In a recent ruling that sent shockwaves through the corridors of Canadian power, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered a blow to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s environmental aspirations. The court found significant portions of the federal government’s Impact Assessment Act (IAA) unconstitutional, siding with provinces like Alberta that have long argued against what they saw as federal overreach into areas of provincial jurisdiction.
The IAA, a cornerstone of Trudeau’s environmental policy, required comprehensive environmental assessments to be conducted before greenlighting major projects, particularly those within industries such as oil, pipelines, and coal mines. The act was seen as a tool to gauge the potential environmental impacts of significant industrial projects, aligning with broader global movements towards sustainable and environmentally conscious development.
“The Supreme Court of Canada ruled by a 5-2 majority Friday that the federal government’s Impact Assessment Act (IAA) and its accompanying regulations are partially unconstitutional, as they empower the federal government to create environmental regulations that should have been within provincial jurisdictions.”
https://www.jurist.org/news/2023/10/canada-supreme-court-rules-environmental-impact-regulations-are-partially-unconstitutional/
The court’s decision hinged on the argument that the IAA granted the federal government overly broad powers, enabling it to intervene in areas traditionally under provincial control. The majority opinion highlighted concerns regarding the act’s vague decision-making mechanisms and the expansive powers it conferred upon the federal government, particularly concerning the regulation of projects with environmental impacts.
“The majority found that the IAA’s method of designating projects for an environmental assessment is ultra vires, outside of federal jurisdiction… Additionally, the majority found the phrase “effects within federal jurisdiction” within the act grants the federal government an overly broad power that violates the separation of powers doctrine in the Canadian Constitution.”
https://www.jurist.org/news/2023/10/canada-supreme-court-rules-environmental-impact-regulations-are-partially-unconstitutional/
The ruling underscores the complexities and contentious nature of environmental regulation in a federation where jurisdictional boundaries are meticulously delineated. It reflects a judicial inclination towards upholding the sanctity of constitutional divisions of power, ensuring that the federal government does not unilaterally encroach upon areas reserved for provincial authority.
While the court’s decision does not obliterate the IAA in its entirety, it necessitates a recalibration of the act’s provisions to align them with constitutional mandates. The federal government, in response, has signaled its intention to amend the legislation in accordance with the court’s directives, ensuring that ongoing and future project assessments remain uninterrupted.
“Although this court ruling is an advisory opinion that does not render the IAA being struck down automatically, the federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Parliament would amend the legislation accordingly.”
https://www.jurist.org/news/2023/10/canada-supreme-court-rules-environmental-impact-regulations-are-partially-unconstitutional/
This ruling is a vivid reminder of the inherent tensions in crafting environmental policies within a federal structure. It brings to the forefront the value of a constitution to protect local governments from an overly zealous Federal approach, ensuring that the zeal for environmental policy, either valuable or headstrong and disastrous, does not inadvertently trample upon established jurisdictional prerogatives.
Canada Supreme Court rules environmental impact act is partially unconstitutional
H/T Gary P
‘The federal government, in response, has signaled its intention to amend the legislation in accordance with the court’s directives…’
I take this as good news, as a a post-Trudeau government could unwind this nonsense in its entirety.
Trudeau is already on the ropes. He has a minority government held together by the socialist New Democratic Party (why do these lefty parties protesteth too much in naming themselves – e.g. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). The NDP leader has already criticized Trudeau’s policies for creating disastrous inflation. His trip to India and the diplomatic fallout, plus a standing ovation in parliament for an SS officer’s services in Ukraine during WWII, pretty well finished him.
A bit more than that. Justatwit’s political support is now more than 20% lower than that of Poilievre and the CPC. The political support for the NDP is also sinking fast for more than a decade also. Both parties are looking at annihiliation whenever Canada goes to a national election. Justatwit no longer attempts to make any public appearances, nor does Jughead.
What has finished him for Canadians is the remorseless surge in inflation, the vanishing of affordable housing, the massive surges in cost of fuel and food, all directly attributable to his carbon taxes.In general, Canadians vote their wallets. That’s the basis on which Justatwit has a collapse in public support.
Trudeau’s stasi hammering the trucker’s appeal, including mounted police trampling people sure didn’t help.
Trudeau feting a veteran SS soldier only solidified the opinions people already had forming.
Don’t be fooled by Jagmeet Singh’s token criticisms. He refuses to withdraw support from the Trudeau government.
“a vivid reminder of the inherent tensions in crafting environmental policies within a federal structure”
Much easier in a parliamentary dictatorship, no pesky structures like that to get in the way of sticking it to the plebeians. Although the UK has what is called a supreme court (h/t T. Blair) it’s just a rebrand of the old ‘Law Lords’.
“The United Kingdom has a doctrine of parliamentary
sovereigntydictatorship, so the Supreme Court is much more limited in its powers of judicial review than the constitutional or supreme courts of some other countries such as the United States. It cannot overturn any primary legislation made by Parliament.”One such piece of primary legislation is the climate change act…
For my money, we were stitched up good and proper when Blair introduced his devolution bills
Can you guess the one UK nation and people who were denied an assembly of their own?
