Impact assessment

In recent months and At the summit itself, the government has begun making and promised more changes to the project approvals process and is now considering further action on taxation reform, labor policy, and other barriers to investment following consultations they hosted over the summer.

Last week even, Ottawa announced significant changes to the federal impact assessment regime, exempting a whole category of project types from the cumbersome process.

So the question before us today really is what has been holding investment back? What do we make of some of the recent changes to improve our investability and what more needs to be done? And to do so, joining me, we have Jerome Gessaroli.

Jerome is a senior fellow here at the And he is the founder and lead of the Sound Economic Policy Project.

Um, so let's move now to some of the changes that, uh, that are needed that have recently been announced that may still be yet to come.

Um, just recently, early September, the government made federal government made some changes to the federal project approval system.

Um, so certain interprovincial international pipelines, power lines will now be handled through the Canada energy regulator rather than through this impact This infamous, I would say, Impact Assessment Act review, and they're removing certain projects from the federal project list.

So to acclaim and applause from many, many sectors, how significant do you think this is as it pertains directly to the types of greenfield projects? high impact major projects that can catalyze a whole host of a chain of positive economic reactions, one might say.

And then some of those projects that you mentioned there that are on the sales block today and tomorrow are energy projects that the prime minister and his government have recently dropped.

from impact assessment review, including pipelines and oil and gas projects.

This is as reported by IADU4 on iPolitics.ca, but the more technical Canada Energy Regulator will now solely review these projects despite concerns voiced during consultations this summer that the move would weaken scrutiny of cumulative effects, species at risk, climate change, and indigenous rights.

A liberal government source told iPolitics that the rush to implement that regulatory change before Parliament resumes is tied to the West Coast oil pipeline proposal backed by Alberta and Ottawa.

I worry that that will not be the outcome of any of this.

Yeah.

And, you know, some of these projects were would have been previously subject to the Impact Assessment Agency, which was a government body that would evaluate, you know, broad environmental, social health and economic effects of the of them.

And they managed to they they didn't have to bring this information.