With regard to Crown Forest…

With regard to Crown Forest Sustainability Act 1994, where the Bill 132 legislation states
option (3) Subsection 11 (3) of the Act is repealed and the following substituted:

With regard to 2 and 3 in the above which are alternate approaches:
2 "Exemption" (the extreme route...pay a fee, aka pay to play)
3 “Instrument” section 18 is the moderate requirement to apply the Stand and Site Guide (a regulation).

The writing of this section will cause public servants to choose ESA 55 (nuclear option), because ESA Section 18 is now so convoluted that it is uninterpretable.

Bill 132 appears to enable (through the CFSA) changes previously made to the Endangered Species Act. However the language is convoluted and ambiguous. Here is one example of redundancy:

ESA: 55 (1) exempting any person, activity, species or thing from one or more of the prohibitions listed in subsection 9 (1) or 10 (1), subject to any conditions or restrictions prescribed by the regulations

Relates to:
CFSA now allows ESA 55 (2) Without limiting the generality of clause (1) (b), a regulation under that clause may, (f)with respect to an exempt activity (ii) require a person to enter into an agreement with the Minister with respect to the activity or to give the Minister notice of the activity

Plain language: This means a company needs to apply for an agreement to do an activity which does not require a permit. Here is the thing - agreements are special wording and more complex than permits which follow a procedure. Thus making section 18 almost impossible to apply.

This has implications to section 18 which is the politically acceptable and logical alternative to exemption. That is not clear because the trail of subsections is now too complex, certainly to the lay people in the public service that must interpret and explain the law. They will likely opt for 55 exemption rather than 18 instrument. I don’t blame them.

The original section 18 was never applied. For some reason adding many new sub sub sections will make it workable? This rewrite makes exemptions certainty. The government deserves the protests they will create.

Sorry this is too complex to do through a website. It requires actual discussion. Closest meeting was 3 hours away.