The federal government is taking criticism for assigning environmental reviews for pipelines, in situ oil sands projects, fossil-powered power plants, transmission lines, and offshore renewable energy projects to an agency that may lack the expertise to assess their impact—as well as some “inside baseball” teasing for a typo in the media release announcing the change.

On Wednesday, the government announced it was “modernizing” project regulation by following through on earlier plans to have the Canada Energy Regulator (CER), not the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, conduct the reviews. “The amendments will create a more efficient, predictable, and transparent regulatory framework for major natural resource and infrastructure projects to help attract and catalyze investment and ensure Canada remains competitive and agile in an increasingly uncertain global landscape,” the release said.

The government described the CER as “Canada’s expert lifecycle regulator”, adding that the Calgary-based regulator “has expertise conducting impact assessments that review a project’s effects on a range of environmental factors, including air, water, soil, climate change, wildlife, species at risk, and Canada’s environmental obligation.” It cast the regulatory change as an attempt to streamline the review process.

“Canada’s economy thrives when we build major projects and modernize our supply chains,” trade and intergovernmental affairs minister Dominic LeBlanc said in the release. “These changes are a critical step toward creating a regulatory system that supports investment and remains committed to meaningful engagement.”

But when some of that engagement took place during summer consultations on the proposed regulatory changes, “the federal government heard concerns that making the Canada Energy Regulator the sole assessor of pipelines could significantly reduce government oversight of such projects,” iPolitics reports.

“Many stakeholders oppose transferring primary assessment responsibilities… to sector regulators alone,” states a federal summary report from the consultations. “They argue that lifecycle regulators have historically been focused on licencing, safety, compliance, engineering, and project operations and do not replace the multidisciplinary public-interest analysis provided through independent impact assessments.”

Citing an unnamed government source, iPolitics says the “rush to implement this regulatory change before Parliament resumes is tied to the West Coast Oil pipeline proposal backed by Alberta and Ottawa.”

That assessment landed just a week after independent analysts at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded that the pipeline won’t recoup the estimated $43.7 billion it’ll burn through in construction costs, 90% of it currently to be covered by taxpayers, as global oil demand weakens.

In addition to being a “politically appointed body” rather than an independent agency, the CER “does not have the same mandate or depth of expertise of environmental issues or laws (such as protecting species at risk, fish habitat protection, and other environmental and social considerations),” Environmental Defence Canada warned in a release, issued after the regulatory change was posted in the Canada Gazette, but a half-hour or so before the federal media release was published.

“The CER is more of an economic regulator, so its scope is narrower,” Programs Director Keith Brooks added in an email. “The upshot is that major projects with large [greenhouse gas] and other environmental impacts will not get as thorough an examination, which could mean that bad projects get a green light, or that conditions that should be put on projects are not in fact put on them.”

The timing of the federal media release prompted Brooks to conclude in an “inside baseball” post on LinkedIn that the announcement was triggered by the group’s critique. The Mix has since learned that the kind of detail in the federal announcement involves days of coordination and vetting within government.

But Brooks pointed to a statement from Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin that “protecting our environment and upholding the rights of Indigenous peoples are at the heart of every impact assessment we undertake,” in a release “about the feds no longer doing impact assessments on some really problematic projects.” That was followed by a quote attributed to Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson, stating that the changes would help “unlock our abundant resource vase”.

“It’s obviously a typo,” Brooks told The Energy Mix, “but it’s a funny typo. The government wants to court investment and get things built, and they want to present their offerings in an attractive manner. What better way than a bouquet of ‘what Canada’s got’ presented in a fetching resource vase?”

In a separate announcement, the government said it is abandoning plans to exempt certain projects from laws designed to protect species at risk after an overwhelmingly negative response to the proposal during summer consultations, The Canadian Press reports. In a report published Wednesday summarizing the more than 26,000 submissions Ottawa received before the deadline, the government said “clear perspectives” emerged regarding species at risk protections.

While some stakeholders supported what CP calls “coordinated reviews” for species at risk, “several Indigenous participants shared concerns about the Species at Risk Act (SARA) proposal and Fisheries Act proposal. Specifically, they were concerned that allowing (cabinet) to approve certain activities in exceptional circumstances deemed to be in the public interest, even with high thresholds and strict conditions, could raise questions of potential precedents for legislative overrides of rights-based and environmental protections and infringe on Indigenous rights,” the report read.

While some environmental groups said Ottawa still had other ways to circumvent SARA, Nature Canada took a victory lap. The federal response to the consultations “gives hope that this government is listening to Canadians and taking us seriously,” Director of Policy Akaash Maharaj said in a statement.

“A few months ago it seemed the government was willing to sacrifice nature on the altar of economic resilience; but the change in tone is now palpable.”