Hope may finally be in sight for fixing Canada’s environmental assessment process, after a four-member expert panel released a promising report on the heels of consultations in 21 cities across the country.

Historically, the focus of Canada’s environmental assessment has been on “avoiding harm” and “significant adverse impacts” associated with new projects, but the new approach recommended by the panel would shift the focus to a “net contribution to sustainability,” said Anna Johnston, staff counsel at West Coast Environmental Law.

“The recommendations that the panel has made address a number of the concerns that were raised by the scientific community,” said Aerin Jacob, conservation scientist for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. “I was pleasantly surprised.”

A key recommendation is to establish an arms-length independent agency with a broad mandate to administer environmental assessments — including gathering information, conducting the review and making the final decision (although cabinet would retain the ability to appeal). This recommendation would take reviews out of the hands of other agencies, such as the National Energy Board.

Another crucial recommendation is for government to move to a model in which the proponent continues to fund the science, but the actual science itself will be provided by independent professionals hired by the government.

“It recognizes that environmental assessment has to be integrated with assessments of the various other impacts, the costs and the benefits,” said Chris Tollefson, executive director of Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation and a law professor at the University of Victoria. “So we’re moving from an environmental assessment regime to an impact assessment regime, which is a major step forward.”

Major Overhaul of Environmental Laws Possible

There are four expert review panels currently preparing reports for the federal cabinet on environmental and regulatory processes.

Each is taking on a distinct but interrelated piece of legislation: the National Energy Board Act, the Fisheries Act, the Navigation Protection Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

Those pieces of legislation were dramatically altered in 2012, during the Conservative government’s overhaul of Canada’s environmental laws — which sparked widespread protests across the country.

The environmental assessment panel went to 21 cities, received more than 500 online submissions and  welcomed more than 1,000 participants at engagement sessions,” according to the government.

Shift Towards ‘Impacts Assessments’ Recognizes Holistic Nature of Project Impacts

The recommended shift from an “environmental assessment” to “impact assessment” might sound like a mere semantic quibble.

But Johnston said it represents a significant move towards a more holistic “sustainability approach” that considers social, cultural and economic impacts in addition to environmental impacts. The report also recommended that environmental assessments should be conducted and decisions made in collaboration with Indigenous governments.

“It makes it clear that we have to not just look at the biophysical impacts of the project — whether there’s going to be significant adverse environmental effects — but instead to look at projects and other proposals in a more holistic way that looks at their impacts on social, economic, cultural and other important components of Canadian society,” Tollefson explained.

However, Johnston notes the report didn’t include a recommended expansion of assessment for cumulative impacts, meaning the negative effects of development from smaller projects on a landscape may still not be adequately evaluated.

Information from Environmental Assessments to Be Made Public

There’s also the issue of information sharing.

Jacob of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative says that one of the things she’s most excited about is a recommendation to make all data from environmental assessments publicly available. While the details are still unclear, Jacob says it would include information sharing and both baseline and monitoring data.

“That’s really key,” she says. “It goes much beyond an individual project: this is about helping Canadians know more about our country. If implemented, that would be tremendously important.

“If you want to know that somebody did something carefully and following particular standards, you have to be able to see all the details of their methods,” she adds. “It helps us build upon the shared body of knowledge. That’s critical.”

However, Jacob notes there’s still ambiguity about the independence of information collecting: although the report is “really explicit” that the new body would be impartial and the lead authority, she says there would still be a reliance on proponent-driven data.

That’s where clarification on what “best available information” looks like is needed.

“I really want to emphasize that scientists of all stripes — whether they’re at universities, working in consultancy companies or NGOs — really care about being involved in this,” she said.

Federal Government Now Seeking Responses to Report

There’s now a public comment period that’s open until May 5, 2017, giving individuals or organizations the ability to respond to the recommendations in the report. Following that, the federal cabinet will decide on changes to legislation, regulations and policies, with the government listing the estimated window of fall 2017.

