Director/owner MERS consulting

Key comments include:

1. The draft Alberta-Canada Agreement ("draft agreement") seeks to give substantially more powers to the Alberta Regulator to assess impacts in areas of federal jurisdiction. It is not clear to me that giving up powers to the Alberta Regulator is responsible in all cases or even necessary to have an efficient environmental assessment process. For example, to date, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) have been the main regulatory entity overseeing impacts to fish and fish habitat in Canada under the federal Fisheries Act. Alberta has jurisdiction of the resources but DFO has regulated industrial impacts that result in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction (HADD) of fish habitat and/or death of fish. Through its mandate, DFO has historically taken a collaborative approach with Alberta in ensuring compliance with fish mitigation and monitoring and has sought advice from Alberta Environment and Protected Areas. This process has allowed major projects to meet major construction and operation deadlines.

Under 1. (1) of Reliance on Alberta's Processes and Reciprocity, Alberta would want control over the assessment of all areas of federal jurisdiction, which would include areas of fish and fish habitat, species at risk and migratory birds. In my opinion, the expertise of federal regulators is vital in areas of Federal and Canadian jurisdiction to ensure that impacts affecting all Canadians interests are properly assessed and mitigated. For projects that potentially impact environmental components that have consequences beyond Alberta's jurisdiction (e.g., migratory fish, birds, species at risk) the federal regulator needs to be part of the assessment process. Canada cannot give all assessment powers to Alberta.

2. Under 3. Decision-Making About the Conduct of a Federal Impact Assessment Alberta would have the power to determine that their environmental assessment process should addresse all adverse effects, including areas of federal jurisdiction, specifically:

" In alignment with clause 1 (1) of this Agreement, IAAC commits to avoiding duplicative decision making processes related to assessments by relying on the provincial environmental assessment or regulatory processes in circumstances where Alberta confirms that those processes will address the adverse effects within federal jurisdiction"..

It is unreasonable that the sole power to decide that Alberta should assess impacts in areas of federal jurisdiction should reside with Alberta. This should be a joint decision.

3. Under 6. Co-ordination of Potential Assessment Conditions and Decision-making; and Permitting the language around coordination should be clearer and provide more direction to both proponents and the IAAC and Alberta Regulator. Stating that decision makers "will develop a cooperative approach" (6.(c)) is not providing anything different than what already exists today. There are many examples (as noted above in DFO and AEPA) where provincial and federal agencies work together, share information, consider and use joint measures etc... Additionally, if good scientific federal reports exist and can provide reliable and useful information, why shouldn't an Alberta Regulator use it? Why does Alberta need to increase reliance on provincial reports (6. (4) e)?

Thank you.