regime for the CER, the transfer of authority for impact assessment to the impact assessment agency of Canada, the expanded list of factors that must be considered when issuing a certificate or authorization, the removal of the standing test for public participation, and the emphasis on partnering with indigenous groups and jurisdictions.
However, the act contains significant omissions that will need to be addressed if it is to achieve its intended purpose of providing credible, evidence-based project reviews and ultimately restoring public trust in the federal energy regulatory process.
In our testimony today we will address four issues: climate change, the composition of review panels, public participation, and energy data. We ask you to refer to our written statement for additional recommendations to strengthen the accountability and transparency of CER decision-making, to ensure the CER is diverse and has a range of competencies, and to tighten up the conflict of interest provisions.
Our first recommendation is to include climate considerations. Similarly to Nigel's discussion on that, the CER act makes no reference to climate policy, commitments, or impacts. In fact, the word “climate” does not occur once in the entire act. This is a major omission. If the economy and the environment are to go hand in hand, the federal energy regulator must have the mandate to integrate climate considerations throughout its activities and functions. This includes the climate impacts of energy infrastructure but also the financial and physical risks that climate change poses to energy infrastructure.
We recommend including climate considerations in the purpose of the act, in the reporting and advising responsibilities of the regulator, and in the factors considered in issuing a certificate or authorization under the act.
Our second recommendation is to limit CER representation on project review panels. We strongly support transferring the responsibility for impact assessment to the impact assessment agency of Canada. Having a single agency responsible for conducting all assessments under the impact assessment act will help ensure consistent application of the law for all sectors and projects. We recognize the specific expertise of the life-cycle regulators and feel it is acceptable that the CER and other life-cycle regulators have a seat on review panels. In fact, that's critical. It is not acceptable, however, that they potentially comprise a majority or the entirety of an impact assessment review panel. The existing wording of the impact assessment act allows for this possibility and must be amended to ensure that project review panels have balanced representation and expertise, including representation from relevant regions.
We recommend amending proposed subsection 47(3) in the impact assessment act to limit CER representation to one of three seats.
Our third recommendation is to provide specific mechanisms to ensure meaningful public participation.
We are very pleased to see the removal of the standing test for public participation. While the intent of the bill is clear, removing barriers to participation is not enough to ensure the public has a real voice in major energy projects. The practical need for improving public participation in the assessment of major projects has been noted by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development as well as both the expert review panels.
We are past the point of acknowledging the need for public and community engagement. We need to make this happen. This requires explicit and careful design from the outset and throughout project life cycles. We believe the best way to ensure this happens is to create a public intervenor office, as recommended by the NEB expert panel, to ensure meaningful public engagement.
We recommend creating a public intervenor office to advise on public engagement activities and ensure public access and representation throughout the project life cycles. We also recommend making the participant funding program mandatory.
Our final recommendation is to create an independent energy agency. We were disappointed to see no specific provisions in the Canadian energy regulator act to improve the state of energy information in Canada or to ensure that federal energy regulation is based on high-quality, independent data and analysis.
The expert panel on NEB modernization stated:
We feel that the Canadian Energy Information Agency needs to have the mandate and ability to tell it like it is on energy matters, and inform the development of energy policy and strategy, without being involved in the determination of energy policy, or administering energy infrastructure regulation. This will help to assure that information is seen as neutral and credible.
We strongly agree with that statement.
We recommend amendments that would enable and fund the creation of a new Canadian energy information agency and expand energy data collection at Statistics Canada. In addition, we recommend that the new agency be tasked with producing annual scenarios for energy supply and demand, including a reference case that considers domestic and international action on climate change.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear today and we welcome your questions.