Quebec and the federal government have reached an agreement in principle to eliminate overlapping environmental reviews of major projects, streamlining assessments for major developments such as mines and ports.

Ottawa had wanted these “one project, one review” agreements in place with every willing province by the end of 2025. 

That deadline slipped as talks dragged on with the last holdouts, Quebec and Saskatchewan, until Monday, when Quebec became the latest to strike a deal.

The deal marks a shift for a province that has long been a critic of the Impact Assessment Act, the 2019 law on Ottawa’s role in reviewing major projects. 

When Alberta’s challenge to the law reached the Supreme Court, Quebec intervened, arguing it let Ottawa layer a federal review on top of the province’s own even for projects falling mostly under provincial jurisdiction.

Like the cooperation agreements Ottawa has reached with other provinces, the Quebec deal has the federal government agree that for projects sitting mainly within provincial jurisdiction, it will rely on the province’s own assessment. 

“By having a single environmental assessment and a single government decision for the same project, we will make it easier to carry out major projects by reducing uncertainty for investors and providing them with greater predictability,” said Quebec Environment Minister Pascale Déry.

The mining industry welcomed the agreement as a long-sought breakthrough. Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada, called it “something the sector had wanted for decades and never expected to see.”

Because mining falls under provincial jurisdiction, Gratton said, Quebec had long refused to recognize the federal impact assessment regime as anything but an intrusion, while Ottawa declined to defer to provincial assessments. The result, in a major mining province, was duplicative reviews that added time, cost and burden.

READ MORE: Carney dodges question on federal assessment in Ontario’s special economic zones 

The deal announced Monday treats northern Quebec separately. It excludes the territories covered by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and the Northeastern Quebec Agreement, leaving them under their existing treaty-based assessment processes. 

The agreement lands as Quebec pursues its own drive to speed up major projects. 

The CAQ government introduced Bill Q-5 last fall, which grants the province power to designate projects as being in the national interest and grant them exemptions from a range of laws, including some environmental and species-at-risk rules — a provincial echo of Bill C-5. 

The bill stalled at the end of the legislative session in June after amendments from Québec Solidaire derailed its passage, and Premier Christine Fréchette has said she hasn’t decided whether to bring it back, though it could return in the fall. 

Environmental groups that fought Q-5, including the Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement, welcomed its obstruction, warning it would have handed the government sweeping discretionary power to sidestep laws and weaken reviews and consultations.

READ MORE: Québec major project law buried by end-of-session filibuster