Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
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www.canadianlawyermag.com/inhouse 41 ENERGY PROJECT AVERAGE TIMELINES source "Timelines, Completion Risk and Federal Project Reviews" by Jonathan Drance, Glenn Cameron and Rachel Hutton of Stikeman Elliott LLP. federal government to have somebody senior really go around and engage at a senior, politi- cal, meaningful level. "It was done in a routine way, by mid-level civil servants who were reduced, I think the court said, 'to the role of note-takers,'" he says. For Indigenous consultation, as with environmental assessments, Drance says the provincial motivation to ensure politically important projects happen can help avoid rejection by the courts. "The provinces, on projects they support that are important to them, will simply pull out all the stops, they will do absolutely everything, in accordance with the strictest possible standards that have been set by any court at any time. And they have tended to make sure that they do that consultation as properly as possible. And the result is that U.S. TIMELINES FOR ENERGY PROJECTS 24 months: Declaratory policy 24 to 36 months: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission project reviews for pipelines, LNG terminals and certain power plants 24 months: Department of Energy reviews for private sector energy projects source "Timelines, Completion Risk and Federal Project Reviews" by Jonathan Drance, Glenn Cameron and Rachel Hutton of Stikeman Elliott LLP. very few projects at the provincial level that are strategically significant to the government have found themselves reversed or stopped by the courts," he says. Mike McKinney is executive director, general counsel for The Sawridge Group of Companies, which is part of Sawridge First Nation in Slave Lake, Alta. McKinney has been in-house with Sawridge for more than 33 years and has ample experience dealing with both provincial and federal governments. Sawridge claims all of Treaty 8 as its tradi- tional territory, a region that spans northeast- ern B.C., the northern half of Alberta, north- west Saskatchewan and a small, triangular chunk of the Northwest Territories. In the last 10 years, they've had two major pipelines and a major power line built across the territory, says McKinney. "You'd be hard-pressed to find any area in the traditional territory that you could walk for 100 metres and not run into some kind of disruption or construction or some project that has been built. . . . It looks like a big forest. But when you drill down into the impacts over time, it's significant," McKinney says. Sawridge has a consultation office that handles a constant intake of proposals, which are reviewed by representatives who arrange for elders and "traditional users" to visit the site of the project to analyze how traditional uses of the land will be impacted, he says. This process "was unheard of" when he began working for Sawridge in the 1980s, he adds. Timing and mapping are the two main problems, says McKinney. Often, the maps the province uses to tell companies with whom to consult doesn't align with Saw- ridge's perspective. Some companies are "very proactive" and approach Sawridge early, while others arrive right before construction is set to begin and are upset Sawridge can't turn around their consultation immediately, he says. "There's a strong interest in preserving the traditional territory for traditional uses," he says. "In an ideal world, [they] wouldn't want that impacted. But they realize that, you know, these projects are required and are going to be built somewhere, so it's better to be involved in making sure they have as little impact as possible," McKinney says. Pipelines: 70 months Oilsands projects: 74 months Liquid natural gas: 42 months