Question Period Note: Regional Assessment of Offshore Oil & Gas Exploratory Drilling East of Newfoundland & Labrador

• Fisheries and Oceans Canada has collaborated with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada and the provincial government to plan the sustainable use of Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore area.
• Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s scientific advice was provided to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to ensure that conservation and protection of the marine ecosystem was included in the regional assessment work.
• Fisheries and Oceans Canada will continue to work with other federal departments, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board to ensure that impacts on fish and fish habitat are avoided.

• The Department is currently working with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (the Agency) on the Regional Assessment (RA) Follow-up Program. The RA Follow-up Program will track and report on the implementation and effectiveness of the commitments outlined in the Ministerial Response to the RA Report published June 4, 2020. To report on the Follow-up program, the Agency will publish each year, by March 31, a Ministerial Response Progress Report. The 2021 Ministerial Response Progress Report has not yet been published but is expected in the coming weeks.
• On November 24, 2020, there was media coverage of the World Wildlife Fund Canada’s (WWF-Canada) comments to the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board which criticized their decision to accept a bid from British Petroleum Canada to explore part of the Northeast Newfoundland Slope marine refuge for drilling. The exemption was possible because of the June 2020 regulation which exempts exploratory drilling in specific areas of the Newfoundland offshore from project specific federal impact assessments. Any proposed oil and gas activity would still be evaluated under various other statutes, including under the Fisheries Act.
• On October 1, 2020, WWF-Canada issued a news release expressing strong concerns about the RA process, mentioning, for example, that DFO’s recently published Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) report concluded that many of the sections of the RA Report were “not considered reliable sources of information for decision-making processes from a scientific perspective.” The news release also quotes concerns from different non-governmental organizations toward the RA process.
• The CSAS Review of the Impact Assessment Agency’s Draft Regional Assessment of Offshore Oil and Gas Exploratory Drilling East of Newfoundland and Labrador was published on September 3, 2020. In December 2019, DFO shared a draft version of the CSAS report with the Agency in order to ensure that the Agency had it as soon as possible to inform the work it was undertaking. The CSAS report informed, in part, DFO’s official comments on the draft RA Report, also provided to the Agency in December 2019, identifying important gaps in the document.
• After sharing the draft CSAS report and DFO’s comments on the draft RA report, DFO agreed to provide support and capacity to address outstanding issues identified in the report. Working closely with the RA Committee and the Agency, most of the issues were addressed by February 2020.
• On June 4, 2020, the Minister of Natural Resources announced the coming into force of a Ministerial Regulation that will exempt exploratory drilling projects in an area of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) offshore from the requirement to undergo a federal impact assessment under the Impact Assessment Act.
• On May 12, 2020, environmental groups announced that they were taking legal action against the federal government for failing to properly assess the impacts of exploratory drilling for oil and gas in NL’s offshore waters.
• On March 4, 2020, the RA committee published its final report, which included its conclusions on the effects of offshore oil and gas exploratory drilling in the Offshore East of NL and recommendations on how to best use the results of the RA to aid decision making. This included specific requirements to be included in the regulation for all future exploratory drilling activities in the study area.
• On April 15, 2019, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change launched a RA of exploratory drilling projects in Eastern Offshore NL. An independent five-member committee was appointed to conduct the RA, with the directive to facilitate a more effective and efficient assessment process for exploratory drilling projects in the defined offshore study area, while also ensuring that the highest levels of environmental protection continued to be applied and maintained.

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