John Chilibeck
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Daily Gleaner
New Brunswick is the first province this year to sign on to the “one project, one review” approach pushed by Prime Minister Mark Carney, meant to ensure the feds and province speed up environmental reviews of big industrial projects.
At a news conference in Fredericton on Tuesday, Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister responsible for major projects, and Premier Susan Holt exulted over the benefits of having one environmental impact assessment for a given project, instead of two, to help gain the trust of investors.
Environmentalists and First Nations had grave concerns about the change.
“The same number of eyes can look at a particular review at the same time. It doesn’t have to be sequential,” LeBlanc said of the old process. “People understandably felt a sense that perhaps it wasn’t as efficient as it might be. But it can be more efficient and more collaborative, but every bit as effective and rigorous.”
LeBlanc, Holt and Gilles LePage, the province’s environment minister, insisted there would be just as much scrutiny of industrial projects, but the process would be quicker by eliminating duplication.
New Brunswick will take the lead on environmental impact assessments, with federal help. An expert technical review committee, made up of local, provincial and federal officials, will guide all decisions.
New Brunswick is the first province to sign on to the Carney Liberal government’s idea pitched at a first ministers meeting in June. The thinking is that Canada must reinvigorate its economy given the threat of trade sanctions from U.S. President Donald Trump, and part of that is making sure big projects that create jobs and wealth aren’t killed by time-sapping bureaucracy.
The deal is similar to what is already in place in British Columbia.
“We know that agreements like this work,” LeBlanc said. “The fact that British Columbia has had a cooperation agreement in place since 2019 has enabled most projects there to benefit from a single, harmonized environmental assessment. And British Columbia’s ability to attract large-scale investment and grow its economy, I think in many ways, should be the envy of many other parts of the country.”
Holt said in recent history, Ottawa and the province closely examined nine different major projects separately, all of which slowed them down, including the Sisson Mine. Federal approval for the open pit tungsten and molybdenum mine 100 kilometres north of Fredericton was granted in 2017 with environmental conditions, but nothing has been dug.
Holt said businesses needed better certainty on government timelines.
“We’re going to meet those same standards, those same regulatory requirements, with a harmonized and coordinated review process,” the premier said. “We’re not going to waste anybody’s time or energy, while still upholding the most robust standards.”
Among the projects the officials want green-lit if they pass environmental reviews are major refurbishments of the Port of Saint John and Port of Belledune. They also want to see mining projects get underway in Mount Pleasant, Lake George and the old Caribou mine near Bathurst.
NB Power, meanwhile, has signed power purchase agreements for four new wind projects that combined will provide 450 megawatts of electricity. The province wants them to be built and running by 2028. Those agreements, struck in partnership with First Nations, will also go through the quicker environmental review process.
Although the officials said First Nations concerns would be considered during a project review, no Indigenous experts were named on the technical review committee.
Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn, or MTI, the organization that represents eight of nine Mi’kmaq communities in eastern New Brunswick, wrote a letter to the federal government in October after a draft proposal came out on the “one project, one review.”
MTI didn’t like what it had seen.
Erica Ward, a coordinator with the group, wrote that in 2020, the chiefs adopted the Mi’gmaq Rights Impact Assessment Framework, an Indigenous-led process designed to assess potential impacts on First Nations rights and determine if Mi’kmaq consent for a particular project would be granted.
The draft proposal ignored the special framework.
“It is actually quite insulting to be left on the sidelines while the Crown negotiates a new approach to impact assessment amongst themselves,” she said, referring to the federal and provincial governments, which inherited the Peace and Friendship treaties, the first of which was signed three centuries ago between the British Crown and Indigenous chiefs.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for MTI said there didn’t appear to be any substantive changes that addressed their concerns.
“The Government of New Brunswick did not consult the Mi’kmaq on this cooperation agreement,” Jennifer Coleman said bluntly.
The Conservation Council of New Brunswick also wasn’t impressed.
Executive director Beverly Gingras said the agreement wasn’t clear on when the federal process or provincial process would be followed.
She pointed out that the old process demanded by Ottawa was much more robust protecting the environment than New Brunswick’s.
“The federal one is definitely stronger,” she said. “Under the provincial process, only about one per cent go under full comprehensive review. Even that one per cent of that full review isn’t as comprehensive as the federal review.”
