On Wednesday 1 September Jason Nixon,
Minister of Environment and Parks made an intriguing announcement. Sharing the stage with Tanya Fir, the Associate Minister of Red Tape Reduction, the duo announced the opening of a new website that allows citizens access to the records of Alberta’s environmental enforcement actions. This website does not include Alberta Energy Regulator’s enforcement actions which can be found at AER‘s compliance dashboard.
According to the news release, the free access to these records “demonstrates this government’s commitment to transparency, reducing red tape, improving efficiencies and eliminating the cost to Albertans.” While seeming to claim credit, the real credit must go to the Environmental Law Centre which has offered this service since 1996 for a fee. According to the release these enforcement actions include actions under the Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act which incorporates previous legislation such as the Hazardous Chemicals Act, Agriculture Chemicals Act, Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.
I tried the site out and found there were 123 enforcement actions against Suncor. The earliest action against Suncor was in November of 1991 for a contravention of a license condition and Suncor was fined $20,000. The most recent action against the company was dated 16 April 2021 and is written in legalese:
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Summary: Count 7: ?Co-accused Suncor Energy Products Partnership, 1277136 Alberta Ltd., and Suncor Energy Inc.? On or about the 18th day of July 2018, at or near Sherwood Park, in the Province of Alberta, being a person who releases or causes or permits the release of a substance into the environment that may cause, is causing or has caused an adverse effect, did fail to report that release to the Director as soon as that person knew or ought to have known of the release contrary to section 110(1) of the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and did thereby commit an offence contrary to section 227(j) of the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act. Withdrawn April 16, 2021.
It appears that many of these prosecution actions have been withdrawn or are amended enforcement orders. Some seem mundane as with the issuance in August 2018 of a warning letter because a vehicle impacted “the banks of Green Stock Creek when it crossed the frozen creek during power line maintenance on April 1, 2018.”
This resource is clearly a victory for better disclosure and a great resource for its main users- law firms, realtors, financial and educational institutions, media and environmental groups.
On the red tape reduction side, the claim is made that over 112,000 regulatory requirements have been removed as of July 1. This represents only 17 per cent of the total regulatory requirements. If true, this shows the massive accretion of regulation of business and individual behaviour over the past 100 or so years. Of course the question is whether these regulations protect the public which regulation is expected to do- like building codes.