Thank you. Good morning, Chair and committee members. Thank you for agreeing to hear from us today.
I'm with the East Coast Environmental Law association, an environmental law charity based in Halifax. We work throughout Atlantic Canada, providing environmental law information, advice, and support. Over the past several months, we have been providing support to the Ecology Action Centre—and my colleague, Mark Butler is with you today—and to the offshore alliance.
Given the breadth of your review of Bill C-69, our focus today is very narrow. Our focus is on the role of the offshore energy regulators in impact assessment; so in particular, the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, which I will refer to collectively as the petroleum boards. As you know, the petroleum boards are the regulatory bodies responsible for the development of oil and gas resources and the management of petroleum operations off the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Currently under CEAA 2012, the petroleum boards do not conduct environmental assessments of designated activities. In this regard, they are treated differently from the other two energy regulators, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the National Energy Board. The NEB and the CNSC are responsible authorities under CEAA 2012, with the power to conduct EAs of designated projects in combination with their own regulatory processes. Of course, this was not always the case. Prior to CEAA 2012, the NEB and the CNSC did not conduct EAs. The merging of project assessment processes and regulatory processes began under CEAA 1992, through the substitution provisions, and proceeded to be formalized for the NEB and CNSC under CEAA 2012. Those changes were made with the intent of streamlining project assessment.
The federal government has stated an objective of regaining public trust in environmental assessment. The appointment of the expert panel on EA reform was part of that objective, and the introduction of Bill C-69 is presumably the culmination of the government's efforts to achieve this objective. Perhaps in an effort to strike a balance, Bill C-69 requires referral to a review panel of all designated projects that include physical activities regulated by CNSC, the Canadian energy regulator or CER, and the petroleum boards. This would be a significant change for the NEB and the CNSC, reducing the role of those regulators in the assessment process and to some extent decoupling the assessment and regulatory processes.
The assessment and regulatory processes are not entirely separated, as proposed section 51 of the impact assessment act requires the review panels to provide conclusions and recommendations to support licensing and other processes under the Canadian energy regulator act and the Nuclear Safety and Control Act. This is for the most part positive, in that the planning or assessment process appears to be at the forefront with the role of informing the regulatory considerations. However, there could be more clarity provided in the act to ensure that review panels under the impact assessment act would not serve as regulatory hearing processes.
Let me move to the petroleum boards. The proposed implementation of the impact assessment act through Bill C-69 creates some confusion for those of us seeking to understand the role of the petroleum boards in impact assessments. As written, the IAA would treat the petroleum boards in a way that is different from the CER and the CNSC initially, but it would subsequently be amended to treat all energy regulators in a similar manner. I'll base my comments on a presumption that the amendments will be passed, but I do seek clarification on why there are provisions in the bill, specific to the petroleum boards, that would come into force at a later date.
In any case, once the amendments are in effect, the impact assessment act would require referral to a review panel for designated activities that are regulated by the petroleum boards. We agree that a review panel should be established for major offshore activities, including exploration and extraction drilling. We also agree with the requirement that the review panel hold public hearings.
As it is written, the review panel must include, at a minimum, two members of the petroleum board, selected from a roster. We do not believe that it is in the best interests of the assessment process, communities, potentially impacted industries, or the environment to have regulators on the review panel. To that end, we would recommend that proposed subsections 46.1(3) and 48.1(3) be deleted.
Regulators have an important role to play in providing expertise to the impact assessment process, and we support consultation and co-operation with the regulator as prescribed in proposed section 21 of the impact assessment act.
However, the assessment process should be conducted independently. Selection of the review panel members should be done on a case-by-case basis with the focus of ensuring that those selected have relevant expertise, local knowledge, no conflict of interest, etc. Limiting the role of the regulators in the assessment process to providing their input and expertise rather than full participation as panel members helps to protect the independence of the assessment process.
I'd like to speak briefly about designated activities. Not all offshore activities are necessarily major energy projects that require a review panel, but many do require independent impact assessments. Under the impact assessment act, energy projects are assessed by a review panel, or they're not assessed at all. We're concerned that this means that designated activities will be limited to the worst of the worst.
Let's take seismic surveys for example. The negative impact of seismic surveys on fish species and marine mammals is not well understood, but recent studies have indicated that seismic survey activities require more thorough scrutiny than they currently receive. We would recommend that seismic surveys be added to the list of designated activities to undergo federal impact assessments; however, there is no path currently in the impact assessment act to assess these activities other than by a review panel. We ask the committee to consider a revision to Bill C-69 to enable offshore activities that may not qualify as a major energy project to be subject to an independent impact assessment by the impact assessment agency.
I'm going to turn the rest of my time over to Mark Butler.