Environmental assessments are how the law ensures that we collectively “look before we leap,” making sure that environmentally risky projects don’t end up harming the water, air, wildlife and other natural features our communities rely upon.
However, in the latest effort to fast-track approvals for major infrastructure projects, the BC Environmental Assessment Office (“EAO”) has outlined proposed changes to environmental assessments that, if implemented, could seriously undermine the integrity of the process.
The government has imposed a very short timeline for public feedback on the proposed changes, with initial responses due on April 13, 2026. We’ll outline our biggest concerns with the proposal below, to help you understand how these changes could affect you and your communities and how you can make your voice heard.
The proposed expedited environmental assessment (“EA”) process is outlined in a discussion paper published by the EAO. Among other changes, this expedited process would:
- Severely reduce the number and overall length of public comment periods, causing the public to lose the opportunity to comment on some aspects of the EA;
- Limit the assessment to only “high-risk values and interests” identified by the EAO early in the process, meaning that not all kinds of impacts will be assessed;
- Reduce the EAO’s involvement in shaping the content of the proponent’s application for an environmental assessment, shifting responsibility to the proponent to determine the nature and scope of evidence to support the assessment; and
- Increase reliance on the proponent to inform and consult with the public and First Nations.
If that’s enough to get you fired up, please go fill out the BC government’s public survey on the proposed changes and tell them why environmental assessment needs to be protected. We’ve worked with our partners at Ecojustice and Organizing for Change to put together a survey guide to help you engage.
Background: The Infrastructure Projects Act
This proposal is the latest phase in the government’s public engagement on the Infrastructure Projects Act (“IPA”), which was passed in the legislature last spring. This law will allow the government to designate certain projects as “provincially significant,” giving those projects access to a number of tools to speed through the approval process – one of which is the proposed expedited EA process.
While the government has committed that this would not compromise BC’s “high environmental standards,” neither the legislation itself nor this new EA proposal reflect that commitment. You can read more about our concerns with the legislation overall and about the risks to environmental assessment in particular in our previous blog posts. You can also see our submission to government from the first phase of public engagement, which was focused on the criteria for deciding which projects would be eligible for designation as “provincially significant.”
As the public engagement process on the IPA plays out, West Coast remains concerned that the accelerated approval processes under the IPA will offer less protection for the environment, the public, and First Nations rights and title.
How environmental assessment works
Environmental assessment is a process through which potential adverse effects of a proposed project on the environment, on people, and on First Nations rights can be thoroughly assessed and understood before the project is approved. It can result in conditions being imposed to help mitigate those impacts if a project is approved, and in some cases can even lead to a decision not to approve the project because its impacts are simply too severe (although this has been rare).
In BC, the environmental assessment process is iterative: a back-and-forth between the project proponent and the EAO with several stages of public review and consultation with First Nations. These iterations determine what information is collected, how it’s analyzed, how project effects are assessed, and what conditions are proposed to mitigate those effects. This process helps to reduce the risk of project impacts being overlooked.
It’s important to keep in mind that not all projects in BC require an EA. In fact, many of the thresholds to trigger an assessment are quite high, catching only very large industrial operations. Any project that requires an EA almost certainly carries a significant risk of serious environmental harms if not properly regulated.
The EA process provides a bare minimum level of protection to catch these potential harms before large projects are approved, and it needs to be comprehensive to be effective. To make sure nothing slips through the cracks, one of the most important changes made to the legislation in 2018 was to add a list of matters that must be considered in all EAs (section 25 of the Environmental Assessment Act).
The proposed expedited process
In order to cut environmental assessment timelines down, the EAO has proposed many changes to the standard process.
- Increased reliance on the proponent
One of the biggest time savings is the shortening of timelines for the proponent. Proponents wanting to use the expedited process are expected to be fully prepared to move quickly through the process, so they will have much less time to prepare their applications and are expected to get it right the first time.
One consequence of this change, however, is that the expedited process will be much less iterative. Proponents are expected to come to the EAO with most of their data collection and analysis complete, meaning there is little opportunity for the EAO, First Nations or the public to have input into how that evidence is produced.
