Carney’s Major Projects Bill Could Be a Fast Track to Catastrophe

The recent passage of Bill C-5 has left many in a fog. Framed as a response to threats from the United States administration, the legislation is, in the main, intended to fast-track what the Canadian government sees as projects integral to the country’s economic security.

I am someone with decades of experience working on large mining, oil and gas, and environmental projects in many capacities—from Peru to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from Patagonia to Northern Canada. I have been at the tip of the spear for construction but also on teams managing ecological impacts. I have seen first-hand how well a project can go but also the disaster that can befall it if it is rushed. With that experience, I can say that there are positives and negatives to the process envisioned under Bill C-5, and somewhere in there are opportunities to expand on but also tripwires and land mines to be aware of.

The item I focused on immediately in the new legislation was the “one project, one review” principle to eliminate duplicate studies when it comes to environmental impacts. Any large-scale development in Canada requires what is referred to as an Environmental Impact Assessment, or EIA. These have been at the core of any project I have worked on. It is a long-term study not only into potential impacts but also to build a clear understanding of what is in that place before the work starts: detailed studies of flora and fauna, water bodies both above and below ground, and effects on local communities. EIAs build a case for a project and also influence how and where things are built.

I’ve often heard the complaint that these kinds of standards aren’t practised everywhere and that they put Canada at a disadvantage when competing internationally. In fact, the opposite is true. EIAs are a widely accepted global norm, and projects that try to bypass them are the ones out of step with international practice. Canada’s long-standing commitment to these processes—and our leadership in refining them—has made us a model for responsible development worldwide.

In many ways, we in Canada have been far ahead on these processes for a long time. While working in Peru in the early 2000s, I found the national environmental regulations around mining and large projects a jigsaw puzzle, one that had missing pieces and required an effort to make things fit where they sometimes didn’t. The Peruvian government and a few mining companies began to work with Canada, creating a framework of co-operation and technical assistance and building a model which became their own. The systems in place in Peru now are profoundly improved and impactful in a complicated mining landscape that runs from the high mountains to the desert, jungle on one side and the ocean on the other. It would be strange for Canada to begin to dismantle its model processes while other jurisdictions grow and deepen theirs.

EIAs can look different for different kinds of projects depending on where they are being proposed. The Liberal government’s initial list of major projects, for example, includes two copper mines—one in Saskatchewan and another in British Columbia—as well as a plan to build out the LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat, BC, which would involve expanding the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Now, mines may have a deep impact over a relatively small footprint, whereas a pipeline can have a narrow band of influence over the distance of whole provinces or even the country. These different types of projects carry different challenges, advantages, and risks. Pipelines can provide a nation with a new and powerful position in a world hungry for energy, but they can also leak, spill, and suffer blowouts. Mines bring us the materials we use in society every day, but their impact on the land is, in many ways, permanent.

Whether or not these projects are important enough to take these risks can depend on who you ask. However, any project, large or small, should have thorough and intelligent processes to determine where they happen, how they happen, and if they should happen. Everyone wants projects to move faster. The question is whether we still want them done right.

Depending on the type of project, the EIA process may be carried out for both federal and provincial authorities. Typically, third-party consulting firms—drawing on specialized staff with local knowledge—conduct these studies. When it comes to major projects in the national interest, the bill proposes collapsing the review into a single stream intended to deliver a final report more quickly and efficiently. This could be both effective and terrible at the same time. In some jurisdictions, using information from previous and adjacent studies makes complete sense, and the overlap seems unnecessary. However, in others, and on different types of projects, deep studies may be needed to better grasp the sensitivities and fragilities of certain landscapes, like waterways, both above and below the ground.

An EIA is a complex and lengthy endeavour, not only due to administrative hurdles but also because of what needs to be studied. You need to observe two or three seasons (sometimes more) of migrations of animals and several cycles of how the rivers and lakes and ground and surface water change between the winter and summer months. Difficult and detailed counts of plants and animals are created to better understand not only what is present in the immediate area but how your activities could impact populations and environments in the adjacent areas.