Johnston said she’s been working closely with government leading up to report, and confirms the government is considering significant legislative amendments. Tollefson added that there will be “momentum towards implementation.”

“This is a real opportunity to make a huge step forward; there may be disagreements on the details but in terms of the broad sweep this is an opportunity that should not be missed,” he said.

Only time will tell how many of the panel’s recommendations are implemented. But experts agree the review process itself has bolstered confidence in the government’s interest in public consultation, which Johnston said stands in stark contrast to the processes that resulted in the changes to the 2012 legislation.

“The panel has recognized that you just don’t get quality decisions when you don’t have public values and input included in that process, and you don’t have community buy-in if the community hasn’t been able to provide their thoughts,” she said.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned aggressively on the issue of science in the lead up to the last federal election. And it makes sense that he did: for the first time ever in Canadian history the issue of scientific integrity was a major election issue for voters across the nation.

Images of shuttered libraries, gagged scientists and dumpsters full of books haunted the Canadian imagination under the Harper government.

Trudeau promised to change all of that. Brandishing the language of the scientific community itself Trudeau painted a vision of a Canadian scientific renaissance, with the restoration of scientific integrity and the veritable holy grail of political vows: evidence-based decision-making.

“As a scientist, I was personally thrilled with the Liberal government’s vocal support for science, especially regarding the critical role that scientific evidence should play in informed decision-making,” Wendy Palen, associate professor and biologist at Simon Fraser University, told DeSmog Canada.

In the early days of the federal government under Trudeau, there were several events that shored up that sense of optimism including the anchoring of ministerial duties in science in open mandate letters and restored funding for research in the first Liberal budget.

Trudeau also promised to bring social and scientific credibility back to the environmental assessments of major resource projects.

“I think I can say the scientific community breathed a sigh of relief over the change in attitude around science and the role of scientific decision-making,” Palen said.

But, she added, that sentiment has stopped short in recent months.

In September the federal government approved the controversial Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal near Prince Rupert, B.C. The terminal is expected to become Canada’s single largest point source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Although opposed by all major environmental organizations in B.C., the project and its treatment under the federal review system raised a number of red flags for the scientific community in particular.

Flora Bank juts out towards Lelu Island, where the Pacific Northwest LNG terminal is to be located. Photo: Ocean Ecology

Proposed for the Flora Bank estuary, a unique eelgrass bed that provides resting grounds for hundreds of thousands of juvenile salmon from the Skeena watershed, the LNG terminal’s proposed site clashed hard with biologists and members of the conservation community who say, when it comes to salmon, a worse location simply couldn’t have been selected.

The federal environmental assessment of the LNG terminal — which concluded destroyed salmon habitat could simply be rebuilt elsewhere — was so fraught with problems members of the scientific community penned an open letter to Trudeau and his cabinet, pleading with them to reject the project’s review.

In that letter, scientists detailed a fundamentally flawed assessment process in which peer-reviewed science was ignored, basic principles of scientific investigation were violated and research paid for by the project’s proponent, Malaysian-owned Petronas, was given primacy.

The federal government ignored those pleas from the scientific community and on a September evening environment and climate minister Catherine McKenna announced the project’s approval.

“This project was subject to a rigorous environmental assessment and today’s announcement reflects this commitment,” she said.

Hearing those words, many scientists in B.C. were simply perplexed.

More recently Trudeau along with members of his cabinet approved the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline under a review process so thoroughly broken, Trudeau campaigned on the explicit promise to scrap it entirely.

But that’s not what happened and last month scientists were again baffled at the cooptation of the language of science in the pipeline’s approval.

“This is a decision based on rigorous debate, on science and on evidence. We will not be swayed by political arguments," Trudeau said.

"If I thought this project was unsafe for the B.C. coast, I would reject it."

For Palen, the announcement was particularly confounding.

