Legislation Introduced To Replace The NEB And Project Review Process

On February 8, 2018, the federal government released Bill C-69 titled "An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts." The new legislation is the culmination of the promised process to modernize the National Energy Board (NEB) and update the environmental and regulatory processes for federally regulated energy projects such as pipelines. The approach set out in the new legislation is consistent with, but not identical to, what had been suggested in the May 2017 NEB Modernization Expert Panel Report (see our earlier post) and in the federal government's June 2017 Discussion Paper on Environmental and Regulatory Reviews (see our earlier post).