Join host Mickey as he sits down with Alex Templeton from McInnes Cooper Law to explore the intricate world of environmental law in Newfoundland.

In this insightful interview, Alex delves into the challenges and complexities of regulatory compliance, the intersection of environmental law and economic development, and the role of technology in shaping legal practices. He also shares his experiences with Indigenous collaboration in resource management and offers valuable advice for businesses seeking to enhance their environmental sustainability.

Gain a deeper understanding of how environmental regulations impact various industries and the proactive steps companies can take to navigate this evolving landscape.

You can listen to this on the following: 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0xuJtRIfpat2Kt04m66ymf

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/navigating-environmental-law-in-newfoundland-an/id1734621258?i=1000657254616

1. Regulatory compliance in environmental law is essential for both environmental protection and economic development.
2. A clear understanding of regulations and standards is crucial for effective compliance.
3. Environmental assessment helps balance economic benefits with responsible resource management.
4. Indigenous knowledge and collaboration are integral to sustainable resource management.
5. Technology, particularly generative AI, is revolutionizing legal research and environmental monitoring.
6. Environmental audits are vital for businesses to ensure compliance and identify potential risks early on.
7. Engaging with regulations from the start is essential for successful business operations.
8. Environmental stewardship is a continuous process and a key component of doing business.
9. Collaborative efforts between industry and regulators lead to better environmental management.
10. Sustainable practices not only benefit the environment but also enhance a company’s competitive advantage.

Mickey (00:00.652)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mickey. I am your host of Beyond Page One. Today we have an exciting guest. We have Alex Templeton from McInnes Cooper Law. Alex practices litigation regulatory practices focused on administrative law, environmental law, privacy and access to information law, municipal law, and commercial law. He deals with regulatory compliance, contracts, insurance, you name it, he does it. Alex, super excited to have you. Thank you for coming in to build a robust legal career. If you focus on environmental law, thanks. How are you today?

37. Alex Templeton (00:37.271)

Yeah, I’m doing great, and thanks very much for the invitation to come and have a chat with you today.

Mickey (00:43.244)

Yeah, very excited to have you, in your experience. What are some of the most challenging regulatory compliance issues that businesses in Newfoundland and Labrador face today?

56. Alex Templeton (00:56.407)

Well, it’s a good question. And sort of a broad series of challenges that industry players face today in navigating environmental regulatory compliance generally. I think kind of the starting place to begin with is just at the outset that regulation works best when everybody understands clearly what is required of them, right? And what the applicable standards are, what needs to be reported by whom and when, and just generally what the consequences are for any kind of non-compliance. And there are a lot of criticisms that we can make, but for the most part, it works well. We, we achieve, typically we achieve good compliance. And that means that we’re getting, positive environmental stewardship that people are being, responsible about their industrial practices and their impacts on the environment. And regulators are, successful in providing an appropriate level of an effective level of oversight. And all of, it only works when you have very committed, smart, hardworking people on both sides of the aisle, regulators and the regulated that are taking it seriously and are doing what needs to be done. 

So I think that from the outset, while all kinds of criticisms can be made of regulatory systems, I think you have to start from the perspective that it’s there, it’s there for a purpose, and it, nine times out of 10, it’s working very well. The challenge that you end up having though is that by its nature, it leads to a certain level of uncertainty. And it’s the type of uncertainty that can be detrimental to particularly in industry, developers need certainty around regulation to be able to inform the investments that they make and the business decisions that they make. Particularly in Canada, we have some challenges in that realm. 

We live in a country where we have a federated federal structure where you have the federal government and provincial governments and municipal governments layered into that, you have Aboriginal governance as well. And that often means you have multiple, levels that sometimes it’s not entirely clear who is responsible for what, who takes the lead on what, and who follows. There are boundaries of, agency jurisdiction that sometimes get a bit gray and at times, claims are made that certain agencies are encroaching onto the turf of others. And that’s all kind of part and parcel of the regulatory puzzle that we have in this country. The other thing, the challenge is that it’s something that takes on a lot of time and a lot of cost. It’s very consuming of both. And budgeting for that can be a real challenge.

