These proposed changes would…

These proposed changes would narrow the scope of the Act and allow projects such as large-scale provincial freeways or high-voltage transmission lines to proceed with less rigorous streamlined environmental assessments (EA), where they once required individual or comprehensive EA’s. The Registry notice provides no environmental reasons or compelling evidence to support these revisions.

This is an inappropriate, unjustified, and unacceptable rollback of current EA requirements for these environmentally significant projects for several reasons:

• the Streamlined EA process is not as robust, accountable, or participatory as the Comprehensive EA process;

• the Streamlined EA process does not result in a project-specific approval with binding and enforceable conditions imposed by the Minister and/or Cabinet;

• pursuant to the Bill 197 changes, it is no longer possible for Ontarians 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

• People in Ontario cannot request the Minister to refer a Streamlined Class EA project to the independent Ontario Land Tribunal for a public hearing and decision.

The Government of Ontario should be updating the EA Act to strengthen regulations and ensure it reflects more up-to-date knowledge on environmental policy; not the reverse.