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Joe Oliver sounded like Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society, as he urged Canadians to carpe diem — seize the day.
The Natural Resources Minister was visiting an engineering company in Toronto to highlight new legislation aimed at streamlining regulatory reviews on big energy projects, first revealed in the March budget.
“We are at a critical juncture. The global economy has presented Canada with an historic opportunity….We must seize the moment if we want to tap into the tremendous appetite for resources in dynamic, emerging economies.” To hear Mr. Oliver tell it, the problem of getting oil-sands crude to markets in Asia will be solved by his bill, which he claims will yield “timely, effective and efficient project reviews.”
The goal is to reduce to 24 months environmental reviews of major projects like the Northern Gateway pipeline from the oil sands to the B.C. coast. Mr. Oliver pointed out that some mine applications have taken up to six years before winning approval. “What kind of message does that send to investors?” he asked.
He has previously decried the intervention of “foreign special interest groups” into the regulatory process, with the intention of “undermining Canada’s national economic interest.”
The new plan will hand environmental review of smaller projects to the provinces, thus avoiding duplication arising from federal and provincial assessments of the same development.
In future, environmental oversight will be handled by three federal agencies, rather than the 40 or so departments currently involved.
Predictably, groups like Environmental Defence claim the new legislation gives Big Oil “a free pass to do whatever it wants,” saddling citizens with the bill for cleaning up oil spills and toxic contamination.
Mr. Oliver countered that the government will spend millions of dollars more on tanker safety and pipeline inspections to ensure those nightmare scenarios do not become a reality.
For the most part, these seem sensible reforms. The Northern Gateway should not be affected, since it is scheduled to end its joint review hearings before the National Energy Board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency a year from now, having heard from 4300 people. A final decision is expected by the end of next year, within the 24 month deadline.
Despite the government’s clear bias in favour of the project, the critics’ claim that Big Oil has a free pass is hogwash. Criticisms by less hysterical environmental groups like the Pembina Institute that the legislation weakens environmental protection may have some basis of truth. Pembina claims that the federal environmental assessment regime is generally more rigorous than the provincial equivalent.
But it does not follow that oil companies have been given the go-ahead to pollute earth and water. It looks as if the new regs will give the government the ability to override any NEB decision, but such a course of action would inevitably face a host of legal challenges.
It’s not hard to see why Mr. Oliver’s press conference took a theatrical turn. The planned capacity of 525,000 barrels flowing through the Northern Gateway at $100 a barrel would boost exports by more than $18-billion a year. This is black gold for a government that sees exports still languishing below pre-recession levels. The combined contribution of Northern Gateway and the Keystone XL pipeline to the Gulf coast would add 1% a year to Canada’s GDP, according to the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.
For the rest of this column, please go to the National Post website: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/17/john-ivison-despite-hyperbole-environmental-fast-tracking-wont-give-big-oil-a-free-pass/