An environmental group has launched a lawsuit accusing the federal government of breaking laws when it loosened environmental regulations to speed up infrastructure projects funded under the government's economic stimulus plan.

'A lot of things are going to fall through the cracks.'— Linda Duncan, NDP environment critic

"These changes to the law are like cutting the brake line to make a car go faster," said Justin Duncan, a lawyer for Ecojustice Canada, in a statement issued Monday about the lawsuit the group filed last week in the Federal Court of Canada on behalf of the Sierra Club of Canada. Ecojustice Canada, formerly known as the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, is a non-profit group that specializes in environmental law.

The case is expected to be heard later this year.

The lawsuit targets two recent changes to federal regulations that could allow many infrastructure projects to go ahead without studies on their potential to harm the environment that would normally be required. They are:

• The Exclusion List Regulations, which exempt thousands of projects funded under the Building Canada Plan from environmental assessments. The projects include those supported by $12 billion in "new infrastructure stimulus funding" over two years.
• The Infrastructure Projects Environmental Assessment Adaptation Regulations, which allow some Building Canada projects not covered under the Exclusion List Regulations to skip a federal environmental assessment by substituting a provincial process instead, with the approval of the federal environment minister. In addition, if the project "is likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects that can be justified" the responsible authority may do what is necessary for the project to go ahead without the review panel or mediator that is normally required.

The regulations were registered on March 12 and published in the Canada Gazette on March 19.

No comment from feds

Annie Roy, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, said Monday that Justice Canada is reviewing the court application. Be she said she could not comment as the matter is before the courts.

The federal government's January draft budget promised to bring in "regulatory efficiencies" for projects requiring environmental assessments. The budget suggested, for example, that projects requiring both federal and provincial assessments could instead be allowed to have a single assessment process to meet both federal and provincial requirements.

NDP environment critic Linda Duncan said federal legislation already includes a harmonization accord that prevents such duplication and the new regulations are "taking that one step further."

"It's basically saying the federal government is no longer in the environmental regulation business," she said at news conference in Ottawa Monday, organized by the Sierra Club.

She alleges that the changes mean projects won't be properly reviewed to see if they could harm human health and quality of life if they involve federally regulated environmental responsibilities such as:

• Fisheries.
• First Nations people and lands.
• Transboundary air and water.
• International agreements on issues such as greenhouse gases and heavy metals.

"You've got lots and lots of examples here where a lot of things are going to fall through the cracks," added Duncan, who is MP for Edmonton-Strathcona.

Stephen Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, said under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the government might vary or exclude any procedure under the act in order to provide some flexibility. Hazell said he helped draft that part of the act when he was director of regulations at the agency in the early 1990s. However, he believes the government is overstepping the authority given to it under that clause in an effort to avoid procedures that would normally be required to amend the legislation, including a debate in Parliament.

'Attack on Parliament': Hazell

"This goes far beyond the environmental issues … What this is is a fundamental attack on Parliament," he added. "We think the government is deliberately testing whether Parliamentarians are going to stand up for themselves or not."

Albert Koehl, a lawyer for Ecojustice Canada, said most of the projects that would be affected by the changes are ones that are typically assessed via screening reports that cost only a couple of thousand dollars and take a few days and a few months, but could potentially save taxpayers a lot of money down the road by identifying possible concerns.

He added that he worries that these legislative changes are just the beginning.

"Given the sort of direction the government has taken, we're worried this is just a first step in the further erosion of the environmental assessment process."

In mid-January, Transport Minister John Baird told Canadian municipalities that he would make a pitch for cutting government red tape in order to speed up economy-stimulating infrastructure spending. A draft Conservative bill leaked nine days later outlined plans for a draft bill that would eliminate environmental assessments on projects valued at less than $10 million that occur on federal lands. The draft budget promising "regulatory efficiencies" for projects requiring environmental assessments was released later in January.

In March, a number of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club of Canada, held a news conference denouncing other proposed changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act that would exempt many projects from environmental assessments. According to a leaked PowerPoint presentation from January, those changes were expected to be introduced as a bill in early spring.

According to Hazell, the federal government currently conducts about 5,000 environmental assessments a year through federal departments such as Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Transport Canada, as well as the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.