You want more politicians? Have got rabies?
I’d be OK with an English assembly if the existing lower and upper houses were reduced to say 100 members each. That still seems way too many to me, but I suggest it as an achievable goal.
I hope you don’t want a massive parallel civil service along with all those newly minted politicians?
(There are currently ~650 MPs and ~730 sitting lords.)
I want some say, don’t you?
It could be done. Turn the Commons into an English Assembly and empty the Lords completely. Have an Upper House with members proportionally drawn from all countries of the UK that the UK government is formed from. Give regional assemblies oversight on Upper House bills that affect them and vice versa. As long as it doesn’t bog down into the usual party political blocking nonsense it might work.
And it would have the immediate effect of dropping the number of MP’s in the English assembly to 533 without any loss in representation.
It could be done in a number of ways, each far more democratic, but parliament is all about maintaining the status quo
You need an Oliver Cromwell to empty the place out. Perhaps he could even repeat this, the finest short speech in the English language.
Oliver Cromwell: ‘In the name of God, go!’ speech dismissing Rump Parliament – 1653 — Speakola
It’s astonishing how relevant to modern times it reads even today more than 350 years later.
And no one delivered it as effectively, theatrically, as the late, great Richard Harris.
It’s counterintuitive (who wants more crooks?!) but think about it. The more members of a legislative body, the less power each one has.
The U.S. House of Representatives is limited to 435 members. If we were to double or treble that, each member’s voting power would be reduced by 1/2 or 2/3. That makes it a lot harder to control a majority of them via party apparatus, bribes, or threats. Also, each member would represent fewer constituents, meaning it would be (1) easier to throw them out and (2) they would be more in tune with their constituents. We’d have a greater variety of voices in the House than we do now.
So yes, I know, who wants more politicians? But I think those things are good results, even though we’d have to spend some extra $$$ to pay them and their staffs.
Increasing the number of representatives, also gives each voter a proportionally larger influence on their representative.
If I remember correctly, when the US was first formed, there was 1 representative for every 50,000 individuals.
I have proposed in the past, that we should return to that standard.
That would mean around 6,000 representatives.
Obviously, this many representatives could not meet in Washington. Which is a good thing.
My proposal includes a requirement that all representatives actually live in their districts, also the position would be considered a part time job, with pay reduced. Also at most, one or two staff members. Also part time positions. The staff members also need to live in the district.
Voting could be done electronically.
Living in the district would allow the voters easier access to their representatives. It would also make it harder for lobbyists to wine and dine representatives. Plus any winning and dinning would have to be done in the view of the voters.
‘Obviously, this many representatives could not meet in Washington. Which is a good thing.’
True, but better yet would be an electorate that demanded a Federal government of very limited power, sorta along the line of the Constitution that the sovereign people of the independent states actually ratified.
Folks can say that this is unrealistic, but if the electorate itself is corrupt, it doesn’t matter a bit how many ‘representatives’ there are or where they’re located.
Back when I was young and naive, I commented on a fellow employee saying his local government officials were “crooks”. I remember saying “Just vote them out”. The retort I recieved was “why would I want to do that ? .. Then we would have new officials that would have to start all over again filling their pockets.”
Based on that logic, having more officials, merely enlarges the number of “crooks”.
Let’s take that argument to its limit. I don’t think having total influence over a completely impotent representative could make my life better.
Having fewer representatives suckling on the public teat would make no noticeable difference to me but I’d have the (small) satisfaction of knowing there are fewer of them at it.
My view may be very UK-centric. All the worst decisions of recent times were nodded through parliament. You don’t need 650 yes-men/yes-women on the payroll to do a bit of rubber-stamping.
All the worst…?
Many. I’ll settle for many.
That is consistent with the intentions of the founding fathers. But more important reforms are limited government and a sound currency.
So long as government has their fingers in every pot, spending funny money that steals from everyone who works to give to minor parasites who vote the major parasites into power, the system must eventually collapse. Adding more politicians to the existing system is like treating hangnails on a cancer patient while foregoing chemotherapy.
‘…spending funny money that steals from everyone…’
You got it. Bad governance on a local basis is older than the hills. Unlimited, totalitarian, governance only came into being with the advent of fiat money that the State could produce at will and enforce its acceptance.
I found the two dissenting opinions chilling in that those judges felt the nebulous claim of protecting the environment was more important than Canadian constitutional law.
Socialists always consider their wants to be above everything else.
Welcome to the U.S. Supreme Court nomination gauntlet and threats from street protests outside their homes.
Only for non-Leftist nominees!
Imagine the legality of nominating and selecting judges based solely on their race, sex and sexual orientation. The exclusion of other races and genders is against the law, as SCOTUS has ruled in the Harvard case.
