The federal government is about to refer its initial selection of national interest project candidates to its new Major Projects Office . The news stirs both excitement and trepidation.
Author
- Robert B. Gibson
Professor of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of Waterloo
Projects considered in the national interest would "enhance Canada's prosperity, national security, economic security, national defence and national autonomy," the government says .
While the notion of national interest projects is compelling, success on the ground depends on thinking through the implementation. There's little evidence that's happened.
The enabling law - the Building Canada Act , hustled through Parliament in June - establishes separate decision-making steps for project approval and for approval conditions, but not much else. How the candidate projects will be evaluated is mostly unknown.
Big project challenges
Major project development is notoriously difficult. That's evident in the long global record of megaproject cost overruns and embarrassments. It's not surprising, given the organizational, economic and technical complexities, inevitable trade-offs and opposition and attractive alternative uses for the money.
For the current initiative, additional practical difficulties include:
How to share implementation power and responsibility with many players, given the constitutional fragmentation of jurisdictional authority;
How to respect Indigenous rights and consent;
How to cover the multitude of linked factors that should inform overall public-interest evaluations and justifications for decisions;
How to achieve reasonable reliability in predicting the positive and adverse effects and their distribution, especially for projects expected to induce further activities;
How to draw well-supported conclusions about project viability, serious opportunities and risks, costs and legacies, in an uncertain global economic, geopolitical and climate context; and
For non-renewable resource projects, how to use limited-life gains to build more lasting well-being, while avoiding dependencies, stranded assets and toxic legacies.
Dealing with all these matters entails careful elaboration of the Building Canada Act's basic two-step process for decisions on national interest projects.
It also requires a departure from the approach so far, which has identified potential candidates through a cloaked process involving proponents and relevant political jurisdictions without published criteria for evaluating the projects or clear plans for the deliberations to follow.
Defensible evaluations and decisions
Before candidates are referred to the Major Projects Office, all parties would benefit from the publication of a well-defined, open and rigorous approach that ensures defensible evaluations and decisions.
As set out with few specifics in the Building Canada Act, the two decision-making steps are:
- Evaluations leading to a determination on whether to pre-approve the candidate project;
- Expedited assessment and provision of permits to consolidate the conditions of approval.
The sequence seemingly ignores the normal process where assessment precedes approval (first consider, then decide). In practice, however, defensible decision-making in Step 1 must have detailed project information and a strong overall assessment of the project's benefits, risks and uncertainties.
That's a basic necessity if the government wants decisions on the pre-approval of projects to be well-founded and justifiable, and if the project planning is to be far enough advanced to be ready for the for Step 2's expedited process for conditions of approval.
Process essentials
For Step 1, the Major Projects Office should provide specifics on the following requirements for decision-making on pre-approval:
Well-elaborated, comprehensive and visibly applied criteria for evaluations;
Detailed project information;
Analyses covering specifics on all the key considerations and their interactions;
Mobilized expertise for due diligence rigour in evaluating project viability, opportunities, risks and trade-offs;
Special imperatives for responsibility in allocating public funding;
Solidly defensible decisions, clearly based on well-informed analyses, while also respecting controversies and uncertainties;
Credible transparency and meaningful engagement;
Detailed project readiness for the expedited conditions and the permits process; and
Clarity about how other authorities are involved in Step 1 and will collaborate, especially in joint assessments, in Step 2.
One project, one assessment
The final point above may present the greatest challenges and opportunities.
The federal government has emphasized a commitment to "one project, one assessment" that will apply often. But many of the reported candidate projects involve several jurisdictions.
Perhaps in a few cases, one assessment could be achieved by deferring largely to a single provincial or territorial process. But where two or more provinces, territories and/or Indigenous jurisdictions are involved - or the project depends on significant federal funding - a joint assessment process is necessary.
Exemplary joint assessments have been conducted in Canada before. Doing so today for fast-tracked mega-projects would be a major accomplishment, especially if those joint assessments prioritize best practices and respect Indigenous rights, including the right to give or withhold free, prior and informed consent.
Rigour and transparency
In sum, what's needed now is detailed elaboration of the process for the initial group of identified candidates for national interest projects. That process should incorporate all the components listed above, including a comprehensive and credible equivalent of assessment before the first step's pre-approval decision.
Such an approach is consistent with the the Building Canada Act and stated policy. Perhaps that's been the federal government's intention all along. If so, it must ensure the process is transparent to ensure the understanding and confidence of all participants.
Political enthusiasm is a useful stimulant but a poor guide and a risky base for deliberations and decisions on major projects. Judging the opportunities and risks of national interest projects is important and difficult. It's time for an open and rigorous process.
Robert B. Gibson has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada. He is a member of the Agency's Technical Advisory Committee.
