Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Bill C-5 is now law after the Senate passed the bill without any changes.
Along with removing federal barriers to internal trade, the legislation allows the federal cabinet to conditionally approve projects it deems “in the national interest” before regulatory processes take place and enable cabinet to exempt those projects from many laws and regulations.
The projects that will be fast-tracked under the new law have not yet been chosen. Carney solicited “wish lists” of projects from the premiers at the recent federal-provincial gathering in Saskatoon, Sask. For the next five years, cabinet can designate projects as “in the national interest” but after that, the list will close. As long as a project is on the list before the sunset clause kicks in, it can be exempted from laws.
A coalition of environmental groups quickly condemned the passage of the controversial major projects bill, saying it erodes democratic principles, runs roughshod over Indigenous rights, shuts Canadians out of decisions that could affect them and puts the environment at risk.
“Bill C-5 is an assault on science and democracy,” Anna Johnston, a staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law Association, said in a statement.
“For more than half a century, we have made decisions according to the basic principle that we should look before we leap. Bill C-5 throws that principle out the window.”
Some senators did attempt to amend the government bill, which authorizes cabinet to override many environmental laws and regulations to build major projects like port infrastructure, pipelines and electricity infrastructure. But their efforts were in vain.
Sen. Paul Prosper tried to change the bill to force cabinet to always consider specific factors when deciding which projects to designate for fast-tracking. As written, the factors — including considering clean growth and Canada’s climate change commitments — are just a suggestion and can be ignored. Along with making the factors mandatory, Prosper sought to add the requirement of “obtaining the free, prior and informed consent” of Indigenous Peoples to the factors.
His amendment and several others were all defeated.
The government's decision to force the bill through before summer and limit study and debate has damaged relationships with First Nation, Inuit and Metis communities, Sen. Paula Simons said on Tuesday. The Chiefs of Ontario held a rally at Parliament Hill last week and about 350 people turned out to oppose the legislation.
Prosper, a Mi’kmaq lawyer and regional chief for Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, said “by investing a few more months into this bill and ensuring that rights holders had an opportunity to share their thoughts and offer revisions, we would’ve seen this bill pass with overwhelming support.”
In his speech, he quoted Chief Shelley Moore-Frappier of Temagami First Nation who called bill C-5 a “betrayal” of reconciliation. Prosper used much of his time to highlight the many concerns raised by First Nations leaders, enshrining their quotes into the record.
“Canada continues to speak about nation-to-nation relationships and reconciliation; this legislation does the opposite,” he said, quoting Moore-Frappier. “It asserts power over First Peoples — over our resources and rights. It was developed without us. It vaguely addresses our constitutional and treaty protections. And if passed, it will further entrench unilateralism as the default method of governing First peoples.”
Many senators, including Sen. Brian Francis, lamented that they had so little time to study the bill’s substance and impact.
Francis called it a “potentially dangerous bill” that risks undermining public trust.
Others, including Sen. Leo Housakos still had criticisms of the bill, calling it a “poor piece of legislative crafting” put together “without any real thinking and strategic planning” that is “highly aspirational.” But he ultimately supported the bill and the decision to fast-track it.
Sen. Hassan Yussuff repeatedly urged the senators to pass the bill without amendments. He said opposition MPs made amendments that addressed some concerns and strengthened the bill. He also reiterated Carney’s argument that the government was elected on a clear mandate to move quickly in response to the trade war with US President Donald Trump’s administration.
In the House of Commons, Senate and among the Canadian public, there is overwhelming support for building big, nationally beneficial infrastructure projects.
A new Angus Reid survey found 74 per cent of Canadians support “fast-tracking” major projects.
But the consensus starts to fracture when it comes to the specifics like provincial jurisdiction, environmental protection and Indigenous rights. Forty-nine per cent of Canadians, in the same survey, said they oppose bypassing environmental reviews to speed things up. The online survey took place from June 20 to 23, among a randomized sample of 1,619 Canadian adults who are members of Angus Reid Forum.
Environment and climate groups, labour organizations, Indigenous leaders and legal experts tried (in the limited time available) to get MPs to change the law. Last week, Conservative and Bloc Québécois MPs made some changes to ensure cabinet won’t be able to override a list of laws, including the Criminal Code, Canada Labour Code and Indian Act. The changes help curtail the expansive powers the legislation affords cabinet, but it can still override most environmental laws and regulations, including the Species at Risk Act, Fisheries Act and Impact Assessment Act.