I’ve heard of proponents of projects that are saying, well, we know from the business perspective, the investment is going to be X, but we need to essentially multiply it by adding another quarter to or a third of investment into this because of the regulatory piece. I think people are getting to be more prudent about that, but at times you get people sort of caught unaware as to the real cost of obtaining regulatory compliance. And yeah, so that’s another aspect of a sort of challenge. And then at the end of the day, what ultimately what it’s all about too is decision-making and regulators are, it’s often the decisions around environmental issues are multifactored decision-making -and that can lead to some unique challenges as well from the perspective of the reliability of the decisions that are made at the end of the day. We live in a democracy and as a result of that, we have elected decision-makers whose discretion is not completely unfettered. Like we do, there are requirements that they, in making decisions, make decisions that are intelligible and transparent. And people need to understand why decisions are made the way that they are. And oftentimes it’s not entirely clear when decisions are made what the reasons are and why a certain balance might have been chosen over another. So those kinds of issues can lead to legal challenges. And so, from that sort of overview alone, you can kind of get a sense as to why I’m busy all day. For different clients, you’re navigating those complexities.

Mickey (06:47.34)

Yeah, no kidding. It sounds like there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and a lot of moving parts, honestly. How do you see the intersection of the environmental law piece and the economic development piece playing out in Newfoundland? And really in the context of the emerging industries, right?

8. Alex Templeton (07:08.535)

Yeah, yeah, like we’ve got, so just to kind of back up there, I mean, we’ve got Newfoundland Labrador as tremendous natural resources. And, we have certain very long-standing established industries, some of which were, the basis for the foundation of Newfoundland Labrador as, as our communities are based on the cod stocks and the traditional harvest fisheries that were the reason this place was settled in the first place. They were part of the natural resources of North America, which essentially empires of Europe fought wars over. It was that. And we’ve from but from the marine resource, we’ve always had a strong fishery industry, or sorry, a strong forestry industry. We’ve had a strong mining industry. And in more recent years, we’ve had an offshore oil and gas industry. We’re now moving into renewable energy space in really big, exciting ways. And also doing new things in the fishery, moving more towards aquaculture, which is a really interesting dynamic in Newfoundland as well. But for that, against that backdrop, the question about the intersection of environmental law and economic development, I go back to the cod fishery. So I was born and raised here in St. John’s, Newfoundland. When I was a teenager back in the early 90s, we had essentially fished the cod stocks to the point of extinction, such that the federal government needed to put in place a moratorium on the cod fishery. And when they did that, it caused a tremendous economic downturn in this province, incredibly disruptive. And, that happened at sort of a point in time when industrial practices were coming to this issue of environmental stewardship in a new way. And, I like to think that we sort of learned from that experience and that some of the legislation that came into place, not only in Newfoundland but sort of across North America around that time, particularly around environmental protection and environmental assessment, that it was in part informed by experiences like that of the God moratorium in Newfoundland. So now, in Newfoundland, we have an environmental protection act. And I sometimes say to clients that I wish it were, titled the Environmental Protection and Economic Development Act, because it’s not only about protecting the environment, it’s actually about balancing appropriate protection of the environment against the benefits of economic development that go hand in hand with it. And part of that legislation was establishing a process of environmental assessment. Environmental assessment is so critically important to the management of our natural resources because it moves away from indiscriminate use of the environment and, sort of deals with the after-effects of either overuse or, significant impacts. It’s the policy that moves us away from that more so towards, okay, let’s consider at the outset, what do we know? What do we know at this point about what the reasonably anticipated environmental impacts are?

Let’s consider all the different ways that we could implement to mitigate those impacts or whether or not there are sort of other methods to get the same benefits that would be less impactful than we should consider. And then do the balancing. Make that decision informed as best we can with what we know at the time to say, okay, if we are going to say, yes, go ahead and proceed and we’re gonna countenance this.

What are going to be the terms and conditions that we’re going to put in place to mitigate the impacts? And what do we know about what those costs are going to be? Wait against the benefits, social economic benefits that will go along with proceeding. And that ultimately is what it’s all about. It’s sort of reconciling those two imperatives. 

In that way, environmental assessment and environmental stewardship have become an integral part of economic development now in a way that never existed before. And so since then, over my lifetime, we’ve seen sort of the development of that and the fine-tuning of that. And again, it’s not without its challenges.

