Environment Committee on Oct. 27th, 2026

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

—independent review of this assessment. You did it in-house with PCO to figure out if there might be a conflict of interest.

[Dawn Farrell]

The people who review my employees are independent. The employees sign off on their conflicts and cannot work on anything they're conflicted on.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Okay.

The government had already committed to pursuing national interest status for Pacific link before your office finished consulting indigenous communities. Were you genuinely free to recommend against designation of that project, or had the government already made up its mind?

[Dawn Farrell]

I was free to recommend against, and the government had not made up its mind until I did all of my work.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

On October 14, you told B.C. first nations chiefs this: “And I feel like, ‘Oh my God, we can never get this country to work. Like it’s never going to work. We’ll never make it’”.

Were you expressing frustration with indigenous consultation or the Liberal government's inability to establish a credible process for meaningful consultation and simultaneously delivering timely approvals?

[Dawn Farrell]

First of all, I was not expressing frustration. What I was expressing is that the way our regulatory processes work in Canada is that they're all done sequentially. You go through an environmental assessment. Then you go through various departments to get permits.

For example, one of our projects, Roberts Bank, has been in permitting in Canada for 10 years. I happen to be in Vancouver. We happen to be working on that project. In fact, I'll talk a bit about Pacific link: It was different.

Ten years of consultation still have not permitted that project, and we do not have the ability to build the piece of land in the port. That was where the frustration was coming from, for me personally.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

You said there was no frustration, but I'll leave that alone.

[Dawn Farrell]

I'm sorry; just a minute. That is—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I'm hoping you will table a complete breakdown of the financing for every project your office is overseeing, showing how much public money and how much private investment is going in, as well as how much is actually committed rather than just announced. You mentioned $200 billion in your opening remarks. Can you provide some sort of analysis of what the private sector contributions to these projects you're working on are and what the public sector commitment is, as well as the source of that? Is it all the Canada Infrastructure Bank or some other source in government?

[Dawn Farrell]

Once our projects become public, financed and finished, we will be able to provide that information.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you, Mr. Leslie. You are out of time.

We'll now move to Mr. Greaves for six minutes.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Thank you to our witnesses for joining us.

Thank you for being here, Ms. Farrell.

As you're aware, of course, and as my commentary has been speaking to, the Prime Minister and the federal government announced in October that the west coast oil pipeline, now known as the Pacific link, has been added to the list of projects of national interest and construction is scheduled to begin on September 1, 2027.

As a Pacific coast MP, I—along with many of my colleagues—have heard concerns from our constituents around how the accelerated timelines being pursued by the Major Projects Office may affect the process of both environmental impact assessments and indigenous nations' capacities to fully engage in meaningful consultation and environmental stewardship. We know that these two things are intrinsic to each other, but they're also integral for projects to receive the social licence to move forward.

I'm wondering if you could please speak to the extent to which the timelines that the Major Projects Office is pursuing can still allow for a thorough assessment of the environmental risks associated with this project and uphold meaningful consultation and the honour of the Crown with respect to the affected indigenous peoples and the duty to consult.

[Dawn Farrell]

Thank you for that question. It is an important question.

As our office moves into phase two under our act, we are putting together processes—which we could get into in more detail—in which we will bring together the proponent, all the first nations rights holders and any departments that have requirements to provide advice on permits, such as DFO and ECCC, as well as government departments inside British Columbia. We'll be holding a public hearing through the CER, at which we intend to bring all of that together up front. Then, through the hearing process, we'll receive advice and considerations on how we need to deal with all the issues with rights holders and the environment in the consideration of the final conditions document that would be issued in early September.

Once that conditions document is issued, it doesn't necessarily mean the project will start construction. It means that now the proponents can take that conditions document and move the project through to FID, which is financial close. They can make sure they've priced all of those conditions in, finalized their budgets and raised their financing. There would be a couple of months before they would start construction.

Currently, from the initial consultations that we did through the listing process, we now know many of the concerns of many of the first nations. We continue to work with the first nations today through our consultation process, which Rob leads. We continue to work with everybody involved with that pipeline so that we can be assured that we have all the issues and our permit will reflect that.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you for that.

With respect to the consultations with affected first nations, I'm wondering if you or perhaps your colleague could elaborate a little on the specific actions that the MPO is taking in order to support indigenous nations in that process, particularly with respect to enhancing their capacity to participate in these processes. As we know, many nations are quite small, and the demands of participating fully in assessment processes like this can be very intensive.

Could you speak to that, please?

[Dawn Farrell]

Rob, do you want to take that?

[Rob Van Walleghem, General Counsel and Vice-President, Indigenous Affairs, Major Projects Office]

Yes, I'll take that.

We now have a bit of history with this process through phase one. We embarked on that on July 2, after the submission arrived in our office. In under three months, we consulted over 130 communities, had over 140 meetings and got over 100 written responses.

I point that out to the committee to demonstrate our ability to get things done more quickly than people are used to. It is a principle of ours, as you've heard said before: High standards don't require slow decisions. Meaningful two-way dialogue needs to happen properly. There's no time frame for that, necessarily. It just needs to happen. We provided capacity funding to the 136 identified groups on the list. We sent out information packages and then set up meetings. We allowed extensions of time for those who needed more time. It was a particularly difficult time, given that it was the summer and there were wildfires, harvesting and the like.

Notwithstanding all of that, the overwhelming response from the communities demonstrates that this can be done in a different way. We had personal, face-to-face meetings. We had written submissions. We had a number of virtual meetings, which several communities attended at the same time. All of their input was received. It was brought back to them for further response and reflection, and then they responded to us again. In terms of ensuring that we had meaningful two-way dialogue, we believe we accomplished that.

We'll now move into the second phase. One of the important parts of the first phase was not only hearing from them on their positions or their understanding of the listing but also having them give us the forecasting—the important discussions they want to have in the second phase. This is in the conditions document. We have had really good insight as to what we're going to be talking about in this second phase. We're embarking upon that now. It will be facilitated by a CER hearing, which people are familiar with.

In addition to that, we'll be working with the proponent, Trans Mountain, on the technical details. Our office will be ensuring that communities have what they need to effectively and meaningfully engage in conversation and dialogue, in order to properly inform the project. It is also critical that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Shannon Miedema]

Thank you so much for this answer. I appreciate it.

Mr. Bonin, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Farrell, are there any office employees paid by oil or gas companies?

[Dawn Farrell]

We have employees here from electricity companies. There may be one or two from oil and gas. I'd have to check that.

We can provide the distribution of employees by companies to you.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Were these people from oil or gas companies subject to an assessment by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner?

[Dawn Farrell]

As I said, we go through an ethics process when we hire them. They cannot work on the projects of companies they're associated with.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

So it isn't the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner who assesses whether there's a potential conflict of interest.

[Dawn Farrell]

The Ethics Commissioner, as I understand it, works on my conflicts. I'm not sure if they work on the conflicts of my vice-presidents, but I think they do. For employees, it's generally handled at a different level.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Who assesses whether there's a potential conflict of interest? You say there's a process in place. What's the process?

[Dawn Farrell]

It's a very extensive process set up in HR, in which employees are interviewed. They are assessed for where their conflicts would be. They also have to sign ethics documents and disclose whether there would be any ethical issues with projects they might work on.