Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My organization, East Coast Environmental Law, engages in federal and provincial law reform advocacy on issues that affect environmental health and sustainable development in Atlantic Canada.
We recognize the urgent need for a global transition from fossil fuels to sources of clean and renewable energy, and we know that we need good law in place to facilitate the transition and improve our ability to steward the environment we depend on as we undertake this Herculean task.
We have conducted considerable research on offshore wind regulation, looking at jurisdictions overseas and studying Canada's nascent regimes. We support Bill C‑49 in principle because we understand the benefit of jointly managed federal-provincial regimes for the planning, assessment and authorization of renewable energy projects in offshore Newfoundland and Labrador and offshore Nova Scotia.
We know that this bill reflects the shared aspirations of the Government of Canada, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Government of Nova Scotia, and we can appreciate that a lot of hard work and dialogue had to happen to get agreement on the text of the bill as it stands. At the same time, we think there are some changes that need to be made to enable successful, stable and sustainable renewable energy development in the offshore with minimum conflict between ocean users and ecosystem needs.
The most important change we want to see to the bill is the inclusion of requirements for tiered planning and assessment to inform key decision-making stages in the offshore renewable energy regimes. We would also emphasize that those planning and assessment processes must provide meaningful opportunities for public participation.
More specifically, we believe that areas within the offshore should not be open to renewable energy development unless they have first been assessed at a high level through a regional assessment or a strategic environmental assessment. In other words, we believe that calls for bids should not be issued for areas that have not been studied through a regional assessment or a strategic environmental assessment that is focused on the impacts of introducing offshore renewable energy activities.
We also believe that all individual offshore renewable energy projects should undergo a project-specific assessment, whether it be a federal impact assessment or an environmental assessment conducted independently by an offshore energy regulator.
Requiring tiered planning and assessment creates opportunities for public participation and input by stakeholders, like fisheries groups, in the key planning and decision-making stages that occur from the highest levels down to the level of project-specific proposals. Doing so helps to ensure that offshore renewable energy projects are sited in suitable locations, where conflicts with other ocean uses and ecosystem needs are minimized.
Bill C‑49 gestures to the need for tiered planning and assessment by proposing to empower the offshore energy regulators to conduct regional assessments and strategic assessments. The bill also explains how offshore regulation would intersect with project-specific assessments under the Impact Assessment Act. What the bill fails to do is make high-level assessments and project-specific assessments required components of the offshore energy regime.
The bill proposes to give the offshore energy regulators discretionary powers—not clear responsibilities—to conduct regional and strategic assessments, and the bill is silent on whether the regulators can or should conduct project-specific assessments when federal impact assessments are not triggered.
Later this week, we will be submitting a written brief to the committee to describe in more detail the changes we hope to see. They include limiting calls for bids to areas that have undergone a focused regional assessment or a strategic environmental assessment, and they also include requiring project-specific assessments by the offshore energy regulators when proposed renewable energy projects do not trigger the federal impact assessment process. These changes would remove ambiguities from the regimes that have been proposed and help to create regulatory certainty. They would also enable more informed decision-making, and they would support wise and prudent stewardship of offshore resources, including not only our energy resources but also fisheries and the biodiversity of marine ecologies.
Finally, I'll close by noting that although we would like to see a cluster of key changes to the bill, we also support a number of the bill's provisions as they stand. In particular, we welcome enhanced federal and provincial powers to protect marine ecologies, particularly the proposed powers to prohibit offshore petroleum and offshore renewable energy activities in areas that are or may be protected by law as areas for wildlife conservation or protection.
Thank you for this opportunity to address the committee. I welcome the members' questions.