This August the Canadian Government eliminated nearly 3000 reviews which were meant to assess the environmental damage that industrial projects could have. The aim of the changes was to speed up the evaluation process, but seems to be neglecting the fact that the purpose of these reviews is to ensure that the projects are not causing severe environmental damage.This concerns business because omitting the reviews altogether is extremely beneficial for all major corporations involved in these projects. Specifically, the oil and fossil fuel companies will benefit, since 678 of the cancelled reviews were fossil fuel projects and 248 were pipeline projects. This is a stark demonstration of how difficult it is to balance efficiency and profit, with safety and social wellbeing, and the role the government plays in maintaining that balance.
I found these articles especially interesting because 638 of the projects were in Saskatchewan, which is where I’m from. “Saskatchewan is the 2nd largest oil producer in Canada”, behind only Alberta. In Saskatchewan “3,528 oil wells [were] drilled in 2011, representing a 29-per-cent over the figure for 2010”. This growth was, I would assume, slowed only by obstacles such as environmental assessments. In my opinion the real reasoning behind disregarding these assessments was not to improve overall efficiency but to improve efficiency for fossil fuel and oil production. Coincidentally this simultaneously increases the efficiency of the money being transferred into corporate pockets. Links to articles where I found the data listed above and that expand on this topic are below.