Editorial
Canada’s Economy and its Future Prosperity are in Jeopardy
BY CATHERINE BROWNLEE, PRESIDENT OF ALBERTA ENTERPRISE GROUP (AEG), CALGARY AND EDMONTON CHAPTERS
No thanks to the federal Impact Assessment Act or Bill C-69 – even with a global energy crisis and the world pleading for Canada’s responsibly and sustainably produced natural resources, Canada, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is on track to have the worst performing economy of the G20 over the next 10 years. Our organizations – the Alberta Enterprise Group and ICBA Alberta – are in the Supreme Court of Canada, supporting the Government of Alberta and almost all other provinces and territories in their fight against the federal government’s Impact Assessment Act.
This is most apparent in the case of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The USA and Canada stood together on the starting line in 2013, both considering how to launch an LNG industry in their respective countries. A decade later, the USA now stands as the largest exporter of LNG in the world, while Canada remains at least two years away from exporting any measurable volume of LNG. In the time Canada took to approve and build one LNG export facility, the United States approved and built seven LNG export facilities and has five more under construction with an additional 15 approved.
Canada has done such a thorough job of saying “no” and turning away capital and talent through regulatory uncertainty, red tape and resource opposition – $150 billion in cancelled energy projects alone since 2017 – that two years ago, the World Bank ranked Canada 64th in the world in the time it takes to approve a major construction project.
Furthermore, in Canada, in every year since 2014, outbound investment has exceeded inbound investment. What precisely is it about the federal Impact Assessment Act that discourages capital investment and resource development?
The federal Impact Assessment Act or Bill C-69 replaced a streamlined National Energy Board with the bureaucratic multi-layered Canada Energy Regulator (CER) and the narrow-scoped Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency with the broad-scoped Impact Assessment Agency. In addition, the Act essentially institutionalizes jurisdictional duplication and red tape. For example, a project may have to go through both a provincial review as well as a federal assessment; time limits for review may be suspended at the discretion of the CER, while stakeholder participation is expanded – meaning one
no longer needs to be directly affected by a project or even be in the affected provinces to participate in the process. Investors can be forgiven for thinking that Canada is focused on entrenching regulatory gridlock with the never-ending demands it places on project proponents. Thus, for investors, the risks are too high and the uncertainty too great; meaning, Canada is a bad prospect for investment. Investment should not come at the cost of a healthy environment. We believe we can do both. But robust
regulations do not have to mean lengthy and uncertain timelines for assessments and project reviews, or unreasonable environmental and social requirements bound by sticky layers of red tape. If we wish to establish a framework to strengthen Canada’s economy and future prosperity, then we need a better development regulatory process. This would be a process that appropriately balances the care for the environment we all want with the economic and resource development we need within appropriate constitutional boundaries to ensure prosperity now and for the future.