54. Alex Templeton (12:54.647)

Like I was saying at the outset, there’s a whole lot of cost that goes along with, both financial and time that goes along with, engaging in that process and seeing that process through. But at the end of the day, it’s all about, better management of the resource, and the industry always sort of, responds to that and responds well to that in my experience.

Mickey (13:19.18)

Yeah. Well, when talking about, businesses and, obviously they’re looking to enhance their competitive advantage, right? So what advice would you give businesses that are seeking to enhance their environmental sustainability practices while also remaining competitive in their space?

41. Alex Templeton (13:41.559)

Well, it’s an interesting question. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s just accepting the realities of the rigorous regulation and compliance regimes that we have, right? And trying to get a clear sense of how you can properly engage with those regulations.

10. Alex Templeton (14:10.401)

Like I said at the beginning, typically it’s well understood what the requirements are. Most of the industries that I deal with, have good solid working relationships with the regulator. They understand each other. They understand their reporting requirements the frequency of those and the level of detail that they need to get into the auditing that goes on, the real-time monitoring, which I think is only increasing. That’s one of the real benefits of technology in the sector is that we have the benefit of being able to almost continuously better understand what the impacts of our activities are on the environment and be able to measure them and then craft new ways to mitigate those impacts. And so it’s, yeah, I think in terms of how can the industry sort of best suit itself to that while being competitive? It is understanding, that doing this and doing it well will make you competitive. At the end of the day, you can’t do it without it. It’s part of, it’s part of the game. It’s part of the price that is paid, part of the cost of doing business now. 

Mickey (15:18.764)

Yeah, you can’t do it without it. Yeah.

Mickey (15:28.874)

Yeah.

37. Alex Templeton (15:37.187)

And, but also that, then, it’s not only about, an ecological benefit, ultimately at the end of the day, but it also makes good business sense as well. It’s better to have a sense of what can we do now to live the balance that we all are accepting and that we have social the license to engage as opposed to doing something that is considered to be sort of indiscriminate use of the environment and not meeting social standards and at the end of the day, facing the consequences of that at a later date. Because I think that the other way that environmental law is developed, is that there are significant penalties that go along with not following the rules. And those are penalties that are only ever increasing. Yeah, I think that’s just it. It’s a cost of doing business and it’s really good business.

Mickey (16:40.62)

Yeah, and truly, like, I mean, I come from the marketing world, right? So it’s leaning into that. When you’re branding yourself, right? Talking about that, you are on the environmental sustainability side, and you truly care about it. It only actually helps you grow your business too.

49. Alex Templeton (16:49.591)

Right.

57. Alex Templeton (16:57.719)

Yeah, and that’s something else from the perspective of green procurement is a real thing now. I mean, it’s something that when people are looking for service providers, goods providers, these are things that people are attentive to now is, well, what is your footprint? Yeah.

Mickey (17:04.076)

Yeah.

Mickey (17:13.108)

100 percent. What is your footprint? Yeah, exactly. Can you share some insight into the role that legal professionals have in shaping public policy related to environmental protection?

27. Alex Templeton (17:27.959)

Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, it’s there are many different ways that legal professionals help to shape that public policy. from my experience, first and foremost, advising the industry on what the regulatory requirements are and giving them a clear understanding as to what those rules are. I think that’s, sort of a constant.

Mickey (17:37.612)

Yeah.

56. Alex Templeton (17:56.471)

more sort of episodic or ad hoc is when we get into litigation around, some environmental compliance issues or regulatory requirements. When that happens, it tends to be more focused issues and more nuanced, but it’s, being part of the process, the judicial process where you ultimately will get, parties that sort of have adverse views as to what the reality may be, and you have, the judiciary there as an arbiter of that and coming to a resolution of that. Typically, that’s not where the story ends. Usually, that’s informing, the way that legislation should be amended or, new regulations should be brought into place to ensure that it is achieving the proper balance, that is intended.

