Fighting Big Oil through the environmental review process

 Posted by Winnipeg Chapter on September 17, 2016 at 1:25 PM

The review panel for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) announced the dates for public consultations which start Monday, September 19 (same day that Maude Barlow’s new book, Boiling Pointcomes out!) and run through December.

 

There will be two types of in-person consultations: 1) 10 minute presentations to the panel during the day 2) evening public workshops that provide info and include discussion. You can also send comments online.

 

Council of Canadians are going to be using this opportunity to call for restoring and enhancing protections for the 99% of lakes and rivers that lost protections under the Navigable Waters Protection Act (NWPA) with Harper’s 2012 budget bills. We know that Big Oil is registered to lobby the Trudeau government to keep protections off and important we’re there to push back on the Trudeau government to restore and enhance them.

 

The link between the CEAA and the NWPA is that companies used to have to notify the federal government under the NWPA when they were building a pipeline, dam, transmission line, or other facility on, under, across or over a lake or river, which would often trigger an environmental assessment.

Harper created a list of 97 lakes, 62 rivers and 3 oceans so that only projects on these limited bodies of water need a permit under then NWPA and consequently an environmental assessment on impacts on navigable waters. Harper also changed exempted pipelines and transmission lines from review under the NWPA. So a project like Energy East, which crosses 2963 waterways, does not have to be assessed for its impact on navigable waters.

 

Council of Canadians Regional Office have put together a package to help participants. It’s posted as a series of blogs on the Council of Canadians website and includes talking points and more detailed info. The first in the blog series is here.


If you are interested, please register soon as space is limited! The Winnipeg workshop and pannel session both take pace on November 16, 2016. You can register for the 1:00-5:00 PM panel session, the 6:30-10:00 PM public workshop, or both. 

 

 

Here’s a couple blogs for more info:

 

Will we see #realchange with Trudeau’s environmental assessment review?

 

Quill Plains (Wynyard) chapter demands restoration of the Navigable Waters Protection Act 

 

 

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