Feds quietly exempt oilsands and gas power plants from environmental impact assessments

The federal government has quietly stopped evaluating whether new gas power plants and oilsand facilities will damage Canada’s rivers and lakes, air quality and species on the edge of extinction. 

The change comes as part of a suite of amendments to Canada’s impact assessment laws passed by the Carney government early Wednesday morning. 

The amendments remove in situ (underground) oilsand facilities and gas-fired power plants from the list of projects that require an evaluation by Canada’s impact assessment agency. They also took away the independent agency’s responsibility for assessing interprovincial and international pipelines’ impacts and assigned the role to the politically-appointed Canada Energy Regulator instead. 

The changes mean that going forward, provinces will decide which projects will need to undergo an environmental assessment. And while many already had agreements in place giving them this responsibility, the new amendments take away the ability of future governments to challenge provincial decisions on which projects to assess.

Environmental Defence published a press release highlighting the changes soon after the amendments were made. The government subsequently issued its own statement formally confirming the changes. 

“Canada has what the world wants, and we need to get those products to domestic and international markets faster,” said Tim Hodgson, Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, in the afternoon statement. “These changes will create a more efficient and predictable regulatory system for major projects.” 

The changes are meant to streamline the review process for the types of infrastructure and natural resource projects Prime Minister Mark Carney has put at the heart of his nation-building efforts. That push includes Carney’s pledge to help Alberta build a pipeline to Vancouver, BC, and his government’s embrace of Premier Danielle Smith’s race to build gas-powered data centres in her province. 

The amendments will “help attract and catalyze investment” in the country, the statement read. 

‘So deeply irresponsible’

Environmentalists are lambasting the change.

“These really contentious plans will give free rein to large polluters, put nature and species at risk, limit public participation and keep Canadians in the dark about the impacts to their health and safety,” said Julia Levin, associate director, national climate at Environmental Defence. “It’s a huge abdication of responsibility from the feds.” 

This is particularly relevant in Alberta, where the provincial regulators routinely exempt major industrial projects. 

For instance, in the past year alone the province exempted Kevin O’Leary’s $70 billion proposed Wonder Valley AI data centre project near Grande Prairie, Alta., from an environmental impact assessment. And this summer, the provincial energy regulator told Suncor it won’t need an environmental assessment before dumping up to 12 million cubic metres of (treated) oil sands tailings water into the Athabasca River. 

“These latest changes neuter Canada’s environmental protection framework and effectively remove the possibility of meaningful environmental assessment of any future data centres constructed in Alberta,” said Chief Sheldon Sunshine of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, whose traditional territory encompasses the proposed Wonder Valley project. 

The nation “unequivocally condemns this latest attempt by the Carney and UCP governments to pander to American oligarchs and tech billionaires at the expense of our treaty rights and the interests of ordinary Albertans,” he said.  

Levin added the government’s argument that Canada’s energy regulator is as well equipped as the country’s impact assessment agency to evaluate the impact of pipelines and powerlines is “very misleading.” The impact assessment agency relies on independent review panels of experts drawn from outside government to conduct assessments, and government officials rely on those findings to decide whether a project should be approved or not. 

The energy regulator “does none of that,” she said. It doesn’t have staff with the same breadth of scientific expertise, she noted, adding that unlike the impact assessment agency, the energy regulator’s leadership team is appointed by the government (the entity is however mandated to operate independently from political influence). 

The changes come days after the government discreetly released its most recent climate assessment, which found the country could be between five and ten degrees warmer by 2100 if nothing is done to reduce emissions. That much warming will trigger even more destructive wildfires, droughts, floods and other extreme weather than those that have slammed Canadians in recent years. 

On Wednesday, Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin defended the government’s decision to quietly release the document, saying it “was not a political exercise.”

“To say:’we’re not going to actually look at the impacts of the most polluting projects in this country going forwards,’ is so deeply irresponsible,” said Levin. 

Canada’s National Observer asked Environment and Climate Change Canada whether the energy regulator will evaluate the impact of pipelines and power lines on greenhouse gas emissions. We also asked if the regulator is equipped to cover the impact assessment agency’s responsibilities and why Canadians should trust the politically-appointed body to conduct trustworthy assessments. We did not receive a response by deadline, though a spokesperson for the ministry noted that some of the questions “are best answered by other agencies.”