Les Leyne, Times Colonist, July 09, 2011

The lack of followup at the Environmental Assessment Office cited by the province's auditor general is only half the story.

The other problem with the office is the astonishing duplication of effort with the federal government, which maintains an identical office that does the identical job.

B.C. officials, and those in other provinces, have been shaking their head in amazement for years at the wasteful and inefficient permitting system.

Two-thirds of the major projects in B.C. that undergo the provincial review also require a matching federal assessment.

There are pages and pages of federal-provincial agreements on how to minimize duplication and overlap. But none has much impact. There are still two big offices doing the same thing.

In fact, one federal move to simplify the process actually added a whole new approval office to the labyrinth.

Coming up with a more sensible approach has been a hobby horse of provincial governments, including B.C.'s, for years.

Former premier Gordon Campbell elevated it to an urgent priority in his last throne speech in 2010.

He promised more work to establish one unified process. "Currently over $3 billion in provincially approved projects are stranded in the mire of federal process and delay," the speech said. "This is unacceptable. Time is money. Duplication is waste.

Tax dollars are limited. We cannot afford to hold investment in jobs hostage."

Premier Christy Clark later made the issue part of her leadership campaign platform, promising a "push for increased harmonization of federal and provincial environmental approval processes."

Clark also proposed a "B.C. Investment Board" that would measure how successfully major projects were moving through the multiple regulatory and environmental processes of "all levels of government."

The implicit assumption was that the B.C. process works fine, and the paper-pushers in Ottawa are delaying everything.

The highest profile example of environmental approval duplication added a whole new level of confusion. Because after doing duplicate reviews of the Prosperity Mine near Williams Lake, the provincial and federal offices arrived at different conclusions. B.C. gave it the green light, while Ottawa said it couldn't go ahead.

That intensified some environmentalists' suspicions that the provincial office generally gives an easier ride to major projects than the federal outfit.

Now the auditor general has dissected the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office and identified some other problems.

His review focused on the monitoring of projects after they have been approved. The office will typically approve a project subject to a number of conditions to mitigate impacts.

But auditor general John Doyle found a number of problems in the followup work to see that the conditions are met.

They are legal commitments. But Doyle found that the office fails to make proponents' commitments measurable and enforceable.

It isn't evaluating the effectiveness of mitigation measures and isn't making enough information public.

Doyle cited weak language in some of the requirements. Phrases like "agree to explore," "avoid as much as possible" and "make best efforts" are promises that are hard to enforce.

After projects are approved, developers have to submit compliance reports, a practice called "proponent self-monitoring."

But the reports are not always submitted and the office doesn't track them for compliance.

If someone complains to the office about a certified project, it generally follows up with the proponent. But Doyle found there is no formal tracking of complaints.

There is also no program of formal site inspections, despite a pilot project a few years ago that showed they could be worthwhile.

The office has approved 115 major projects since 1995 and has yet to impose any penalty for non-compliance.

For a government bent on streamlining the dual approval process, the audit isn't good news.

The federal auditor general checked out the federal process two year ago and generally gave it passing marks.

Despite the government's preference for a B.C. approval process for B.C.
projects, it looks like the federal process is more thorough.

lleyne@timescolonist.com

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