BC’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) can’t guarantee the mines, power projects and resorts it approves are keeping the environment clean, according to Auditor General John Doyle.
In a report released earlier this month, Doyle pointed out that not only are the conditions the EAO requires companies to comply with so vague they’re basically unenforceable, but also no one from the provincial government actually leaves their office to audit major projects after they’re approved.
“Because that doesn’t happen … we can’t offer any assurance to citizens that the adverse effects that could flow from projects are being managed appropriately,” Doyle told Business in Vancouver during a recent interview.
The audit is the first of its kind for the EAO, which was established in 1995 to ensure sizable industrial, mine, energy, waste and tourism projects meet the province’s environmental standards.
Environmentalists say Doyle’s audit is proof the assessment process is “toothless and broken.”
“This gives a black eye to projects that have gone through the environmental assessment process,” said Gwen Barlee, a policy director with the Wilderness Committee in Vancouver.
The audit could have significant implications for industry, which pays millions of dollars every year to wade through lengthy assessment processes for potential mines and power projects.
Interestingly, the province’s mining and energy sectors, often criticized for the impacts their projects have on B.C.’s vast wilderness, have remained quiet since Doyle published his audit.
Gavin Dirom, president and CEO of the Association for Mineral Exploration B.C. (AMECBC), wouldn’t comment directly on Doyle’s report but said the industry doesn’t need more rules and regulations that make it difficult for job-creating projects to get off the ground.
He did say, however, the province needs to beef up the capacity and resources within the EAO, which is having a tough time keeping up with companies looking to capitalize on B.C.’s resources amid the commodities boom.
“We’re suffering a major permitting crisis … because there’s such a huge surge in the growth of the sector,’’ Dirom said.
But the EAO first needs to get its house in order.
In addition to EAO certificate commitments not being measurable or enforceable, Doyle said the office is failing to:
- ensure that environmental monitoring responsibilities are clearly defined and that compliance and enforcement actions are effective;
- evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation measures to ensure projects meet their desired environmental outcomes; and
- ensure the public has proper access to monitoring and compliance information.
“Everyone assumed because of this tough environmental assessment process and because of the certificates, which were binding, that there was a tight system, and what we’re finding is it’s not as tight as people assumed,” said Doyle.
That news isn’t a surprise to the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, which published a review of B.C.’s environmental assessment process last November.
The review came to many of the same conclusions as the auditor general.
“The EAO does not have a field presence, and does not seem to have a viable, proactive compliance and enforcement strategy,” the review said.
It added that project proponents often write their own compliance reports.
The review also noted that government staff “are stretched thin by successive staff and budget cuts and do not consider enforcement of EA certificates to be within their mandate.”
Barlee said that’s not only bad for the environment, “but it’s bad from a public trust perspective that people in British Columbia are looking to the government … to be providing adequate environmental oversight.”
However, Doyle’s audit focused only on what happens after a certificate is issued.
Critics argue the process is flawed from front to back, noting that only one project in 16 years has been refused certification.
“I don’t know what to make of that,” said Doyle.
Environment Minister Terry Lake had a different response.
“I think it’s easy to make that accusation when you look at those numbers, but critics fail to recognize … it’s a very iterative process,” said Lake. “It’s designed to identify concerns, challenges and then those things are modified through the process so a project coming out the end of the process often looks quite different than it did during the process.”
Still, the EAO has accepted Doyle’s recommendations.
Lake agreed that many of the conditions attached to certificates are “pretty vague.”
Lake added that he hopes to set up a system that allows the public to monitor a project’s environmental record after it has been issued a certificate.
But he conceded there is a backlog of permit applications throughout B.C.’s resource ministries, and that the EAO might need to hire more people to “make sure all the conditions that are attached to the certificate are in fact being met.”
Dirom agreed that project certificates need to be reviewed “efficiently and effectively” to garner public trust, but he hopes the auditor general’s report doesn’t result in a whole new set of regulations that make it even more difficult for industry to build projects in B.C.
After all, industry often blames the province’s laborious permitting process for the fact that a decade passed without a major new mine being built in B.C.
Said Dirom: “People don’t resonate with a lot of restrictions; they resonate with a goal that needs to be achieved.”