April 23, 2009

Ecojustice sues Ottawa over plans to amend environmental assessment regulations

OTTAWA

Environmentalists are suing the federal government over what they say are regulations that sidestep the Environmental Assessment Act.

Ecojustice, formerly the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, is suing because it believes Ottawa has gone too far in approving regulations that exempt economic stimulus projects from formal assessments.

Albert Koehl, an Ecojustice lawyer, says the regulations exempt thousands of infrastructure projects — including highways, bridges, roads and sewer systems — from environmental scrutiny over the next two years.

He says the lawsuit asks the Federal Court to declare the regulations illegal.

It’s a challenging case, he says, but even hard economic times are no excuse for evading laws on environmental impacts.

Stephen Hazell, executive director of Sierra Club Canada, says the regulations usurp the right of Parliament to amend its own laws.

“What the government is doing is using a regulatory process that has no parliamentary scrutiny to change federal statutes,” he said.

He admitted that “most Canadians may be more interested in President Obama’s dog than they are in parliamentary process.”

But Hazell said MPs should be concerned that their powers are under attack. He says it’s a sign that the federal government is trying to get out of the environmental scrutiny business and leave it to the provinces.

“We think that the federal government has a fundamental role in assessing the environmental implications of the projects that it approves and it shouldn’t be handing those approvals off to all and sundry.”

Ecojustice lawyer Jams Duncan said it’s dangerous to abandon these assessments.

“These changes to the law are like cutting the brake line to make a car go faster.”

Canadian Press

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