Cities should get faster approval for 'green' infrastructure projects: Baird

Transport Minister John Baird says he wants to eliminate federal environmental assessments for "green" infrastructure projects such as public transit or waste-water treatment plants.

Baird is to meet Thursday in Ottawa with the mayors of 22 of Canada's biggest cities, where he'll make a pitch for cutting government red tape in a bid to speed up economy-stimulating infrastructure spending.

"We have a lot of rules in place to stop bad things from happening," the former environment minister said in an interview Tuesday.

"We don't have anything to help good things happen."

Baird said his priority for the meeting will be identifying new projects that can get underway in 2009 or 2010: "What projects are out there that are new — that wouldn't normally be scheduled to be done over the next two years — that would be what we'd call 'shovel ready.' "

Don't strip down environmental laws: NDP

But the NDP warned that the Conservative government will be in for a battle if it tries to strip down federal environmental laws.

MP Thomas Mulcair said that while going after shovel-ready projects is a smart plan, "that doesn't mean shoving aside environmental regulations."

Some provincial premiers, however — including Manitoba NDP Premier Gary Doer — have called for streamlining environmental assessments to avoid duplication between federal and provincial processes.

Premiers plan to raise the issue Friday at their meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The federal government has already committed $33 billion for infrastructure spending over seven years, with the possibility of more in a federal budget to be released Jan. 27.

Urgency due to looming recession

With the economy likely heading into recession, federal officials, premiers and municipal mayors are seeking ways to get infrastructure projects off the drawing board and creating jobs as quickly as possible.

Baird said he'd like to push ahead with plans for cutting red tape that will make for a shorter lag time between a federal funding commitment and a given construction project getting underway.

He said mandatory environmental assessments are a problem.

Whether Ottawa provides one dollar or a billion for a targeted infrastructure project, it triggers a federal environmental assessment, Baird said.

But if Ottawa provides gas-tax dollars to provinces to use for the same project, it does not trigger a federal assessment. Nor does base infrastructure funding provided to the provinces.

"We're going to look to see what we can do to streamline that."

Major new projects, such as mines, dams or oilsands developments, will still require environmental assessments, the minister said.