Protest against gutting CEAA turns to Facebook
Your take-away message: If you do anything after reading this post – join the Facebook group Save Canada’s Environmental Laws!, and get your friends to do the same.
Will the Canadian government get away with this cynical and undemocratic attempt to by-pass public process? Could be: they got away with burying major changes to Canada’s Navigable Waters Protection Act in last year’s Budget Implementation Act.
But then again, they thought that they would get away with proroguing Parliament, and Canadians flocked to Facebook groups and Websites, phoned their MPs and demonstrated in the streets. We can only hope that Canadians will be as vigilant now that the integrity of one of Canada’s most important environmental laws is at stake.
In a perceptive comment responding to that post, “PFL” wrote:
The democracy movement you mentioned didn't happen because of hope. It happened because of work. If you want to make this a big thing, you're going to have to hammer on about it, everywhere, all the time, with everyone (all parties).
I agree with your critique, but saying "We can only hope" is weak.
We know that social change does not just happen. We’re working with the members of the Canadian Environmental Network’s Environmental Planning and Assessment Caucus and others to call on Canadian politicians to fight these amendments. As part of our work with that coalition, Josh Paterson of our office has launched a new Facebook group, which we hope will be a key focus of public opposition to the gutting of CEAA, as well as the undermining of the Navigable Waters Protection Act last year, and other anti-environmental initiatives.
If you’re on Facebook (or if you’ve always thought about joining), now is the time to join Save Canada’s Environmental Laws! Invite your friends, and your friend’s friends to join – let’s grow this facebook group!
It’s also the time to talk to, and write to, your MPs and ask them to oppose this attempt to hide amendments a key environmental law at the back of budget legislation. Remember, handwritten letters may work best, but e-mails, telephone calls and other communications are also important.
Comments
Problems with CEAA amendments
Hello Maclow,
So far as I'm aware most of the independent analysis of the impacts of the CEAA amendments have been done by environmental groups. We've given our overview of the CEAA amendments here. The Environmental Law Centre of Alberta has done a more detailed analysis which seems pretty good.
I think that's it's reasonably clear that exempting a whole host of federally funded projects from CEAA is not good for the environment. CEAA is intended to ensure (amongst other things) that federal government decisions promote sustainable development. Federal stimulis funding is important - but not if we're funding projects that undermine a sustainable future.
I think it's equally clear that allowing the Minister of the Environment to break up large projects into small pieces and avoid doing detailed assessments of the large projects is also a step in the wrong direction.
People can disagree with our conclusion that delegating environmental assessments to the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is a bad idea. Indeed, people have on this blog. However, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency reviewed the one pilot environmental assessment done by the NEB, and while they were positive about many aspects of the pilot, they also found that members of the public (non-professionals) felt shut out by the process. The federal government is promising new participant funding (which is found in the Budget Implementation Act), but while this may help, the problems with openess to non-professional participation in the NEB process seemed to be more fundamental. An analysis of the NEB process done by the Canadian Environmental Network is less flatering - documenting in more detail many of the frustrations felt by ordinary members of the public who were involved in the NEB pilot process.
The amendments do also charge CEAA with a more direct role in comprehensive studies of major projects (except where the NEB or the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will be playing that role). It's not at all clear that this change will "hinder sound environmental management" - it may be a positive development. However, it still should have been proposed and explored in the context of the Parliament-mandated review of CEAA and not have been buried at the end of the Budget Implementation Act.
Thanks for taking the time to look into this.
questions
I understand how the process of burying ammendments to CEAA at the end of a budget is fundementally undemocratic but it is unclear to me how these changes hinder sound environmental management. Could you please point me to an unbiased revue of the changes. I fear the government may feel the need to bury any changes to CEAA because they are concerned that the environmental community will spin it negatively regardless. As a person very concerned with our management of environmental values, I recognise there are changes to CEAA that should be made and changes that should not. Lets force our government to make the right changes.
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