The Anti-Environment Budget

Buried within Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill, are major amendments to Canada’s environmental assessment rules.

In a move that emulates the worst of U.S. legislative hijacking, the federal government gave opposition parties a poison pill that will force them to choose between the environment and an unwanted election. By introducing major amendments to Canada’s environmental assessment rules into Bill C-9, the budget implementation act, the government is consciously destabilizing Canada’s minority Parliament. In one fell swoop, these proposed changes purport to sidestep a recent Supreme Court ruling, subvert the parliamentary process, silence Canadians who would otherwise participate in environmental assessments, and strip away the federal role in responsible environmental decision-making.

Only weeks ago, the country’s highest court slapped the government’s wrists for abdicating its consultation and assessment duties under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA). The Supreme Court disapproved of the government’s minimalist approach to environmental assessment, ruling that the complete impact of future industrial projects must be examined before approval is given. The unanimous decision in MiningWatch v. Department of Fisheries and Oceans clearly established that federal laws governing assessment of massive industrial projects must be applied in full and not at the whim of Cabinet ministers.

The proposed changes to the CEAA buried deep within the 900 page Bill C-9 will undo the Supreme Court’s precedent and eliminate improvements made to the act in 2003 that guarantee public consultation in environmental assessments. The changes would deliver a body blow, if not a death strike, to the idea of environmentally sustainable development in Canada. Twenty years of experience protecting the environment through environmental assessment, both inside and outside the courtroom, has shown that the natural world and the health of Canadians will suffer as a result. One needs only look south of the border to see the kinds of effects these changes may have: a legal loophole allowed drilling by BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig to avoid a U.S. federal environmental assessment. Surely this serves as a wake-up call and demands that our federal government stop the piecemeal dismantling of the CEAA.

The fact that this comes only weeks before a parliamentary committee begins a mandatory review of the CEAA displays an utter disregard for the democratic process. While Canadians freely criticize the decisions made in the House of Commons, most are satisfied that those decisions are the product of a public process that allows for stakeholder consultation and all-party debate. However, by employing a “Trojan horse” tactic to tuck away significant legislative changes within the annual budgetary bill, the government is baldly circumventing that process. Simply put, this is governance by stealth, and represents a corrosive form of “leadership” that manifests a fundamentally dishonest approach to legislative amendment. The government is confronting the opposition with a bold-faced dare: reject Bill C-9 as a whole and send Canadians back to the polls, or accept these controversial amendments (along with the environmental harm that will inevitably ensue) and pass the budget.

Bill C-9 is the second consecutive attempt by this minority government to hold opposition parties hostage through a budget that contains unpalatable non-budgetary elements. In last year’s budget bill, amendments to navigable waters protections were among the poison pills of choice, and opposition parties were forced to choose between protecting the environment with a non-confidence vote and supporting an extensive array of stimulus measures in the context of an economic crisis. In the end, the opposition parties split and the budget bill passed into law, along with radical amendments to the law that had, for over 100 years, protected Canadians’ right to navigate lakes, rivers, and streams.

While politics may be a dirty business, the honour of our elected representatives is at stake. Canadians deserve better than to have the government hoist the opposition onto the horns of a dilemma that is purely partisan. Neither Canadians nor the opposition parties should be forced to choose between an unwanted election and legislative amendments that will only serve to weaken twenty years of environmental protection. If the government wants to amend the CEAA in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in MiningWatch, then let them do so through the normal parliamentary process.