Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you for receiving us today.
I look around the room and I see friends and colleagues whom I've worked with over many years. It's nice to see you, nice to engage in this conversation. It's so important.
FCM certainly welcomes this opportunity to bring Canada's municipal voice to your review of Bill C-69. As environmental and economic leaders, municipalities understand and support federal efforts to improve environmental assessment processes. Municipalities are uniquely impacted by these processes, sometime as proponents, sometimes as interested participants, but always as a level of government protecting the interests of our communities.
Municipalities are regular participants in environmental assessment where outcomes have a local impact on areas of municipal responsibility, such as environmental sustainability, emergency response planning, land use planning, and the construction and maintenance of municipal infrastructure.
At the same time, many projects, including those within the resource development sector, are important to economic prosperity and the quality of life in local communities. In addition to these, as participants, municipal governments are also project proponents directly affected by federal environmental assessments when municipal infrastructure projects are subject to federal approval.
Each of the expert panel and House standing committee reports, which inform the changes proposed in Bill C-69, noted the unique and growing role of municipalities within environmental assessment processes.
FCM has filed nine submissions over the last year with recommendations to improve environmental and regulatory review processes. Our recommendations reflect the views of the diverse membership of more than 2,000 municipalities representing over 90% of the Canadian population. With responsibility for 60% of the country's public infrastructure, municipalities help drive Canada's economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and quality of life.
To address Bill C-69 I would like to walk the committee through each of the acts that are being changed, starting with the Navigation Protection Act. FCM has consistently recommended aligning the legislation with current transportation demands, which depend more on the construction of bridges and roads than expanding water navigation. In 2009, the former Navigable Waters Protection Act's scope was refined with input from municipalities to include an exemption for minor works and waters with little impact on navigation. Several amendments in 2012 brought aspects of the legislation closer to Canada's modern realities. These changes addressed municipal concerns about project delays and expenses caused by federal reviews triggered by small-scale projects.
FCM recognizes and shares concerns about the large number of lakes and rivers that no longer have oversight under the Navigation Protection Act. However, the proposed Canadian navigable waters act includes changes that FCM did not call for and will have significant impacts on municipalities. These include a new requirement that project proponents notify and consult on proposed works on all navigable waters, including both scheduled and non-scheduled water bodies, and a new resolution process that would allow the Minister of Transport to review navigation concerns on non-scheduled water bodies.
FCM expects these changes will result in significantly more municipal infrastructure projects falling under federal review, and we are concerned about the expansion of the scope of the legislation to include, effectively, a new class of works that will fall outside of the existing minor works and existing major works categories. These in-between works are likely to include municipal infrastructure projects that are critical to public safety, transportation, and commerce—for example, bridges, water control structures, and flood mitigation structures. We're not advocating that all bridges, water control structures, etc., be exempt, but we believe there is a consideration for the scale of a project and scale of the waterway that needs to be taken into account.
To address these, we recommend, first, that Transport Canada conduct a review of the existing minor works order, to assess whether more types of works need to be added. Second, we recommend that Transport Canada create a standardized mechanism for project proponents who notify the public in order to meet new requirements under the act. Third, we highlight the importance of enforcing the timelines for public notification and consultation outlined in proposed subsections 10(3), 10.1(1), and 10.1(3) as a means of reducing untimely delays. We recommend that these timelines are reviewed and amended as provided for in regulation, if they are deemed ineffective.
The second part of Bill C-69 that FCM is focused on is changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. FCM supports the proposed approach of having designated projects jointly reviewed by the proposed impact assessment agency of Canada and the relevant federal life-cycle regulators. We also support broadening the scope of assessments to include economic, social, and health impacts, and the “one project, one review” objective that Bill C-69 strives to achieve.
Still, we believe that Bill C-69 does not go far enough in recognizing the important role municipalities play in relation to designated projects. For that reason, we are proposing the following amendments: that proposed section 11 of the impact assessment act be expanded to expressly include consultation with municipal governments; that this phrase, “comments from a municipal government impacted by the designated project”, be added to the factors that must be considered by the impact assessment agency of Canada under proposed subsection 22(1) of the impact assessment act; and that, as a result of the above amendments, “consultation with municipalities” be added to the preamble of the impact assessment act, making it clear that this is an objective of the legislation.
FCM strongly believes that early engagement with municipalities leads to better outcomes. Therefore, we are also calling for consultation with municipalities to be a required component of the initial project description, which proponents must file with the impact assessment agency of Canada.
Finally, I'd like to turn to the National Energy Board Act. Municipalities interact daily with the existing network of NEB-regulated pipelines and power transmission lines. Communities of all sizes benefit from economic activity associated with resource development and energy transportation infrastructure. Municipal governments are directly impacted by pipelines through emergency response planning, land use planning, and construction. There are several changes the government is proposing that are in line with FCM's recommendations, but I'd like to address a few of the recommendations made by FCM that are not clearly addressed. Notably, FCM called for the NEB Act to be amended to recognize municipal bylaws and require pipeline companies and the NEB to abide by them, within the limits of the Constitution. We also said that the NEB Act should be amended to provide municipalities with a direct role in deciding the local route that proposed pipeline projects take.
While the proposed changes go a long way to improving the public consultation process, they do not go far enough. Codifying the requirement to consult with municipalities in the legislation will go further to address municipal concerns that have arisen during recent NEB hearings.
In addition, FCM is recommending that the impact assessment agency of Canada and the Canadian energy regulator be granted greater flexibility in determining the maximum time limits for conducting an impact assessment of a proposed pipeline. While FCM supports timelines for environmental and regulatory reviews, we recommend that these be determined on a project-by-project basis.
In conclusion, we want to stress that it will be necessary for the federal government to actively engage and consult municipal governments as regulations for these acts are created. As environmental and economic leaders, municipalities understand the need to balance economic activity and environmental protection as complementary priorities. We believe our recommendations help to achieve this balance.
We thank you again, and we look forward to your questions when they arise.