Indeed, you get a pre-emptive offer of equivalency from the federal government the moment it says, “Well, we might do something about this, but there will be an offer of equivalency on the table immediately.” I think that needs to be approached in a much more robust way. If the standards made under CEPA are supposed to be national in scope, then the provinces need to meet a substantive test for equivalency. This is what happens in the United States. The states do administer the EPA standards under the Clean Air Act, but there are very stringent tests on the part of the U.S. EPA as to whether they allow that. There is a record of the EPA effectively taking equivalency back from states that have not performed adequately, and then they enter into direct administration of the federal Clean Air Act regulatory regime within a state.
It's a much more robust approach on the part of the federal government. This does not preclude harmonious federal and provincial relations. I would argue that it's fairer to the provinces that deliver and take action. They're not disadvantaged by other provinces that say, “Oh, yes, we have an equivalency agreement”, but haven't done anything.
The other thing that troubled me greatly, as I was investigating, is that I couldn't find any recent evaluations of provincial performance under the existing equivalency or administrative agreement. I would be extremely cautious about loosening the rules around those without some greater evidence about the performance under the existing regime.