Wilkinson warns Poilievre's resource approval plan will end ‘in court on an ongoing basis’

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is pledging to create a “one and done” system for resource project approvals and rapidly approve 10 projects he says are stuck in the “slow federal approval process.”

To achieve a maximum approval wait time of one year, Poilievre said he will eliminate the Impact Assessment Act and create one office and one assessment process to handle all regulatory approvals across all levels of government.

This proclamation comes a few weeks after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced his intent to streamline the approval process for big infrastructure projects in response to the trade war with the US. Carney said his plan, with a similar slogan to that of Poilievre’s — “one project, one review” — would aim to get projects approved within two years. 

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson cautioned that Poilievre’s aim to get project approvals done in six to 12 months is too ambitious — and legally risky. That speed of approvals “is almost certainly a recipe for ending up in court on an ongoing basis,” he told Canada’s National Observer in a phone interview.

Trying to do Indigenous consultation on that tight timeline, particularly with communities that don’t have a lot of resources, will lead to challenged approvals for failing to sufficiently consult with Indigenous communities, Wilkinson said. 

“Mr. Poilievre seems to have learned nothing from the period of the Harper government, when they gutted the environmental assessment process, and it became very, very difficult to get even good projects approved, because nobody believed that the appropriate thought had been given to environmental considerations and to Indigenous rights,” he said.

However, Poilievre said his process would be collaborative.

“We will do this in partnership with provinces, First Nations and municipalities, getting them to sign on to merging together their various processes,” Poilievre said at a press conference in Terrace, BC, on April 7. 

“We will get rid of the double process right now, where you have to do the exact same environmental review three different times for three different levels of government.” 

That’s a “disingenuous” way to describe the parallel processes that actually occur, according to Dayna Scott, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School.

“They keep trying to say, ‘Oh, they do these one at a time and we'll just do them together and that will save all this time,’ as if nobody had ever thought of that before,” Scott said in a phone interview with Canada’s National Observer.

“They tried it in the Ring of Fire already. They set up a Ring of Fire Secretariat years ago, as if that was going to be this one-window shop that was going to make everything go quicker … and that hasn't succeeded either,” Scott said. “Even if he snaps his fingers or issues permits without looking at any of the criteria, it's still not going to make these projects automatically appear.”

Poilievre flagged 10 projects his government would fast-track, including LNG Canada Phase 2, Suncor’s proposed bitumen mine expansion, a variety of proposed mines, a port terminal in Quebec and an all-season road to access critical minerals in northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire.

“A lot of them are waiting on different things, different market conditions, commodity prices — like they're not always just sitting there waiting for their permits to be issued,” Scott said. 

For example, LNG Canada Phase 2 isn’t bogged down in the approval process; it already has the necessary federal and provincial joint permits. It’s just waiting on a final investment decision from Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi and Korea Gas Corp.

Poilievre said “it would be impossible to complete LNG Canada” with the federal government’s proposed cap on oil and gas sector emissions and industrial carbon tax. The first phase of LNG Canada received provincial and federal support in the form of subsidies and tax breaks.

For Phase 1, the BC government agreed to cap the carbon tax at $30 a tonne, so for the second phase to go ahead, LNG Canada either needs a similar break on the carbon tax or public money to cover the cost of electrification, said Sven Biggs, Stand.earth’s Canadian oil and gas program director, in an emailed statement to Canada’s National Observer. 

“The barrier to LNG Canada Phase 2 getting built is fossil fuel subsidies, not permitting,” Biggs said.

Liberals would keep Impact Assessment Act

Natural Resources and Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson took to social media site X with a rebuttal to Poilievre’s April 7 press conference. His post pointed out that five of the 10 projects Poilievre highlighted began assessment in the last two years and are on track, with three decisions expected in the next year.

Three of the projects Poilievre is pledging to rapidly approve are actually being assessed under the Harper-era approval process, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA), not the Liberal government’s Impact Assessment Act. These include the Rook 1 Uranium Mine in Saskatchewan, Springpole Lake Gold mine in Ontario and the Cape Ray Gold and Silver Mine in Newfoundland.

In some of the remaining cases, the proponents requested an extension or failed to provide information required for the assessment.

Matador Mining Ltd., the company behind the Cape Ray gold and silver mine proposal in Newfoundland, started the assessment process in 2017 but hasn’t submitted any materials, and in 2022 requested a three-year extension.

The main difference between Carney’s and Poilievre’s visions for fast-tracking major projects is that Carney would work within the existing Impact Assessment Act to make it more efficient, whereas Poilievre would kill the act altogether. 

Carney proposed a “Major Federal Project Office,” which Wilkinson explained would monitor progress and push departments to keep timelines on track. Offices like the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment and Climate Change Canada would still do the science and the major projects office will consolidate that work, Wilkinson said.

Another aspect of the Liberal plan is striking agreements with willing provinces and territories.

“British Columbia has effectively done the environmental assessments on a number of projects,” Wilkinson said. 

“They must do them to the standards that are required by the federal government, and federal officials support the work of provinces — but it's all done one time, not two times.”

Carney wants to expand this model, Wilkinson said.

Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer