Find out how you can help prevent it
On May 8th the federal government released a proposal to embark on what is arguably the worst gutting of its environmental impact assessment regime in the last half century, along with dismantling other environmental laws protecting at-risk species, lakes and rivers, and fish.
Unlike the hype surrounding announcements like Prime Minister Carney’s list of “nation building” projects, the government quietly published this discussion paper on a Friday afternoon with no press conference and zero fanfare.
Friday afternoon announcements are a well-worn trick for unpopular measures.
The government is now seeking public feedback on the discussion paper until June 7th. But it is also worth noting that the federal Cabinet has already approved these rollbacks and says it plans to table legislation before June 19, less than two weeks after the end of the 30-day comment period. In other words, the government sees these sweeping changes as a done deal.
Update: On June 4, 2026, the government extended the deadline for feedback to July 22, 2026 after hearing from "thousands of stakeholders, Indigenous groups and members of the public." They now intend to introduce legislation to implement the changes at the next sitting of Parliament in September.
So, we need your help – click here to send a letter to Prime Minister Carney and your MP to let them know that this evisceration of our environmental safety net is unacceptable.
Why is the Carney government dismantling our environmental safety net? Its stated reason is that environmental reviews can be complicated and time-consuming (although no-one has provided credible evidence to back this claim).
The truth is that environmental laws apply to large, complicated projects with often enormous footprints and significant environmental effects. The Northern Gateway Pipeline would have been over 1,100 km long and crossed hundreds of streams and rivers, and a spill could have affected thousands of kilometers of coastline. The Site C dam flooded almost 10,000 hectares of land stretching 83 km. If approved, the combined footprint of Suncor’s largest tar sands mine, the Base Mine Expansion Project, along with existing operations, will be more than 40 square kilometres. Smaller projects contribute significant cumulative impacts too. It takes time to understand what ecological harm these projects will have, not to mention the health and safety risks they pose.
What the government is proposing
The proposed deregulation falls into four categories:
- Evisceration of federal environmental impact assessment, including “pre-approval” of pipelines and other energy projects;
- Making it easier for projects to cause species extinction;
- Making it easier for projects to harm lakes, rivers and fish; and
- Creating “Federal Economic Zones” – place-based environmental law carve-outs for specified projects.
West Coast will publish a detailed brief in the coming days. I provide a sketch of the proposals below.
1. Evisceration of federal environmental impact assessment and pipeline pre-approval
The single biggest rollback is to the federal impact assessment regime. The changes, along with agreements being negotiated with provincial governments, will ensure that only a very small fraction of projects will have a federal assessment. Any remaining projects will be rushed through an arbitrary two-year review that will consider only a narrow subset of environmental effects.
Pipelines, transmission lines and offshore energy projects will receive an up-front approval, before going through any environmental review, and prior to any formal opportunities to comment on the proposal. These projects will be exempted from the Impact Assessment Act and instead be reviewed by the Canadian Energy Regulator under the Canadian Energy Regulator Act (CERA). CERA provides little assurance that reviews and engagement opportunities will be any more than check-box exercises.
The discussion paper also proposes to allow “early construction” to begin before assessments are finished, and to give ministers blanket authority to weaken conditions of approval. What is more, federal officials will have to ensure that conditions of approval do not cost proponents too much to implement, without specifying who gets to decide what is too high a cost, and with no proposed consideration of the costs of more environmental harm.
2. Allowing Cabinet to authorize the extinction of the southern resident killer whales and other species at risk
Another alarming proposal is to amend the Species at Risk Act, a cornerstone of Canadian environmental law, to authorize the federal Cabinet to exempt projects from a critical protection power. Referred to as the “no jeopardy” clause, it prevents ministers from authorizing harm to at-risk species that would jeopardize their survival or recovery. The amendment would allow Cabinet to override that protection and allow projects to wipe species off the map.
Government sources, as reported by the Toronto Star, have confirmed that the government intends to use this power to authorize harm to southern resident killer whales. The Carney government could use the power to green-light a pipeline and oil tanker project. It could also use the power to approve ports, LNG and other projects in the orcas’ habitat.
3. Making it easier to harm lakes, rivers and fish
The discussion paper proposes weakening both the Canadian Navigable Waters Act and the Fisheries Act, two other flagship environmental laws. The Canadian Navigable Waters Act protects lakes and rivers by (at least ostensibly) regulating major projects’ effects on the navigability of those waters.
Currently if a “major work” – one of the five categories of project described in an order made under the Act, including dams, bridges and aquaculture facilities – will interfere with navigation, the proponent must seek approval from Transport Canada. The discussion paper is proposing to narrow the types of activities that require a permit to impede navigation, but does not specify which activities the government plans to exempt. It is worth noting that until 2012, any project that impeded navigation required a permit and an environmental screening. Now, we could be looking at a small handful.
Regarding fish, the discussion paper proposes to make permission to offset harm to fish habitat “more flexible,” though does not specify how. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans is currently reviewing the Fisheries Act and has received recommendations (e.g., here and here) that proponents be allowed to buy credit from third parties for offsetting harm to fish habitat.
While allowing offset credit purchases from parties like First Nations and conservation organizations could reduce burdens on proponents and hasten permitting, creating markets for fish habitat offsetting comes with serious risks. Offsetting is not an exact science and all too often fails to restore fish habitat equal to what is lost. As a result, offsetting should be a last resort, only once proponents demonstrate that the harm is unavoidable.
The discussion paper does not talk about guardrails to ensure these ‘flexibilities’ don’t result in a rush to offsetting, nor does it limit the suggested flexibilities to offsets. Given the Carney government’s laser focus on major project fast-tracking over environmental protection, there is real risk that fish and fish habitat will be on the losing end of this measure.
4. Federal Economic Zones
Finally, the federal government is taking a page out of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s playbook and proposing legislation to create “Federal Economic Zones.” The paper is light on detail about what these zones will do, but a key feature will be the ability to exempt projects from environmental impact assessments if a regional-scale assessment has already occurred identifying standard mitigation measures as conditions of approval. As an example, the paper talks about energy corridors, a key ask of the oil and gas industry for years.
There are a few things to note about this proposal. First, the government does not need new legislation to allow itself to use regional assessments to exempt projects from impact assessment. It already has that power under sections 112(1)(a.2) and 112.1 of the Impact Assessment Act. What, then, does it need new legislation for?
Second, the discussion paper says that Federal Economic Zones would remove the need to go through “separate project reviews, make the permitting process simpler, and reduce risks for investors.” The idea appears to be modelled after Ontario’s Bill 5, which created the Special Economic Zones Act that allows the Ontario Cabinet to exempt projects from all provincial laws. (It is worth noting that Bill 5 has faced significant opposition from First Nations and environmental groups, including a court challenge.)
Given the sweeping new powers for the federal Cabinet already provided by the Building Canada Act, it is easy to suspect that the Carney government intends to give itself even greater powers to exempt projects from environmental laws in these zones.
Risks of deregulation
Environmental laws exist for a reason. So why is our federal government – along with provinces like BC, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia – proposing to fast-track projects by removing environmental safeguards?
We know from experience that when environmental safeguards and processes are weak, disasters can happen, often with significant health and safety costs. The cleanup costs can run in the hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars (the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico cost over $60 billion USD), much if not all of which is borne by the public.
As our report An Ounce of Prevention describes, the 2014 Mount Polley Mine tailings disaster released more than 134 tonnes of lead, 2.8 tonnes of cadmium and 2 tonnes of arsenic into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake. British Columbian taxpayers paid nearly $40 million to help remediate the damage, although toxins persist in Quesnel Lake to this day. The project never went through an independent, public assessment.
The health risks of deregulation can also be significant, as evidenced by human-caused mercury poisoning in the English and Wabigoon rivers in northern Ontario, and arsenic poisoning from the Giant Mine in Northwest Territories.
Projects may promise benefits in the short term, but those stated benefits must be weighed against the possible short-term and long-term costs. Failing to do so is not just shortsighted, it’s grossly irresponsible.
What’s next
Before the discussion paper was published on May 8th, we heard that the federal Cabinet had signed off on the changes being proposed in it, meaning the policy direction has already been set. What is more, the discussion paper states that the federal government will be “moving quickly” to introduce legislation after the engagement period ends on June 7th. We have been told – with the Toronto Star confirming – that “quickly” means before the House of Commons recesses for the summer on June 19th, possibly even earlier.
In other words, this “engagement” is a sham. If the government were interested in expert, public and Indigenous leadership perspectives, it would have engaged on the ideas well in advance and would hold off on tabling legislation until after it has had time to digest the feedback it receives. In our view, the only meaningful opportunity the comment period provides is to register concerns and opposition.
Concerned citizens can also always talk to their elected leaders directly, too. We have created this tool for anyone to send a letter to the Prime Minister, key Cabinet ministers and their Member of Parliament asking for this foolhardy proposal to be scrapped.
Top photo: Decomposing maple leaf (Credit: Wyxina Tresse via Pexels)