Team Trudeau made a lot of big promises on the campaign trail in 2015. Promises to "set things right", to promote "transparency", to create things for the future that will be "clear and straightforward". Sunny Ways, my friends. At what is more or less the midway point of their mandate, the record on delivering compared to promising is nothing to be overly excited about.

The Harper gang made their priorities and more or less rammed them through without dissent being tolerated from within or without. Despite claiming to be pro-Canada and pro-Big Oil, the environmental approval process was a gong show. But wait friends, Sunny Ways was here. Travel the country having town halls and staffers running about collecting the input from Canadians. We listen, we pay heed, we are not the Harperites. Uh huh. Anyone who took part in the Electoral Reform circus knows this is a ruse, plain and simple.

The official title for C-69 is an "Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts". Sounds straightforward, right? This government said omnibus bills were a thing of the past. C-69 is 412 pages. It makes changes to 31 existing Acts. Because of its sheer size and scope, informed critique is slow to reach the public while the government seeks to sell it. The idea seems to be to give new names, new legislation and new branding to a system that will remain essentially the same. The derided NEB is replaced by the Canadian Energy Regulator. The CEAA 2012 is replaced by the Impact Assessment Act.

The View Up Here presents this backgrounder episode to inform on C-69 and set the stage for future episodes on its changes, eventual passage and decisions.

on-line input and guides from Ottawa https://www.impactassessmentregulations.ca/

TVUH Backgrounder - Bill C-69, Revision of Canada's Environmental Approval Game

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