Along with two co-authors, Palen wrote to Trudeau in the weeks prior to the pipeline announcement informing him of a new analysis that identified significant gaps in knowledge and research specifically on the impacts of Alberta oilsands crude, known as bitumen, on marine organisms.

A review of over 9,000 studies found not enough is known about the potential effects of an oil spill from the tankers that will be fed by the Trans Mountain pipeline to say with certainty the project is safe.

“The government’s words and use of the words ‘evidence-based decision-making’ are starting to be questioned by myself and others in the scientific community,” Palen said.

“I heard many of my colleagues wonder what the government really means by ‘evidence-based decision-making’ because those aren’t just empty words — they have a really specific meaning to those of us in science policy and in scientific fields.”

Palen said two important components of the scientific use of evidence are one, that the information is publicly available and preferably independently verified and two, that subsequent decisions are made on the basis of that evidence.

“That’s in contrast to making decisions and then subsequently backing up that decision by the selective use of science or evidence,” she said.

“That’s a big philosophical difference.”

Canadian Scientists Say They’re Unsure What @JustinTrudeau Means When He Says ‘Science’ https://t.co/nY9aCktGiB #cdnsci #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/MPEyzW1Bad

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 16, 2016

Palen said the federal government does not make publicly available the information it bases its decisions on so there is no way to independently verify the data or research undergirding these major project approvals.

Kathleen Walsh, executive director for the science-advocacy group Evidence for Democracy, said that’s a big problem for a government that wants to present itself as evidence-based.

“If government is serious about these decisions being based on science, they need to make that kind of information open and available and they need to be transparent about it,” Walsh told DeSmog Canada.

When it comes to gaps in knowledge, like on the effects of bitumen in marine environments, making evidence-based decisions becomes even more problematic.

“It’s one thing to ignore the evidence that exists but it's another to completely ignore gaps in evidence and pretend they’re not there,” she said.

“So for the federal government to say these decisions are based on evidence or science is not necessarily truthful.”

Walsh said she doesn’t want to elide the progress this government has made on the science file, more generally.

“Certainly there have been some big wins for them in the last weeks on science,” Walsh said, referring to the announcement of a Chief Science Advisor position as well as new rules to prevent the muzzling of federal scientists.

“But we can’t get that confused with their record and say it’s perfect.”

And making those grand claims about science will become more difficult going forward when the Chief Science Advisor position is filled, Walsh said.

“That person is going to have to answer these really hard questions about evidence and government decisions. I’m really looking forward to seeing how that plays out.”

In addition to the introduction of a scientific advisor, Walsh said the federal government’s current review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is also a huge opportunity to start getting science right in the country, especially as it relates to major project approvals.

Aerin Jacob, a Liber Ero postdoctoral fellow in environmental studies at the University of Victoria, couldn’t agree more.

“One of my motivations for being involved in the environmental assessment review is it’s not a very sexy topic,” Jacob told DeSmog Canada. “A lot of people think it’s boring.”

The Act went underwent significant changes in 2012 under the Harper government that many say has left some of the nation’s most important environmental legislation toothless.

“This is an opportunity to take a look at the changes to the Act in 2012 and the ramifications those changes have had. And not just to repeal those changes, but to take a good look at what good environmental assessments can be and to make sure Canada is a leader in that regard.”

Jacob recently organized the creation and release of an open letter from nearly 2,000 young scientists and researchers to the federal government as part of the review, calling on the government to return scientific integrity to the environmental assessment process.

The letter, which Jacob presented to the expert review panel in Nanaimo this week, outlines five ways the federal government could improve scientific rigour in the assessment process, including the use of best available evidence, making information and data available to the public, evaluating cumulative impacts of projects and eliminating conflicts of interest.

Dr. Aerin Jacob speaks at a Before the Abstract event about her research in the Serengeti. Photo: Before the Abstract

“We see what happens when science takes a back seat in this process,” Jacob said, pointing to the “entirely preventable” tailings pond collapse at the Mount Polley mine in B.C. and the recent approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

“With something like the Kinder Morgan decision, there was a lot of concern that has been raised over the last couple of years about that process. Scientists and independent experts have said again and again the evidence being present there isn’t the best evidence, it doesn’t paint the whole picture.”

