An application will arrive in the door at a government department that has a potential responsibility. It could come in initially through a Fisheries and Oceans application because there's a concern or knowledge on the part of the proponent that there is fish habitat involved. Most things that go in the water have fish habitat involved. In the case of pipelines, it could come through the National Energy Board, where an initial notice of project comes through. We'll just call it a notice of project, as opposed to an application.
As government departments, we share information amongst ourselves. Those government departments that receive the application take a look at the project proposal. They say, well, there are a bunch of other departments that will be implicated by this, an interest in those departments that it should be reviewed. They take those and they refer them out. It could be through the environmental CEAA, the environmental agency process as part of a CEAA review, or it could be from regulator to regulator, passing the information over. We work quite closely with Fisheries and Oceans.
Once those departments have those pieces, each of the regulators look under their particular legislation at their regulatory authority to make a decision. In our case, it would be with respect to navigational concerns, as to whether or not the project imposes either substantial or very little interference to navigation, and, depending on what it does, if we can find a way to make the project go and approve the project with certain terms and conditions. If we can, we generate the approval. If we can't, an approval is not issued.
Meanwhile, while we're doing that work, in the case where an environmental assessment is required, you will have the environment assessment agency involved--relative to posting the environmental assessment requirement and information pertaining to review of those materials--and you'll have the fisheries department looking at the fish and habitat concerns associated with the project. You may have other departments, depending on what the project is.
All of that material, which ultimately comes together under an environmental assessment indicator, or an environmental assessment, where it's been called upon and required, would come out as either a positive or a negative. We would get the results of that environmental assessment, in our particular case, where called upon. If the environmental assessment comes out as negative, we cannot, by law, under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, issue our approval. If it comes out with a positive and we have a positive navigational capability here, based on certain terms and conditions, then we would issue our approval. That's generally the normal course of action. Fisheries, as well, issues a letter of authorization or other documents associated with the fisheries. All of it glues together for the proponent.
There's no doubt that there are about four or five different areas at times--government departments--that need to make a determination or a review. We would hope, under a new piece of legislation--and I think it's identified within our guideline document--that we could start to delegate some of our authorities in carrying out those functions.
When we were with Fisheries a while ago, prior to 2003, we actually started that, by cross-training fisheries officers and our officers. We could do some habitat assessments for them and they could do some navigational assessments for us, on the smaller projects where extensive qualifications and knowledge base were not required,and based on certain criteria that we would cross-train each other on.
We've transformed that now, in our department, to these minor works policies. We're actually having the proponents self-assess themselves in certain areas. But we would hope with the new legislation, as identified within the guidance document, that we would be able to get a capability to delegate certain authorities to other agencies, such as fisheries officers and perhaps some municipal inspectors. We don't know exactly to what level we'd take it. That is something that would have to be discussed and consulted upon.
Right now, we don't have the capability to do that within our legislation. It does not provide it, because back in 1882 when it was developed, you just didn't do that.