Evidence of meeting #36 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was yesaa.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Unfortunately, time has elapsed. Maybe on a further round you can get a response to that question.
Ms. Jones is next up.
Liberal
Yvonne Jones Liberal Labrador, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank you, Ms. Randall and Mr. Smith, for your presentation today.
This morning we heard from a number of other presenters. One of them, Chief Steve Smith, said that this particular bill is a made-in-the-Yukon law. He went on to say that the northern regulatory process works.
Would you agree with that statement as it relates to this legislation, not to the amendments, but the original bill?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
Yes, that certainly is made-in-Yukon legislation, and I believe it works quite well. I believe that, as with many pieces of legislation, there are always things that in practice we can do to improve it.
Liberal
Yvonne Jones Liberal Labrador, NL
Deputy Chief Millie Olsen also made a statement this morning that there is no evidence that these proposed timelines will benefit assessments or proponents in the Yukon. Do you agree with that statement?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
I'm really not comfortable commenting on someone else's opinion.
Liberal
Yvonne Jones Liberal Labrador, NL
Let me ask you this way. The bill as it is right now will take away decision-making power by the board and its officers and the ability to provide time-limit extensions to project assessments and will give that authority to the minister. Do you have any concerns or observations that you want to share with our committee concerning how this might affect the process within your organization and how it might affect those proponents who are coming forward?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
I think it will be a challenge for the board to work through different ways. If these changes go forward in the legislation, we will have to find ways to make this work. Timelines would be one requirement in the legislation, but as I suggested in my presentation to the committee on the purposes of the act, those are also things that we need to accomplish when we undertake our work.
Section 42 sets out the things we need to consider when we do assessments, so we have a wide range of things that we as an organization need to accomplish when we do assessments. Some of these changes will definitely require us to re-look at how we're doing some assessments.
Liberal
Yvonne Jones Liberal Labrador, NL
In the past, your group did assessments on a number of different files, as you have indicated to us already. Do you feel that the current timelines in place and the current scope in which your committee has been able to work have been to the detriment of any of the proponents, have slowed activity, have shown a decline in how economic development works or a failure to look at the environmental and social impacts in any way?
You have a history of working under the old legislation, and while there may have been ways to improve it, do you see anything that we are dealing with here today that is going to make your board more effective or more efficient in the work you do?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
We have 10 years of experience conducting environmental assessments on projects, from very small projects to very large projects. We have flexibility now in timelines that we have established under our rules, which for the most part, I feel, work fairly well.
Certainly there are areas in which things can be improved. We have proponents. We have first nations. We have other groups with sometimes different interests who feel there could be improvements made. I'm unsure until I see how these changes would play out or be implemented whether they would accomplish that or not.
Liberal
Yvonne Jones Liberal Labrador, NL
I can certainly understand why you would be very guarded in your responses, simply because of the task that your board has. But if you have a process that for the last 10 years has worked, in which you have controlled the timelines as a board and have been able to set those timelines to the satisfaction of proponents and the board itself in carrying out the work you're mandated to do, how do you...? Now the power is going to be turned over to the minister to set those particular guidelines. Does that impose restrictions upon the work you do, and is it going to affect proponents who will come forward having to have social and environmental impact assessments done?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
A couple of areas in which I think changes will be required in our process concern the timelines. Our designated office assessments currently take an average of 52 days. The proposed timelines are 270 days.
Those are the majority of our assessments. Currently we have the public and the first nations asking for extensions to public review processes on a regular basis. Because we have very tight timelines on those designated office assessments, we are quite conservative in providing extensions to them. So I see that with this much longer timeline for designated office assessments there will be more opportunities for extensions to projects. I'm not sure that was the intent of the legislation, however.
With regard to executive committee screening, certainly for large projects, if we're including the adequacy review stage in that 16 months, we will need to look at a different way, likely, to conduct some of the larger, more complicated screenings. That may mean exploring anything from—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blake Richards
I'll have to stop you there. We're quite a bit over time.
We'll move to Mr. Strahl next.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wanted to talk about the amendment in Bill S-6 that allows for board members' terms to be extended. Perhaps you could speak to cases in which that has been an issue before; or is this a forward-looking amendment that says that if a review is under way and a member's term is about to expire...?
Has it happened in the past, that this has affected reviews, and do you see this as a positive change?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
This was an issue that was raised in the five-year review. There was a concern that, for instance, if an executive committee screening were under way, or perhaps a panel of the board, and a board member was either conducting that executive committee screening or sitting on that panel when their term expired, it left a sort of void as to what we do. Are we appointing someone new, either in the middle of a process or somewhere down the line near the end of a process?
My understanding is that the legislation will now allow that board member to continue with that project until it is finalized.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
Now, you mentioned timelines. You said that you are currently conducting reviews in a shorter time period than is envisioned by the amendments in Bill S-6. Am I correct on that, for the most part?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
That's a designated office....
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
Okay.
Do you see that as being a particular concern? Is that going to put undue pressure on you? Or is it like, again, this is already happening, so it puts it in legislation but in practice you're already meeting those shorter timelines?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
It will require us to look at our rules again because these timelines are different from what is in our rules. These processes are different from what is in our rules. Part of that will be how we conduct these designated office assessments, if that's what we're speaking to—the ones that are averaging just over 50 days now and the proposed 270 days that's in Bill S-6. Then that will certainly provide participants in the assessment process at the designated office level a lot of room to discuss how they think those assessments should happen, the level of public participation and first nations participation, and the timelines around that.
We currently pride ourselves on meeting and beating timelines—the ones that we have—so this will undoubtedly add a level of pressure for us to extend timelines.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC
We talked this morning about significant change quite a bit. Have there been instances where a designated office or the board itself has reviewed projects where it's simply a renewal, that sort of thing? I'm trying to get an idea of the concern there as well.
I know you don't want to get into the politics of it, but have there been cases where you grade...? Does YESAB have its own determination as to what level of review is required already? Would this Bill S-6 amendment take that out of your hands and make that decision for you? What do you do now when you're getting a simple renewal versus...? We heard about a massive expansion at a mine. Obviously, they're treated differently, but maybe you can walk us through that process.
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
I guess the best way to answer that is that ultimately decision bodies under this proposal under Bill S-6 will be making a determination of whether a new assessment is required. So until they sort out what that means in practice, it's just impossible for me to comment on how operationally that would work.
Conservative
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
Well, currently at the designated office level we have a flow chart. So there's a way a project comes in. There is a certain amount of days set to review the information on that project, to do an adequacy determination and request further information. If it's a more complicated or comprehensive project, we can extend some of those timelines. We go into a second almost parallel process for more complicated, larger projects. At the designated office level, right now, we have everything from very small projects to...that come into mines.
We currently have a process in our rules that accommodates those differences in projects.
NDP
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Thank you very much.
My understanding right now is that the board is autonomous. Based on the concerns being brought forward with this bill and the need to recognize first nations input on this as well, I'm just wondering with the changes being made to the bill, is this not speaking to the autonomy of the board in question?
Chair and Executive Committee Member, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board
I don't feel it's really my place to make a determination on the autonomy. The hallmark of the YESAA legislation has been its independence and its neutrality. The first purpose of the act that I talked about in section 5 speaks to that. It says “ to provide a comprehensive, neutrally conducted assessment process applicable in Yukon”.
It will of course be imperative to ensure the independence and neutrality of YESAB and that it's maintained in order for us to retain the trust of decision bodies and Yukoners.