The Ontario government may be keen to get shovels in the ground after this week’s agreement to proceed with the controversial Highway 413 megaproject. But opponents say the federal government must still keep an eye on the project’s environmental impacts and eventually re-designate it for review under a revamped Impact Assessment Act (IAA).

On Monday, the two governments announced they had reached a deal to start work on the 52-kilometre road, and had asked the Federal Court to set aside its designation for review under the IAA. That was after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled parts of the Act unconstitutional in October, 2023, prompting Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault to promise a fast rewrite.

The day after the federal-provincial announcement, Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said the agreement would speed up the project. “I’m hoping to get shovels in the ground within the next year,” he said.

But one of the groups leading the opposition to the project, Environmental Defence Canada, said the announcement only underscored the need to get on with the IAA amendments—which must be approved by Parliament—in time to re-designate Highway 413 for review as soon as the new statute is in place.

“Problems with the current Impact Assessment Act always meant the current assessment designation of Highway 413 would eventually need to be discontinued and reinstituted under an updated version of the law,” Environmental Defence Counsel Phil Pothen said in a statement Monday.

But he said nothing about the Supreme Court order or the federal-provincial deal altered “the expectation—and Ontario residents’ demand” that the road will be subject to federal review.

Project opponents always knew the federal assessment would have to be discontinued after the Supreme Court ruling, Pothen told The Energy Mix in an email late Wednesday afternoon. “Now that the first part of that has happened, every Ontarian who cares about the environment or climate change has got to keep the pressure on government MPs,” including Ontario cabinet ministers, to get the IAA updated and the project re-designated.

“We must demand in the meantime that the federal government refuse any federal permits required for Ontario to begin destroying habitat, such as permits to interfere with species at risk habitat or interfere with waterway,” he said. “Applying real political pressure, rather than just asking nicely, is important, because Ontario will be trying to convince the federal government not to re-designate Highway 413 after the Impact Assessment Act has been updated.”

Already, Pothen added, the province is trying to frame what he called a “procedural” agreement Monday as a decision not to conduct a federal impact assessment. “it’s vital to tell our MPs that we know that isn’t true.”

But Ottawa can still refuse federal permits for Highway 413 under the Fisheries Act, the Species At Risk Act, and other legislation. “There is really no way that the federal government could grant those permits without violating its own obligations and essentially deciding to risk the extinction of species,” he said. “If the federal government were to grant permits to build on the current proposed 413 route, then it really would be exposing itself to legal challenges.”

In a release last month, Environmental Defence Executive Director Tim Gray described Highway 413 as “the bulldozer front of farm-eating, nature-killing, climate-warming, developer-enriching sprawl that would cost Ontarians billions,” adding that “much better city-building and transportation alternatives are at our fingertips.”