I’m glad WUWT is reporting on this case. It is a very significant case. Had the decision gone the other way, the Trudeau government would have had a climate change veto over provincial resource projects in Alberta and elsewhere. That would have been a major problem. The SCC is not a conservative body so this result was far from certain. In an earlier case, Chief Justice Wagner had proclaimed his agreement with all of the usual climate change horror propositions. So, I was a little surprised with the result in this case. I guess the destruction of Canada’s constitutional system in the service of climate change mitigation was just too much even for the current court.
In response to a comment made above, I note that while it is true that a future Conservative government could have unwound the legislation even if the court had not done so, the likelihood of a Conservative government holding power continuously at the federal level (even assuming the Conservatives win the next election) is far less than is the likelihood of continuing conservative governments in several of the Canadian provinces that would have been most affected by the Impact Assessment Act, especially Alberta. So to have the court determine that the legislation is unconstitutional is far better.
Unfortunately only ‘partially unconstitutional’ whatever that means. The act has not been struck down.
The Trudeau government said that it would change the parts that the court objected to
“The Trudeau government said that it would change the parts that the court objected to”
Knowing Trudeau, whatever they come up with will be significantly worse.
It means that the parts of the Act dealing with provincial projects are contrary to the Canadian Constitution, but the parts of the Act dealing with federal projects on federal lands or outside of Canada are consistent with it. The unconstitutional parts of the Act were not struck down only because the case was a reference (it’s too difficult to explain here what that means). The Court saying the parts of the Act dealing with provincial projects are unconstitutional effectively amounts to the same thing. There is no way the federal government will ignore the ruling. This case is an enormous win for the provinces and for sane resource policy.
As a practical matter, is it not correct that Canadian constitutional law (Section 91(2) of the Constitution Act, 1867) is
similar to the US with respect to federal jurisdiction over inter-provincial and foreign trade?
If so, a pipeline or a freight train carrying oil might have little point if it can’t exit Alberta because Ottawa deems it might make the Great White North green and pleasant in the winter (September to June)?
Is farming allowed now, massa?
As a Canadian I find this a reassuring decision though not a full obliteration of the nonsense that Justin and his radical environmental minister has inflicted on Canada. It is good to know that, if at some time in the future, the government of the day decides to link arms with some radical environmental cult and say, try to destabilize and gut the Canadian economy based on some imaginary threat such as say, a man-made weather catastrophe, then our courts might actually reread the constitution and take some meaningful action. Hopefully such an event never makes that necessary.
I can say without the slightest doubt they will not stop trying, the only path forward is to get them out of government.
Coincidentally, I saw this video of the Liberals talking about climate emergency
https://www.google.ca/search?q=monty+python+monks+chanting+and+hitting+themselves+on+head&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ca&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:62210d26,vid:P6WjhzzEHmE,st:0
ie justin domine dona eis requiem
Unfortunately, in Canada, it has happened before that the Liberals have spent like drunken sailors, then the following Conservative Government has to do the government belt tightening and tax increases, with the result the populace votes them out the following election. Mulroney in the 1993 election was left with only 2 seats following over a hundred tax increases to get the country back in financial order. The Liberals promised to abolish the new General Sales Tax to get elected but did not…..
It’s good to see the Canadian Supreme Court is more realistic regarding climate policy than the Liberal government which keeps entertaining the illusion of Net Zero by 2050 even if the majority of the population doesn’t consider such a goal to be any sort of a priority. In fact, a recent Leger poll found 85% of Canadians maintained that Net Zero 2050 was wholly unrealistic; in fact, when all eight of the country’s previous climate plans since 1988 have fallen far short of their targets, it’s no wonder that any new ones can’t generate any degree of optimism. As for the Supreme Court, when it sees that global renewable energy funds have been experiencing net outflows of capital lately and the S&P Global Clean Energy Index has seen a 30% decline this year, it’s become aware that blocking reliable traditional energy source development makes no sense at all and has a good chance of leaving the country with power shortfalls and negatively affecting the export sector as well.
Edward, this had nothing to do with climate policy. The court was ruling that parts of the federal statute were unconstitutional and violated the provincial jurisdiction. This was a legal judgment, not one on the science, or lack thereof, of climate change.
Correct. A recent study showed that the majority of judges in this country are Liberal donors.
The SCC ruled a while ago that the Feds could impose the carbon tax due to “climate emergency” even tho no evidence was presented to demonstrate an emergency.
But that was a vague thing about “polution” and taxes.
In this case the Feds tried to grab control of resource project approval, something clearly in provincial jurisdiction and got slapped down.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I’d wait to see the details of how this gets revised before counting it as a meaningful victory. The US Constitution was gutted via an interpretation of the interstate commerce clause. It’s unlikely that the socialists will go down without a fight.
I reckon that there aren’t many resource projects that could be wholly contained within a province.
You can extract the shale oil but you can’t sell it outside of Alberta. Maybe you can extract it, but if you burn it in Alberta, they can deem Alberta to extend only 100 m above the surface, so any emissions cross the provincial border. Or the entire atmosphere over Canada is federal territory, etc., etc.
Sorry to give them any ideas.
Making progress.