To the Ministry of…

To the Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism (MCM) regarding the proposed changes to the Standards and Guidelines for Consultant Archaeologists (S&Gs) and proposed criteria for evaluating a Licensed Consulting Archaeologist’s (LCA’s) compliance record and licence.
I appreciate the need to review and update the S&Gs. As a practising LCA, I have concerns with a number of the changes, the foremost of which I will outline here:
1) Under ‘Role of the Ministry’, (pg 8 in the 2011 S&Gs), the removal of encouragement for LCAs to contact MCM for technical advice when projects and sites do not fit neatly into the S&G parameters. By taking out this paragraph, and similarly the removal of a statement welcoming comments and feedback on the S&Gs (same page), it appears that the Ministry is closing doors to communication and implying that they are not able or willing to provide technical advice on how to best work with and maintain compliance with their Standards. Archaeology is a social science and does not fit neatly into calculated and numbered boxes; when unusual conditions are encountered field decisions often have to be made in real time and being able to reach the Ministry for guidance is an important component to maintaining a project schedule. The changes are also supposed to ‘improve compliance outcomes and limit the need to seek advice and confirmation from MCM’, however as they do not address archaeological field or reporting problems with the 2011 S&Gs, it is unclear how they will accomplish this;
2) Stage 1, Determining the Project Area, the requirements for ‘complete properties or all lands subject to a development application’ with specific exceptions, do not account for Environmental Assessment (EA) project areas that frequently are conducted well in advance of defining an area of impact and include a broad scope with multiple partial properties as its purpose is to help define the future area of impact. The limiting of a ‘linear corridor’ to 20m width also does not allow for most new road construction or expansion projects to be treated as a corridor;
3) Stage 1, removal of an option Property Inspection from Stage 1 will make it more difficult to appropriately determine the best methodologies for Stage 2, particularly on larger properties with complex topography and potential, which will affect planning the next steps and may cause substantial delays once the Stage 2 is in progress;
4) Stage 1, recommendations, the introduction has amended the wording to specify recommendations focus on features of potential ‘within the project area’; this is a concern as a feature of potential (eg a watercourse or road) may be adjacent to but not within the project area but still indicates the project area has potential;
5) Removal of Health and Safety comments in the introduction;
6) Partial clearance after Stage 2: this has been noted as ‘inconsistently used’ but was only used when a proponent desired it and the buffers worked with their plan; the new standard that instills an automatic 50 metre buffer requirement on all sites identified at Stage 2 also seems to indicate that letters from proponents and approval authorities are required also in order to submit and process the report, regardless of whether the proponent is wishing to go ahead with the project prior to Stage 3 or not. This section should be amended to provide an option to move to Stage 3 without the required buffers and letters (ie without a partial clearance) if that is the chosen course;
7) It is noted that, where formerly portions of a project area that weren’t to be developed (eg Environmental Protection zones) could be excluded from the project but remain within the landholdings (Section 7.8.1 2011 S&Gs), changes indicate these portions would have to be transferred to a public body, which will increase delays and may provide complications and additional costs to the said public body or to the proponent if the public body will not assume the land;
Concerns related to the proposed criteria for evaluating compliance records of LCAs include that factors such as the number of revised reports is not an indicator of the quality of their archaeological work without consideration of the types of revision requests, nor does it take into account the variation in Ministry Archaeological Review Officer’s interpretations of the S&Gs and therefore in their revision requests. It is also requested that the process is transparent and that an individual LCA’s record of compliance is accessible to that individual.
The bulk of the proposed changes do not address issues or concerns archaeologists have with the current 2011 S&Gs. It is also noted that there have been no substantive changes to the requirements for Indigenous engagement. The focus appears to be on the project area end and will affect the proponent and approval authority through additional forward planning requirements (eg transferring EP zones to a public body), and defining project areas; the proponent will not be assisted by the removal of the optional Stage 1 property inspection. For the LCA, these changes will increase project management time and will not substantively or indirectly reduce field or reporting time.
I am therefore respectfully requesting that MCM allow additional time for consultation on these proposed changes prior to implementation.