All of this is conducted in a world undergoing enormous climatic change, with things like temperature and rainfall regularly falling outside of understood models and behaviours. Bodies of water are sampled, tested, mapped, and plotted. All of these aspects come together to build a picture of what is there before a single road or foundation is built.

Is there room for improvement? Yes, absolutely. I have witnessed these studies drag on, sometimes at the fault of a company being slow to provide information and data, but I have also watched studies executed to a very high quality sit for months and years in the hands of government regulators who seemed to be either horrendously understaffed and underfunded or who had other reasons to slow down the process.

But then sometimes, even often, projects stall for their own reasons: financial or logistical, or perhaps a swing in commodity prices forces a company to focus on one area and hold off on another. Will this new focus on project approval create an atmosphere where the government provides various encouragements to persuade companies to keep their eyes on Canadian projects when these shifts occur?

Depending on the size, nature, and location of a project, both federal and provincial organs are involved. Although the exercise is meant to be conducted in co-operation, that is not always the case. I have been on projects where a single aspect of the EIA held up the entire process, for months, as parties volleyed questions and comments back and forth over the net with no headway made. This is not the usual outcome, but it can be an issue. If an EIA takes two or four years to complete and is executed to a high level of quality, reviewing it should be a matter of a few months, not years.

On the other hand, what can seem like delay from the outside often produces the very insights that make projects safer and more sustainable. It is also often overlooked that the outcome of an EIA is not only a go/no-go box check for a project’s approval but provides a road map for how certain things are done. If the valley where the tailings deposit is headed is at the headwaters of a sensitive river system, maybe alternate locations should be considered. Perhaps an access corridor interferes with migration patterns of caribou. Seasonal timelines might need to be taken into account: partial closures during migration or nesting seasons have been part of Northern projects since I have worked on them. The information provided in these studies is invaluable, not only to the people and government but to the projects themselves.

This brings me to another crucial point: the voices of First Nations communities, who are rightly wary of these changes. I’ve worked on projects that maintained strong, respectful relationships with local partners—and I’ve seen the other kind, where constant conflict bred an ever-tightening knot of mistrust on both sides. There is real opportunity here to build better relationships among all parties, but that requires recognizing that speed can serve more than just new developments. If a bill can accelerate project approval, it can also help illuminate and address community needs and concerns more quickly.

There is another caveat to all this, one worth some reflection. We tend to see large projects as bright, forward-looking symbols of progress and prosperity. But what about what we’ve left undone? As of this writing, thirty-six First Nations communities still live under water advisories, with poor or no access to clean drinking water. In all the talk of nation building and major development, perhaps that is where we should begin. New projects on these lands could, and should, start by addressing what has long been broken.

What about the many shuttered mine sites, factories, and other projects which reached the end of their lifecycles or were abandoned before completion or cleanup? Alberta, for instance, is strewn with improperly closed oil wells, abandoned pipelines, and derelict facilities. The same fast-tracking being proposed for new endeavours could also be applied to solutions to many of these facilities. Would now not be the time to attack these challenges head on and perhaps attach real conditions to new and expanding oil projects?

There are also the red flags along the way. As Canadians, we are living in a country with a bounty of water, minerals, oil, and all manner of valuable extractable materials. We also are the custodians of vast natural wonders which deserve consideration and protection. As we open our lands and waters up to more development, our government needs to pay careful attention to which organizations want in. Companies with a long record of safe, successful, and well-managed projects in Canada deserve to have that experience recognized when new and lesser-known players come calling.

If our previous standards and practices were too arduous for someone, we need to look very carefully before letting them put boots on the ground. How they have performed in other jurisdictions is often a good indicator of how they will perform here. As in any industry, there are good and bad players. Mining, oil, and other industries have their own long history of corruption and companies with nefarious intent, driven by greed. But these industries also have players that not only follow the rules but attempt to improve the standards. Nations also fall into those two camps. If our international reputation begins to fall into the category of “we will allow anyone to come in and extract for the right price,” then we risk not only our own nation’s welfare but the good we have done elsewhere in creating responsible processes and standards.