Opportunities for the EAO to request further information about unanswered questions will also be severely limited. Instead of guiding the process, the EAO will move to a “validation” approach, giving the proponent much more freedom to shape the assessment and creating a risk that the proponent’s bias and self-interest could undermine the quality of the evidence.
In addition to the proponent driving study design and data collection, the proposed process would also rely on proponent-led community engagement, both with First Nations and with the general public, outside of the EA, partly to compensate for the inadequacy of consultation and public comment opportunities within the expedited EA process.
These shifts help the EAO meet its arbitrary goal of a 20-month timeline for EAs, which they say will be down from an average of three to five years under the standard process – but those time savings may be an illusion. Data collection and analysis is still occurring, but now the proponent will do it independently before the EA clock officially starts running. The timeline gets shorter on paper than it does in reality, while opportunities for oversight are lost.
It’s also important to note that currently, much of the three- to five-year “normal” timeline is taken up by proponents. Well-prepared proponents, like those that would be able to take advantage of the expedited process, would likely complete the standard EA process in far less time than the average. If the EAO only shortened the proponent’s timeline for application development and made none of the other proposed changes, the maximum EA timeline would be reduced by 3.5 years.
In other words, the most effective way to reduce the timeline of an environmental assessment is simply for the proponent to be well-prepared, which requires no regulatory changes at all.
- Changes to scope of assessments
In the expedited process, the EAO would no longer be required to assess all of the factors that normally apply to all projects. Instead, based only on the project description, the EAO would determine which matters are “high-risk values and interests” warranting assessment.
This change would fundamentally undermine one of the key purposes of an environmental assessment: to provide opportunities to unearth and understand all of the potential impacts of a project, not just the obvious ones.
This could result in the EAO deciding not to assess, for example:
• The cumulative effects of the project in combination with other existing or proposed projects;
• Disproportionate effects of the project on women, Indigenous communities, or other populations;
• Effects of the project on future generations; or
• The project’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Many of these matters are required to be assessed in all cases precisely because it is difficult to judge, based on a project description alone, whether they are “high risk.” These are complex questions requiring careful assessment to properly understand. They will not be significant in all cases, but their significance cannot be determined without assessing them.
- Limited public engagement
The expedited process would replace four public comment periods of 30 days each with only two:
• 14 days to comment on the project description, and
• 30 days to comment on the application.
This reduces the total time for public review and comment from 120 days to 44 days – a proportionally massive reduction in public engagement time that contributes a relatively small time savings to the EA process as a whole.
In addition to the reduction in available time for engagement, the shift from four to two comment periods also means the public will lose the opportunity to comment on some key elements of the EA:
• The process order: this is the decision that establishes how the EA will proceed. In the expedited process, the EAO will issue the process order with no public review or input.
• The draft assessment report: the EAO normally releases a draft of its report that describes its assessment of the project effects. At this stage, it also provides a draft environmental assessment certificate, outlining the conditions that would be imposed if the project were approved. This provides the public with a key opportunity to understand the effects of the project, verify that their concerns have been understood and addressed, and provide input as to whether the proposed conditions will be adequate to address the assessed impacts.
Removing these opportunities means fewer checks on the EAO and greater risks that key considerations will be missed.
- Limited First Nations involvement
Similarly, the number of times in the EA process where the EAO is required to seek consensus with First Nations have been cut in half from four to two. The expedited process would also remove the option for First Nations to conduct their own assessment of the project’s impact on the Nation and its rights as part of the formal BC EA process.
These changes have the potential to reduce the ability of First Nations to fully engage with the EA process for projects that may affect their communities and constitutionally-protected rights.
How to get involved
The government has imposed a very tight timeline for this engagement. If you want to have your say, here’s how:
- Complete the public survey by April 13, 2026: Note that this survey only deals with the changes to public engagement in the expedited EA process, although you can include comments about other issues as well.
- If you have more to say, send a written submission to [email protected] by April 13, 2026.
- Keep an eye out for more opportunities to submit comments as the EAO refines its proposals, likely starting later in April.
- Reach out to your MLA, the Minister of Environment and Parks, or the Minister of Infrastructure to share your concerns about the proposal or about this public review process.
For more information about how to effectively complete the survey, check out this helpful survey guide hosted by Organizing for Change.
Top photo: Malahat mountains and forest landscape (Photo: Luka Franzi via Pexels)