Transparency International Canada (TI Canada) made a submission on Friday, August 21 to the Government of Ontario’s open consultation for Class EA amendments for Activities of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines under the Mining Act (Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines).
TI Canada acknowledges the importance of introducing changes that would ensure environmental protections while eliminating red tape and project delays. However, TI Canada also strongly encourages reforming the Environmental Assessment Act (EAA) to make the process more transparent and accountable. A transparent and accountable environmental assessment (EA) process, applied to both public and private sector projects, contributes to the approval of projects that are socially responsible, environmentally sensitive, and economically viable.
As part of TI Canada’s programming, we seek to enhance transparency and accountability in EA processes for mining projects in Canada. In this regard, as part of the global TI Accountable Mining Program, we completed a transparency and accountability risk assessment of the EA processes in Ontario as well as British Columbia and the Yukon. This study, which includes a national report and three jurisdictional reports, will be published in autumn 2020. The findings and recommendations in our submission are based on the forthcoming reports.
In summary, TI Canada made the following recommendations:
The government should extend the EAA scope to include projects proposed by both public and private sector proponents and make an EA mandatory for all projects triggering clearly defined thresholds.
If the Class assessment regime is maintained, provisions should be put in place for the government to consider the comprehensive impacts of a project and make a project’s potential impacts publicly known.
The government should provide a transparent definition of ‘public interest’ and criteria to measure its significance objectively.
Federal, provincial and Indigenous governments should reach a consensus on who should be consulted for EAs of mining projects in a region of Ontario.
The government and proponents should support Indigenous communities to develop their community consultation protocols.
Ontario EAs could incorporate a co-creation process with Indigenous communities to identify valuable components to Indigenous communities that should be assessed in a given project.
The government should develop measurable, detailed, and publicly available procedural guidelines for what counts as meaningful public consultation.
The government should transfer responsibility for mining promotion to government agencies working with economic development to ensure the unbiased assessment of projects.
The Minister for Energy, Northern Development and Mines should publicly disclose the rationale for EA-related decisions with substantive justifications.
You can read the full submission here.
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For comment, please contact:
416-488-3939
For information on the Accountable Mining Program, please visit:
- TI Canada’s website: https://transparencycanada.ca/mining-for-sustainable-development/overview
- TI Global Accountable Mining Program: https://transparency.org.au/global-mining/