Jacob said the lack of transparency around the evidence the government used to makes it decision about the pipeline is “deeply concerning.”

“Although it’s possible there is other evidence the government is considering, it’s not evident because we can’t see it.”

“It’s like a black box of decision-making. That’s not scientifically rigorous.”

Jacob said what her and other young scientists and researchers are proposing isn’t radical.

“These aren’t crazy new ideas, to share that information and share how you arrive at a conclusion. This is what we’re taught since elementary school: show your work.”

Jacob said she feels when it comes to science, there is a culture change underway in Canada.

Scientists were eager to get involved in the environmental assessment review, she said.

In Nanaimo, Jacob told the panel young scientists like herself have had a “coming of age.”

“Muzzling of scientists, putting data in dumpsters — that was the norm” for her and other young scientists under the former government. 

“It was not a good time to be looking at a scientific career in Canada and we do not want that ever to be the case professionally or personally.”

“I really can’t underscore how big an opportunity this review is,” Jacob told DeSmog Canada. “It could influence everything about how we make decisions about the environment.”

Jacob said so many of the social concerns that have arisen around major projects like pipelines and LNG terminals could be resolved through a more robust assessment process, starting with greater transparency and rigour from the outset.

The federal expert panel will conclude its review of the environmental assessment act this week and will make recommendations to the federal government by the end of January 2017. A secondary process, which will include the input of a multi-interest advisory committee, will follow on the heels of the panel’s report.

“I really hope the panel will take a bold approach. We’re talking a major overhaul here. And I hope our elected officials have the courage to implement it.”

Image: Justin Trudeau at a Science North event in Sudbury, Ontario. Photo: Prime Minister's Photo Gallery

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A one-of-a-kind debate in Victoria this week brought science and technology to the minds of federal candidates who all, despite their differences, agreed vociferously on one thing: Canada needs to be freed from the “war on science.”

In a packed room at the University of Victoria federal candidates for the NDP, Liberal and Green parties voiced unanimous concern with the muzzling of scientists, the cuts to research funding and the lack of transparency in government decision-making — all of which have, the candidates argued, became common place in the last four years of Conservative party majority rule.

Event organizer Aerin Jacob, a postdoctoral fellow in Geography at the University of Victoria, said Canadians are aware that there is a science crisis in Canada, even if they aren’t clear on the details. She invited candidates from all parties in four Vancouver Island ridings to speak to the community about those concerns.

Jacob said candidates from the Conservative Party did not respond to multiple invitations to participate in the science and technology debate.

Science Under Seige

“I think everyone in this room knows we’re seeing a war on science that is unprecedented, dangerous and deeply ideological,” Liberal candidate Tim Kane told the audience. “There is no doubt science in Canada is under siege.”

Jo-Ann Roberts, former CBC journalist and Green party candidate said the issue of science in Canada “is a big reason why I decided to run for office after being a journalist for 37 years.”

“It is not just war on science: it is information and knowledge in this country that is under siege,” Roberts said. “Canadians are angry about it.”

NDP candidate Murray Rankin said Canada has “moved from the age of enlightenment to the dark ages” due to “arbitrary funding cuts, centralization of power and a lack of respect for research.”

“Stephen Harper’s war on science is everywhere to be seen and his victims are everywhere in our system,” Rankin said.

CBC radio journalist Bob McDonald, who moderated the event, said, despite the current situation, “Canada has a long history of doing really excellent science.”

“We need scientific literacy in politicians and in the public because we have hard decisions we need to make about the future,” he said, “about how we keep ourselves warm, how we move from place to place and where that energy is going to come from, where our food and water is going to come from.”

McDonald told the audience “science is one of the last institutions we have that actually looks for the truth.”

