Wilderness Committee raises questions at project referral timing while pending Species at Risk Act permit

VANCOUVER / UNCEDED xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh AND səlilwətaɬ TERRITORIES - Today’s announcement referring the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (RBT2) expansion project to the Major Projects Office (MPO) reinforces our fears that Prime Minister Carney’s Building Canada Act and the recent discussion paper “Getting Major Projects Built in Canada” were always a gateway for species extinction.

“The Wilderness Committee is concerned that this decision is fuelled by the knowledge from both the Port of Vancouver and the federal government that RBT2 cannot meet the requirements under the Species at Risk Act,” points out Conservation and Policy Campaigner Lucero Gonzalez. “Therefore, the only way the project can go ahead is referring it to the Major Projects Office in an attempt to bypass this essential step.”

Following the earlier announcement of the project getting $10 billion in public funding, this political move highlights Carney’s perseverance to get RBT2 through its final permitting hurdle. Concerningly, the last permit — and arguably the most important one the project needs —  is the Species at Risk Act permit. Under this permit, the project would need to pass the “jeopardy test” to prove the project won’t jeopardize the survival and recovery of the endangered southern resident killer whales.  

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was expected to decide on RBT2’s permit this October, raising the question of why the project would be referred to the MPO this late in the process.

“We have long been saying that Carney’s fixation on expediting major projects is carefully designed to bypass the most important environmental protection laws in the country — even if it means driving a species to extinction,” said Gonzalez. “Today, Carney has shown he is comfortable with extinction, but RBT2 could be the first of many more projects that will be allowed to bypass the jeopardy test at the federal government’s will. This is Carney’s extinction plan.”

The Wilderness Committee wants to remind both the public and the federal government that bypassing the jeopardy test does not make the imminent threat to species at risk disappear; it just makes their extinction easy to ignore in federal approval of major projects.

“We condemn any attempted bypass of the Species at Risk Act under the guise of building faster and cheaper in Canada,” said Gonzalez. “Extinction of the southern resident killer whales can never be rubber-stamped.” 

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Lucero Gonzalez | Conservation and Policy Campaigner
lucero@wildernesscommittee.org