GOA Fast-Tracking Development

Yeah. We need this like a hole in the head.

Fast-tracking can often be simply Out Of Control with associated risk involved. Photo: Brittani Burns via Unsplash.

“The federal government has promised to “fast-track” development proposals as have many other provinces (especially pro-business Alberta). This is based on a business narrative that development is being constrained by all the rules. That, I believe is only one side of the story. As a former provincial biologist who reviewed dozens of development proposals over the years (and still do for landowners and the conservation community) this is a very nuanced narrative with a biased perspective. There is significant risk to the public, to health, indigenous peoples, and the environment with a “damn the rules” development attitude.” - Lorne Fitch

Cutting the Red Tape for Development—What Could Go Wrong?

Lorne Fitch, P. Biol.

You would think, especially listening to the business press, corporate spokespeople, and many politicians that our economic foundations have been dealt a mortal blow by having rules, legislation, and policies guiding development. This contagion, this insufferable red tape, must be eliminated or our very being will be put at risk. Really?

This is a one-sided story that smacks of the greedy, rules-be-damned attitude of predatory economic interests. It is an attitude and an expectation that has been fostered in the exclusive bathwater of business.

What is taught in every introductory psychology course is something termed “operant conditioning.” The theory, in its simplest terms, holds that behaviours are shaped by the consequences they produce. In its most familiar form, operant conditioning is called positive reinforcement. When a rat pushes a lever that releases a piece of cheese, this is likely to be repeated because of a positive reward.

There is a strongly weighted perception of excessive regulation despite extensive government support for business. This support is constantly reinforced with red-tape reduction, streamlining, fast-tracking, subsidies, grants, income tax write offs, low royalties, inadequate reclamation bonds, preferential land use planning, self-regulation, decreased monitoring, and desultory regulatory oversight, all served up on a platter. But none of this is enough it seems.

As business has learned, pushing the lever meting out these rewards with vigor, lobbying, and self-serving publicity will allow the rewards will continue to flow. The narrative that the public benefits from this is a constant refrain, but the tangible results are never made clear. What is clear is freeing business from rules reduces costs, creates minimal negative repercussions, and provides consistent financial rewards even though the costs to the environment, to society, to public health, and to indigenous peoples are often excessive.

We have consistently been sucked into a whirlpool of laudatory business hype where any and all development must be good, must be supported, and must be approved. As a former provincial fish and wildlife habitat biologist I reviewed dozens of these business proposals, their environmental impact assessments, and assorted impact and mitigation statements. As a group, the consistent claim was these projects would have little or no environmental impacts and the few issues they might create could be easily corrected. These performative fairy tales dissolved under scrutiny.

Many of the resource projects were bewilderingly stupid and ecologically unconscionable. Yet, several were considered perfectly suitable by corporations, the press, governments, the public, and sometimes even the environmental community. I can only speak from my expertise in ecology, not in corporate profits, but if these development proposals failed to meet any metric of environmental sustainability, it is highly likely they would also fail a societal economic test.

Mountain coal mining has and will create toxic environmental legacies that have and will outlive the development. Industrial-strength, clear-cut logging has and will render watersheds unstable for decades, upwards to a century, and cause species extirpations. Rampant urban sprawl will pave paradise and increase flood risk. Increased water diversions kill rivers.

The Alberta tar sands have provided great wealth (at least to some), skewed public policy, creating a landscape and indigenous people forever scarred, and pollution costs that will be dumped on the public purse. Increased use of oil and gas exacerbates our climate dilemma and subjects us to more wicked weather. Can we not connect the dots to drought, flood, fire, and heat domes? The time is fast approaching when insurance companies may no longer offer us protection from ourselves.

There is a sense that the only way to extract value from our natural capital is to dig it up, cut it down, burn it, plow it under, pave it over, divert it, and export it—no matter the cost to society and the environment. The truth is, by protecting and better managing natural capital we can both make and save money. Speeding up development does not necessarily make us richer, smarter, and more independent. Too often, as we’ve seen multiple times, wasteful, polluting, and inappropriate projects take us in the opposite direction.

The essential role of rules, of legislation, and of strong public policy is to sort out the solid development projects from the chaff, and force companies to do their due diligence to protect our health and environment from dangerous risks. Yes, there is opportunity to improve the process, but not at the expense of lower standards.

We should never reward and approve shoddy proposals with inadequate planning, with considerable environmental costs and high liabilities, and questionable benefits to the public. Surrendering regulatory oversight and responsible caution to the pell-mell chaos of bad projects is irresponsible and suicidal.

The “Build Baby Build” mood of governments should not morph into the “Screw the Rules” approach of frenzied business lobbyists. An objective assessment is the only way to accomplish this, not a speedy checklist approach where the thumbs are pressed firmly on the development side of the scale.

Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a past Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence and Travels Up the Creek.