So legal professionals are sort of engaged in that perspective as well and can help push the public policy in environmental protection through that means as well. And then other than that, even just direct engagement with decision-makers, ministers, and she or bureaucrats, I tend to do that often through my involvement in an industry association that I’ve been a long-standing volunteer called EcoNext. It used to be called the Environmental Industry Association here in Newfoundland, but essentially what it is is it’s a not-for-profit organization that’s made up of about 200 member businesses that touch on the environmental sector. In the past, it was more so, sort of environmental service industries, but it’s grown into a group that, sort of has a very wide-encompassing umbrella of different types of businesses that are involved. But through that association, yeah, we can often, sort of advocate directly with, ministers and government to help promote, not only the clarity of regulation that existing industries require, but also in terms of emerging industries and help to inform what investors will need to establish brand new industries and what some of the challenges are there.

Mickey (20:31.724)

Yeah. What are some of the, you mentioned at the beginning of our podcast, sustainable energies that are starting to flourish in the area that you’re in? Can you, what are they? What are people doing?

42. Alex Templeton (20:42.455)

Yeah, so there are some very exciting things going on in Newfoundland and Labrador right now. What we had was up until recently, so Newfoundland’s electricity is predominantly renewable. We have a very major hydro assets here in the province. And up until recently, we had essentially a moratorium for lack of a better word on wind development, even though we have significant wind energy in this province. Sometimes, on some days it’s completely ridiculous, but we have this solid resource that is just crying out for development. In the meantime, we have greater accountability around greenhouse gas emissions coming on and throwing into the mix, the Ukraine conflict and the reliance of some of our European allies on, Russian oil, oil, and gas. And it spurred, sort of new requirements, new needs and…

Mickey (21:58.348)

Yeah.

6. Alex Templeton (22:06.423)

in this province, it has been sort of the foundation for consideration of how we can properly develop our wind resources. Newfoundland has often been sort of termed as an energy powerhouse. And I remember years ago that people were considering this and they were saying that the real disruptor in the energy industry was going to be around either storage or transmission. How can we get the power to where it needs to be? And it’s either going to be through some kind of great advancement in transmission assets and in our means of moving energy around, or otherwise it’s going to be about being able to store it and move in that way. And it’s not until recently that people got serious about wind-to-hydrogen projects as sort of a means of unlocking that question. And so that’s where we are right now is that there are several different proponents. There has been a lifting of this moratorium on wind development and predominantly what the interest is right now is wind to hydrogen or green ammonia projects.

Mickey (23:12.972)

Yeah.

30. Alex Templeton (23:30.123)

There are several around the province, some of which are more advanced than others, some of which are getting their footing as first movers in this new industry. And yeah, it’s a major push-on. We have a contingent that was just over in Rotterdam promoting this and a lot of new off-take agreements that are in the works with companies and utilities in Germany are predominantly where the market seems to be currently. And so that’s gonna spur a lot of economic development activity here in the province. And then in the meantime, we also have tremendous offshore wind resources as well, which it’s good to see that sort of the component pieces that need to be put in place to unlock that industry are making headway. We have a regional assessment that’s going on in terms of the environmental impacts where wind farms could be best suited in our offshore. So I mentioned we have a robust oil and gas industry, offshore oil and gas industry in Newfoundland as well. Amendments are currently making their way through the federal parliament to essentially authorize the offshore oil and gas regulator to also consider renewable projects. And that’s the type of thing that we’ve seen happen throughout the world. Just sort of common sense makes sense. You’ve got a great established regulator that, with a proven track record to be able to do the job and do the job well. And so this is, yeah, this is part of the puzzle as well. And it’s very encouraging to see sort of all that activity going on in tandem. I mentioned this group EcoNext that I’ve been involved with over the past 10 years. a lot of this stuff was things that we were, talking about 10 years ago, but we were saying, wouldn’t it be great if, it was always sort of perspective and, and, who knows if this would ever come to fruition and here we are looking at this, and I can look at every industry sector in Newfoundland and say, there are things that we were talking about 10 years ago that now, it’s here, it’s happening, and it’s a, yeah, yeah.

Mickey (26:05.292)

happening. That’s, that’s, that’s encouraging, really exciting. Very cool. Yeah, sorry, I took a little bit of a segue there. But I was interested in that. What are some common misconceptions businesses have about environmental regulations? And you work with clients. So, how do you work with your clients to overcome those misconceptions?