A briefing prepared by West Coast Environmental Law warned that bad impact assessments lead to major problems, like the collapse of the Mount Polley tailings dam in 2014. It is still the biggest environmental disaster in Canada’s history, authors Anna Johnston and Kristen Theriault wrote. Approximately 25 billion litres of wastewater and tailings from the copper and gold mine — including 134.1 tonnes of lead, 2.8 tonnes of cadmium and 2.1 tonnes of arsenic — spilled into the environment and nearby bodies of water.
A 2016 investigation by the Auditor General of British Columbia found that the BC Ministry of Energy and Mines did not ensure that the tailings dams were designed or operated in accordance with the approved plan or original project certificate, the briefing noted. The project never went through an independent, public environmental assessment, according to the briefing.
On the flip side, a strong impact assessment can have positive impacts. For example, in 1997, the federal and provincial government, the Labrador Inuit Association and the Innu Nation worked together on an assessment for the Voisey’s Bay nickel-copper-cobalt mine in northern Labrador. To avoid the boom-bust cycle that leaves the next generation in the lurch, the panel recommended the company decrease production so the mine can operate for longer and keep community members employed. The company agreed to produce only 6,000 tonnes per day compared to its original proposal of 20,000 tonnes per day and it is still operating.
In her speech on Wednesday, Sen. Paula Simons said she worries Bill C-5 is “overcorrecting in expediting mega projects that may not be of local interest, even if they are of national interest.”
Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
Comments
So much for our chamber of sober second thought.
Big fail.
Why do we need a Senate if it is just going to rubber-stamp precedent-setting, democracy-shredding, ill-conceived, and likely self-defeating legislation with enormous potential for harm?
See you in court, PM Carney.
Optimism has betrayed me so many times, I shouldn't have any.
An optimist would point out we really have begun to suck at building large things, lately. There are a handful of really large projects that might fail without such privileges; and 'green' advocates have all been made aware that their own projects can be stalled by environmental claims - as for the last 3 years in Alberta!
If conservatives were in charge, I'd naturally assume that every awful project would quickly be put under this protection; Liberals, I'm willing to give a little rope to, have a little hope. Because I'm a dumb optimist.
I share some optimism also given PM (and his spouse) come from strong environmental advocacy. I think it seems logical he would not want to through years of hard work out the window. Politician get easily distracted by lobbyists, corporate persuasiveness, short-term gains. They loose their direction and site of their promises made to the general public's wellbeing, longterm outcomes, and potential negative impacts to the next generations and our environment.
I have a little optimism left too. I'm willing to wait and hope that a count of clean vs filthy projects is weighted substantially toward clean. ANY progress on clean is better than what a Conservative government would bring to the table. But the ratio Carney's Libs will broker on energy has yet to materialize. I certainly hope it's 9/10ths clean, but considering the current political noise, that may be too optimistic.
Then we also have Carney's housing initiative, which boosts that optimism. Nothing of the kind will ever come from the CPC in its current metamorphosis borrowed from the Paleolithic Age.
Carney's personal narrative was weighted with a clean majority of projects (but also with CCS and a lot of private corporate investment thrown in) in a book and speeches for a decade prior to politics. His warning about the costs of climate change makes his current tango with Danielle Smith puzzling. The dirty does tend contaminate the clean, though. After a year or so we'll have a preliminary tally to truly judge whether Carney is staying quiet about his true clean intentions, or whether the Build Baby Build binge will be sunk by dark delusions of oil wealth as dictated by Alberta and the CPC.
Right now the airwaves are saturated with pipeline rhetoric, all in the complete absence of realistic financial calculations, risk management or demand analysis justification. Climate and ecological systems be damned. Canadian mitigation of Trump's chaos and economic illiteracy will likely have largely worked itself out by the next federal election (EU here we come), barring the unforeseen, so that crisis will not be available as an excuse to continue the life of C-5 beyond five years.
In the end, the numbers will not lie. By then I hope the NDP has reformed itself to bring back millions of progressives who voted Liberal to keep the Conservatives out of office. It has worked well. But more oil weighing down the Liberal ship will sink it, and we can only dream at this point for a social democratic government that is economically literate and running on sunshine and nice breezes.
Pollyannish Liberal supporters and diehard Carney fans fail to acknowledge historical facts and present reality:
There are two O&G parties in Ottawa, not one.