All three candidates said if elected they would take steps to introduce a parliamentary science officer in Ottawa and bring back the mandatory-long form census.

Roberts said the Green Party’s platform includes a plan to make publicly funded science freely available to the public — something both Rankin and Kane said their parties would also pursue. Kane said the federal Liberal Party has plans for a central online portal that would make federal science more easily accessible to the public.

Rankin said the NDP will institute a bill of rights for science in government, something that would protect public servants from the fear of political reprisal.

“There should be an understanding that you can’t be fired for speaking truth to power,” he said.

Science a Number One Election Issue

The non-partisan science advocacy group Evidence for Democracy has been working hard to make science a relevant election issue. The group recently reviewed questions from federal leaders debate since 1968 and found none mentioned science policy.

Katie Gibbs says events like this week's science and technology debate show how much science has become a major player in the upcoming federal election.

“I have actually have been amazed to see how much science is playing into this election,” Gibbs said.

“And I think unprecedented that we’re seeing science as one of the main issues being discussed.”

Gibbs said the issue of science and the current challenged being faced with funding cuts and communications restrictions has “reached the next level of public awareness.”

This week Maclean's listed science as the top policy concern for Canadians who voted in the magazine's policy "face-off." Seventy-four per cent of participants said they wanted to see publicy funded science more readily available to the public.

“It’s really the public that is bringing this up,” Gibbs said. 

Transition Off Fossil Fuels Pressing for Candidates

All three candidates promised to reinstate funding for federal science, redirecting funds from contentious oil and gas subsidies.

McDonald asked the candidates to address the “big elephant in the room,” the fact that Canada is an oil producing country.

“How do you make the transition” off of fossil fuels, McDonald asked.

“The majority of fossil fuels must stay in the ground,” Roberts said. “We’re the only party that is opposed to the expansion of the oilsands…because if you’re expanding you’re going to need more pipelines and if you’re expanding you’re not bringing down your greenhouse gasses.”

Roberts said other countries provide a view of what a greener future could have in store for Canada.

“We have seen in Germany their renewable energy is 11 per cent of the GDP,” Roberts said. “Our oil and gas accounts for six per cent [of the GDP] and two per cent of the population works in the sector.”

The transition to cleaner forms of energy won’t occur without incentives, Roberts added.

Rankin said the NDP’s view on oilsands projects and pipelines is that decisions about these kinds of projects has to be “based on science, not ideology.”

“It’s just as bad for the Conservatives to never meet a pipeline they didn’t like for ideological reasons and to simply say we hate them for ideological reasons, “ he said.

Rankin added the transition to renewable energy will affect the approximately 550,000 people employed in the fossil fuel industry and must be “taken seriously.”

Rankin said there are smart ways of looking to transition. “If we move to geothermal — which is a technology that is much easier on the environment —geothermal is found where natural gas is found so that gives us an easy transition from the natural gas industry.”

“The question is sensitive to the reality that we have to look after those people who will be displaced,” he said.

Kane said he saw “lots of commonalities” between the three parties positions, adding the Liberal Party would work to create a favourable tax regime to draw renewable energy technology to cities like Victoria.

Kane also promised the Liberal Party will work with provincial premiers to formalize emissions reductions targets for the nation as a whole and “restore credibility” to the federal environmental assessment process which determines the fate of major oil and gas projects and infrastructure like the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Jacob said she hoped the event would remind Canadians of the importance of science to the upcoming federal election.

“Science is about discovery and it’s exciting. Talking about science is talking about optimism, it’s talking about the future, about what we don’t know and what we want to find out and how we will go about doing that.”

“When people go to the polls they might be thinking about their jobs or their families,” Jacobs said, “but their jobs and families are deeply connected to science and technology whether or not they know it.”

“It’s important for politicians to pay attention to science and tech and for people to ask them questions about it.”

Jacob said she was “thrilled” to see the room so full of community members.

“It gives me hope.”

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