Regarding legislation to…

Regarding legislation to move to a project list approach for the Environmental Assessment Act, I evaluate this approach to be an inappropriate, unjustified, and unacceptable one. The project list approach will rollback current EA requirements for these environmentally significant projects. There are several reasons for this concern:

1. the Streamlined EA process is not as robust, accountable, or participatory as the Comprehensive EA process;
2. the Streamlined EA process does not result in approval for a specific project with specific binding and enforceable conditions imposed by the Minister and/or Cabinet for a given project;
3. as a result of Bill 197 changes, Ontarians are no longer able to file a "bump-up" (or "elevation") request on environmental grounds to ask the Minister to move a particularly significant project from the Streamlined EA process to the Comprehensive EA process; and
4. Ontarians cannot request the Minister to refer a Streamlined Class EA project to the independent Ontario Land Tribunal for a public hearing and decision.