28. Alex Templeton (26:28.535)

Yeah, I think that I just sort of harkened back to this idea that environmental regulations are like an impediment, that it’s something that business has to overcome and that once you’re past it, well, then, you’re past it, and you sort of move on. And that, that their purpose is actually to stop economic activity altogether which, that again, I go back to this idea that the environmental protection act should be called the environmental protection and economic development act because it’s, it is that it’s, it’s that, and I don’t see, to be honest, I don’t see a lot of my clients, really engaging in that. I think I think that’s part of the mythology that’s still out there. And it’s probably people that aren’t, sort of seasoned actors would maybe have that misconception, but I think most, responsible sophisticated businesses understand that it is just part of doing business now. There’s no question about it. And that, yeah, it isn’t about trying to put the blocks on what it is that you intend to do. It’s about just trying to get a good, clear sense of what are the impacts going to be and how are we going to deal with those. And now, what’s the best way to deal with those responsibly? And so I think that’s it. that’s what I’d come to. And then, the only other myth is, yeah, is that sense that, okay, we’re going to jump through that hurdle or jump over that hurdle, jump through that hoop, and then be on the other side of it and we’ll be able to carry on. No. environmental stewardship is something that is from, what would you say, from birth to grave. I mean, it’s, it’s just something that, yeah.

Mickey (28:21.74)

Yeah, they wanted onwards.

24. Alex Templeton (28:24.663)

It’s just going to be a continuous part of doing business in any jurisdiction. Newfoundland is not unique in any way in that regard.

Mickey (28:33.1)

Yeah, that’s it makes total and complete sense on my end. You mentioned technology earlier and, with how fast technology is evolving, how is technology changing the practice of environmental law?

51. Alex Templeton (28:51.607)

Yeah, so it’s, well, I think I’d start by saying that technology is impacting all practice of law in all different sectors. I mean, and in exciting ways. I think that what we’re seeing is, well, generative AI in particular doing interesting things. I was talking with a colleague of mine about this the other day and we were sort of remarking on the fact that when I came through law school and a couple of, a couple of vintages before mine having gone through law school, what we saw was that the law libraries had really sort of become, I don’t wanna say museums, but they essentially, it was a unique type of research that was still going on in law libraries when there was a time when law libraries used to be very bustling places where there was a lot of work going on. People had moved to sort of online databases of, commentary and case law. And that was the predominant method by which legal research was being done when I went through it. Generative AI, I see is sort of like the next level of that. All of a sudden, some of the work that used to take a team of people to complete was very labor-intensive and time-intensive. Now, through the use of generative AI, we’re able to see the results very quickly. And that’s only going to lead to, I would think, better decision-making and more timely decision-making. but it’s fundamentally going to change the practice of law. And so we’re always trying to be attuned to that and how we’re how we’re properly gonna be able to adapt to the times. In environmental law, I think one of the sort of key technological pieces is what I referenced before, which is around information and data collection and the new unique ways that we’re seeing that enable us to do that so that we can better understand what impacts are. It also benefits the sustainability of industrial practices though as well because we are more tuned to changing environmental conditions and as we get more and more data on that we’re understanding properly how those you know present risks to the industry and how those risks can be mitigated and accommodated. So yeah it’s sort of in that area that I would say that’s going to have a tremendous impact on environmental law going forward as well.

And a lot of the businesses that I mentioned, fall under our umbrella at Econex as well, you’ve got some really interesting tech companies doing some amazing things around, remote sensing and monitoring the environment and, both, air, soil, marine, big-time. So it’s always interesting to see what different companies are doing to better enable us all to understand the environment that we are operating in. And you can only imagine, Newfoundland and Labrador, I will say, although, I’m saying this aware of the wildfires that are going on in Western Canada right now. Newfoundland is, it is an interesting, unique environment in which to do business.

38. Alex Templeton (32:38.827)

The offshore oil and gas industry that we have here, has some of the harshest conditions in which to extract oil and explore for oil on the planet. And we’ve been able to do that and make a run of it and understand it. Aquaculture is similar, it’s attractive here because of our bays and the cold water that we have.

