GREEN: Ottawa streamlines review process for energy projects

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In what looks like a bit of timely and meaningful regulatory reform, the Carney government recently streamlined the regulatory approval process for a broad swath of energy-related projects and activities. The reform is pertinent to three high-profile energy issues in Canada today — the Pacific pipeline enshrined in last year’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Alberta and Ottawa, the prospective construction of additional electricity supply and transmission in service of Ottawa’s electrify everything strategy, and the large-scale data centre proposals sought by the federal government. So though it’s complicated, it’s worth understanding.

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Basically, what government has done is shift the regulatory approval process for a swath of potential energy projects away from what would have been a multi-agency “integrated review panel” organized under the federal Impact Assessment Act to a single regulatory entity — namely, the Canadian Energy Regulator (CER). Like I said, it’s complicated.

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Streamlining the process

To simplify, under the old system, Company A proposes a project, the federal government reviews the project via a multi-agency integrated review process, then the project is approved, approved with modifications or rejected.

Under the new system, Company A proposes a project that’s assigned to a single regulator (i.e. CER) for review, then the project is approved, approved with modifications or rejected (or, if one is cynical, if approved, the project moves into a legal fight with various special interests).

Again, the government is moving a broad swath of energy-related projects and activities from the old system into the CER review process, but those projects and activities include pipelines and some oilsands extraction facilities.

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While by no means a regulatory panacea — the Impact Assessment Act still gets in the way of getting things built in Canada — this is a promising bit of regulatory reform that might help advance the Pacific pipeline (and “Pathways” carbon capture and storage project) contained in the MOU between Alberta and Ottawa. At the very least, it suggests the federal government may follow through on the many vague promises it made about a pipeline to the Pacific in the MOU.

‘One can hope’

I’ve been pretty critical of the Carney government’s environment, health, safety and energy policy “reforms” to date (see new de facto EV sales mandate), mainly for being sham reform and sleight-of-hand that simply move the regulatory pea from one nutshell to another. And this may be more of the same — crucially, the Carney government promises no reduction in the stringency used to evaluate proposed projects by the CER review process compared to the old process.

But one can hope this is a real deal that genuinely streamlines regulations and helps get things built in the energy space with a bit less suffocating red tape. That’s worth a tip of the (hard) hat, and a prayer it actually comes to fruition.

Kenneth Green is a senior fellow with the Mathison Energy Research Initiative at the Fraser Institute.

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