Liberal support for the O&G industry goes back three decades at least. It was the Liberals who got the oilsands off the ground. Decades of subsidies that far outweigh support for renewables. Decades of duplicity on climate.
The Liberals give us no hope or expectation that they will finally see the light and abandon their support for O&G. Exhibit 1: Bill C-5. The Bulldoze Canada Act that arbitrarily sets aside environmental laws is a trumpet call for fossil-fuel expansion. Otherwise, what is it for?
Contrary to all evidence, longtime Liberal supporters hold out the prospect that the red team will finally see the light and abandon their decades-long support for O&G.
They will wait for a long time. Possibly forever.
Fossil-fuel expansion puts Canada's climate targets out of reach. It does not matter how many "green" projects the Liberals build if fossil-fuel production and emissions increase at the same time.
The Liberals' both … and energy agenda is a plan to fail on climate.
P.S. "Realistic financial calculations" do not matter. The O&G industry does not have to make a business case for new pipelines if Ottawa and Alberta make taxpayers pick up the tab.
Neoliberalism is all about governments propping up markets.
Business case or no business case, industry-captured governments will fill the gap. Neoliberal industry-captured politicians like PM Carney, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson, and AB Premier Smith will happily supply the funds necessary to keep the fossil-fuel industry going and profits to shareholders flowing.
As Mark Jaccard observed in 2018, oilsands expansion enabled by new pipelines is incompatible with Canada's climate targets:
"National studies by independent researchers (including my university-based group) consistently show that Mr. Trudeau's 2015 Paris promise of a 30% reduction by 2030 is UNACHIEVABLE with oil sands expansion."
"Trudeau's Orwellian logic: We reduce emissions by increasing them" (Globe and Mail, 20-Feb-18)
The OECD, the UN, and the federal Environment Commissioner all warn Canada is NOT on track to meet its targets. The main stumbling block? Increasing oilsands emissions.
OECD: "Without a drastic decrease in the emissions intensity of the oilsands industry, the projected increase in oil production may seriously risk the achievement of Canada's climate mitigation targets." (CBC, 2017)
"Banking on technologies like hydrogen and CCS without complementary supply-side restrictions is particularly concerning when those solutions will facilitate increased fossil fuel production over the next decades."
"In Conversation: Ottawa is Continuing Its 'One Eye Shut' Climate Policy, Carter and Dordi Say" (Energy Mix, May 6, 2021)
"Meeting Canada’s climate commitments requires ending supports for oil and gas production' (The Cascade Institute, 2021)
"Prime Minister Trudeau has signaled enhancements to Canadian climate policy are coming. But without moving to constrain fossil fuel production, any new emission reduction targets that Trudeau might announce will be a continuation of 'one eye shut' climate policy and unmet climate commitments. To begin to meet its emission reduction targets, Canada must remove supports for the oil and gas sector and begin a gradual phase out of production.
"… While the Government of Canada has begun to strengthen its climate policies, it does so with 'one eye shut' as it continues to avoid the climate consequences of increasing oil and gas production. Rather than constraining oil and gas production …, the Canadian government continues to foster growing oil and gas extraction by providing a range of supports to the sector that is driving up emissions. To begin to meet its emission reduction targets, Canada must withdraw its support from oil and gas extraction and begin a gradual phase out of production.
"… The paper also provides a critical assessment of the multiple ways the federal government is now supporting oil and gas production growth through continued financial support and the legitimization of unproven technological solutions that validate and accelerate future extraction. As a corrective to this federal support for oil and gas expansion, it recommends Canada join its demand-side climate policies with a supply-side approach, noting numerous specific policies the federal government could adopt in the near-term to begin a gradual phase out of oil and gas production.
Key findings
1. Based on the Government of Canada’s anticipated expansion of oil and gas extraction—more oil and gas is expected to be produced in 2050 than in 2019—the oil and gas sector in Canada will still be emitting some 200 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2050, the year by which the federal government has committed to achieve net-zero emissions.
2. Canada’s 2021-2050 oil and gas production would exhaust about 16 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget. Canada is indeed a “carbon bomb” of global significance.
3. Banking on unproven and expensive solutions like carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, without complementary supply-side restrictions, will not help Canada meet its climate target—particularly when these solutions are designed to facilitate increased fossil fuel production over the next decades."