Canada’s environmental assessment system is starting to feel like Groundhog Day — but the federal government still has time to change the script. Every few years, governments narrow the rules, promise faster approvals and act surprised when the same pressures return. After three decades of rewrites, one lesson should be clear: nature protection was never the barrier. Yet with Bill C-39, it is once again being treated as the problem.

Bill C-39 repackages the same old pattern as progress: fewer reviews, faster decisions and less public scrutiny.

If weaker oversight produced faster, better outcomes, decades of shrinking federal assessment should have delivered the proof by now.

Meanwhile, the risks to nature keep growing — to endangered Southern Resident killer whales, from mine waste threatening waterways or climate-driven wildfire and weather extremes.

Thirty years of fewer assessments

In the 1990s, federal environmental assessment cast a wide net.

Under the original regime, thousands of federal decisions were reviewed each year because funding, federal land or permits........

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