But we understand that to do this well, we have to understand the different ecologies of the places where we are growing our fish stocks. We have to understand the impacts of oxygen levels within water and temperature changes within water and be prepared for those. And then the simple fact of climate change as well, the impact of climate change in Newfoundland has predominantly been in the strength of the relative storms that make their way up the eastern seaboard. And so we have to be prepared for that. We have infrastructure here that was made 30 years ago to account for what was considered to be 100-year storms. And suddenly 100 -100-year storms we’re seeing happen maybe three times a century or more like one every 20, 25 years. So it’s just about being more aware and constantly understanding what the standards are that we are operating towards and better understanding those standards and being prepared.

Mickey (34:21.132)

I like that. Thank you for sharing that. You as, mentioned something at the beginning of the call about the Indigenous knowledge and the perspective. So how can the legal system better integrate Indigenous knowledge and perspective into environmental law and resource management? And do you have work with them? Yeah.

39. Alex Templeton (34:39.479)

Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, well, it’s, so the indigenous knowledge piece is a, yeah, it’s a critical component, a key component. As I started with we have the layering of multiple different, sorts of governance models or, networks in Canada and It means that we have to listen to all of the various parts of our communities or societies. And that, I think, is one of our proudest achievements as Canadians, to be quite frank, is the way that we can grapple with our history and navigate through the things that, the ties that bind us all together. I think that’s a critical piece. But in terms of, yeah, Indigenous knowledge, one of the great things about resource management is that it is typically that the more voices that we have, typically more voices do equate to better decision-making. And Indigenous knowledge, what we’re seeing in Newfoundland which again, I think is just a tremendous development, is that we’re seeing more and more partnerships between industry and our indigenous groups in actually developing our resources hand in hand. And I think that’s so critical that we need different stakeholders informing what the effects are, positive, negative, and neutral, from their perspective concerning their particular constituencies. And, it’s at the end of the day, governance is complex, and social license is complex. However, I think it has to be an inclusive exercise. It’s one that if we are exclusive in who we listen to or whose opinions, and perspectives we choose to validate and whose we ignore. At the end of the day, I think the history of that type of approach has been one that shows that it’s fraught with problems. So we’re trying a new approach. And yeah, I think for the most part, it is working and it’s going to work well.

Mickey (37:26.988)

That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m from Manitoba and I’m seeing it here as well. So it seemed like it was creating a collaborative effort on, issues, so to speak. A couple more questions for you here, but just wanted to finish up by what are some proactive steps that companies can start taking to minimize their environment besides hiring you.

54. Alex Templeton (37:54.007)

Yeah, I was gonna say get legal counsel. No, it’s, well, it’s funny though, because in, reality, it is about engagement, right? Like it’s, and understanding that if there’s a true understanding of this, like we’ve been saying throughout, that this is a part of doing business as opposed to, okay, this is sort of one aspect, one unique set of hurdles that we’re gonna have to get over and then we’ll be passed just having that mindset that if it’s gonna be something that’s gonna be an integral part of your, industrial activity or your business from, from inception through, then it is about sort of, establishing early on that you’re going to need to understand these regulations. You’re gonna need to understand the way that they’re potentially going to be evolving. You’re gonna have to stay up to speed on them and understand how they impact your business. I do work, you mentioned in your intro that another aspect of my practice is in the privacy world. And we do, we do audits of different businesses to understand, how they’re doing in terms of their protection of confidentiality and how prepared they are for things like privacy breaches. The same is true of the environment.

 You can do environmental audits to properly understand, how are we doing. Are we answering to all the regulations that exist? Do we have unique challenges from an environmental perspective that, we aren’t properly prepared for? We aren’t properly mitigating that risk. And yeah, there’s no sort of early enough time in my opinion to acknowledge that and then get advice and get diligence around those issues early on.

Mickey (39:54.284)

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much. I learned a ton. This is not a world that I’m acquainted with very well. So I’m sure our listeners are gonna be listening to this and gonna be having a lot more questions. So yeah, with that, I will wrap things up. If you guys do have any other questions, this obviously will post Alex’s information. I’m sure he’ll love to take some questions and educate some people on any of the topics covered here today. So with that, I’m gonna say thank you, Alex, and I’m gonna sign off.

23. Alex Templeton (40:23.607)

That’s awesome. Thank you, Mickey. Take care.

Mickey (40:25.516)

Thank you.