• Whiteouts, Ice Roads, and Wolverines: What Working at a Diamond Mine in the Far North Is Like
• Mr. Carney, about That Pipeline Deal—We Need to Talk
• Carney Bets Big on Copper, but Two Fast-Tracked Mines Won’t Make Us a Powerhouse

Reading the bill, it’s clear that a great deal of responsibility is placed in the hands of the minister. Of course, no single person can be expected to review the thousands of pages of dense technical documentation these projects entail. That responsibility might fall to a team, and who is appointed to that team will matter enormously. Within this framework lies an opportunity to ensure that the bill’s most critical and protective measures are not only preserved but properly carried out.

That concentration of authority is just one example of the broader complexity at play. There are many moving parts to this bill, and as with anything, what is written and how it is executed can be very different things. How will these powers be used? What will the corporate responses to this be? How will local community involvement be impacted? What will the landscape of industry, development, energy, the environment, and the people and communities within it look like in ten or twenty years?

In thinking about the future these changes will shape, it’s worth remembering that every project has an ending too. Bill C-5 might also influence how things are, in a sense, unbuilt. When large projects are designed, part of the effort involves what is called a closure plan. This involves the detailed and complex steps for not only the winding down of the project but also for the long-term maintenance of what is left. Sometimes this is a tailings dam or an underground mine, whose water and earth structures must be monitored and, when necessary, further remediated. Other times it is the impacts to the environment and the processes needed to bring conditions back to a healthy landscape. How a project will shut down after its lifespan will influence decisions about its design, so that the end result is easier to dismantle.

People like me are sometimes involved in only this unbuilding of a project, helping companies and local stakeholders better prepare for the future. Often a closure plan will include options for alternate uses of the land, materials, and equipment. These can range from facilities for special waste storage to alternate uses of machines and buildings for the community.

Film sets are an example. The Britannia Mine north of Vancouver has been used for TV series, including The X-Files. Another example is the Creighton Mine near Sudbury, Ontario. Its deep tunnels and shaft access were redeveloped into what is now the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Laboratory, which uses tanks of heavy water deep below the surface to study solar neutrinos passing through the earth. The facility, built in the ’90s, would have been far too expensive to develop independently, but through creative thinking, teams built a brilliant use case for the mine after its lifespan.

Will the bill reduce the requirements for these closure plans? Or will streamlining the approval reduce what can be long review periods that involve administrative hurdles, with documents sitting in stacks on desks or languishing in inboxes before seeing the light of day? What about if projects and companies delay or withhold important findings? Will the increased pace and pressure of approvals make it harder to spot these missing pieces when legislation is pointing toward a green light? In the rush to build, it’s easy to forget: what we fail to plan for at the end will become the next generation’s crisis.

I am well aware that as a country with resources, we are in some ways in a knife fight, with the world and ourselves. The struggles related to extraction and how we protect our home and planet while also taking what we need requires far-reaching vision, serious planning, and also a greater grasp of what we use and how we use it.

That’s why reforms such as Bill C-5 warrant caution. The temptation to streamline can easily slip into a mandate to weaken oversight. The government and the companies involved must resist seeing these policy shifts as a licence to dismantle long-standing safeguards. If we’re not careful, the gaps they open could lead us down the same path of environmental neglect now evident in the United States.

The dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency and related institutions in the US is, to me, nothing less than an assault on both the land and the public. Under Donald Trump’s presidency, the agency’s funding and staff have been slashed, oversight powers gutted, and rules on pollution and climate rolled back. This is all being done in the name of “cutting red tape” (sound familiar?). To those who believe that industry can and should regulate itself, history offers a clear warning. Has any powerful institution—corporations, banks, even the military—ever successfully policed itself with integrity and sufficient rigour?

Independent oversight isn’t a bureaucratic burden; it’s the backbone of accountability. Large projects need studies and reviews. We can make them more efficient. We can’t make them optional.