The Hook

The Senate’s passing of a divisive budget bill that calls for substantial cutbacks to Canada’s Environmental Assessment Act represents a profound abuse of power on the part of the government, Canada’s Green Party leader says.

"This is the most egregious and brutal disregard for environmental protection in the history of Canada," leader Elizabeth May said. “It’s just vile.”

Senators voted 48-44 to pass Bill C-9 Monday night — an 880-page, wide-sweeping budget bill that allows the federal government to privatize parts of Canada Post and relax once-mandatory federal environmental assessments of projects like oil pipelines and tar sands.

The Conservative’s budget bill received Royal Assent Monday night despite the Senate Finance Committee’s vote July 8 to remove several provisions from the budget including the Environmental Assessment provisions.

For May, who testified before the Senate Finance Committee July 8 calling for the removal of provisions that erode environmental assessment regulations, the budget bill’s passing represents the government’s disregard for democratic process.

"This is a profound abuse of power," she said. "It is in and of itself an indictment of the democratic process and the brutish tactics of the government to pass a bill without public consent."

Bill C-9 exempts a host of major, government-funded infrastructural projects from federal environmental assessments. It also allows the Minister of Environment —Calgary Centre-North’s Jim Prentice — to conduct environmental assessments on smaller segments of projects instead of comprehensive assessments.

"Either one of these changes would have been a setback for environmental assessment law," West Coast Environmental Law staff lawyer Josh Paterson said. "To do both of them results in a pretty massive setback . . . basically setting back the clock a decade or two on environmental assessment in Canada."

For Paterson, the Monday night vote and the accompanying changes to Canada’s environmental assessment laws also represents the government’s failure to prioritize climate change and other environmental in its decision-making process.

Paterson noted that the changes to the environmental assessment regulations were buried in a complex omnibus bill.

"These kinds of major changes to environmental assessments were just inappropriate in a budget that was probably unrelated," he said.

West Coast Environmental Law staff and other critics of the budget’s impact on environmental assessment laws will restate their concerns this fall when the federal government takes on a parliamentary review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

"We’re going to be working very hard to see to it that these changes are reversed and also that environmental assessment is improved, rather than weakened in Canada," Paterson said.

Niamh Scallan is completing a practicum at The Tyee.