A little rustle in the brush before we begin…
Welcome back to Species of the Month — where we usually dive into Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA), habitat constraints, and the joys of navigating federal permitting.
This month, we’re doing an October lore edition. Instead of a listed species, we’re heading into the regulatory backcountry with a being that everyone has heard of and almost no one can put on a map: Sasquatch.
The name comes from a Coast Salish word, and in many First Nations traditions Sasquatch is understood not as a monster, but as a caretaker of the land. And that makes it a surprisingly sharp guide for the biggest regulatory story of the fall: Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act.
Species Spotlight: The One Everyone Knows, Nobody Can Map
Sasquatch has a regulatory lesson baked right in.
Everyone has heard of it. Almost no one can point to it on a map with confidence. And that is exactly the risk inside a faster approvals regime: if your process depends on what your baseline studies can “see,” then anything outside the frame can become tomorrow’s delay.
That is not just a Halloween punchline. In federal project planning, proponents are routinely asked whether they have done preliminary wildlife and wildlife habitat assessments, species-at-risk presence studies, and other early technical work before the review really gets moving. Existing federal permitting also already turns on detailed information about which species may be affected, where they occur, and what habitat or residences could be disturbed.
So if Bill C-39 promises “one project, one decision, one year,” the obvious follow-up question is: one year starting from what quality of information?
That is where Sasquatch comes in. Sometimes the most important tracks are the ones conventional study design was never set up to read.
The Real Creature Feature: What Faster Reviews Still Need
A lot of industry will welcome Bill C-39’s push for certainty — and frankly, for good reason. Federal files already involve overlapping permit pathways. Impact assessment reports and project descriptions regularly flag the need for approvals under the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, and the Canadian Navigable Waters Act. In some cases, the SARA permitting path can already be combined with a Fisheries Act authorization process.
In other words, coordination is not a new idea. The system has been inching that way for years.
But speed in theory and speed in practice are different animals.
Current SARA permitting guidance makes clear that timelines depend on having a complete application. Environment and Climate Change Canada’s 90-day processing clock can be suspended when more information is needed, and that timeline does not apply in some cases where Indigenous consultation or a decision under another Act of Parliament is required. For projects undergoing federal impact assessment, permit reviews can run concurrently, but proponents still carry responsibility for identifying and completing the species-at-risk surveys needed to support review.
Translation: the clock is only as fast as the file is good.
So yes, “one project, one decision, one year” is a compelling slogan. But no one should confuse that with “one year, regardless of what got missed in the field.”
Follow the Footprints: Why Indigenous Knowledge Cannot Be an Appendix
Here is where the Sasquatch analogy stops being cute and starts being serious.
In many First Nations traditions, Sasquatch is a caretaker of the land. That framing matters because Indigenous knowledge is not decorative. It is evidence.
Federal project records already show Indigenous rights, knowledge, and community knowledge being treated as dedicated components of project information gathering. In other federal processes, regulators expressly gather and consider Indigenous Knowledge and develop community-specific consultation plans. And Indigenous participants have long warned against reviewing projects piecemeal, urging decision-makers to examine cumulative effects in relation to past, present, and future development.
That matters even more if Bill C-39 expands the use of Regions of National Interest.
Regional pre-assessment can be a powerful pro-development tool. Done well, it can reduce duplication, give proponents earlier clarity, and move good projects faster. Done poorly, it risks locking in a baseline that is technically tidy but ecologically thin. As one Agency record notes, consultation tied only to a permit request is narrower than consultation during a federal impact assessment. So if the ambition is to streamline later project decisions, the regional assessment stage has to be where the hard, place-specific, community-held knowledge gets built in.
Because once the corridor is drawn, the missing footprints get much harder to find.
From Bigfoot to Big Efficiency: Where Ultimarii Earns Its Keep
This is exactly the kind of moment Ultimarii was built for.
For environmental consultants, regulatory professionals, and project developers, the challenge is not just reading Bill C-39. It is operationalizing it. Fast.
That means understanding, early:
- what baseline studies regulators typically expect;
- where SARA, Fisheries Act, and navigable waters triggers are likely to surface;
- when permit pathways can be coordinated;
- what information gaps are most likely to stop the clock; and
- where Indigenous consultation and Indigenous knowledge need to be integrated before a file becomes expensive to fix.
The record shows that federal reviews already ask for early wildlife and species-at-risk studies, already coordinate multiple authorization streams, and already pause timelines when files are incomplete or further consultation is required. That is the kind of pattern recognition that can save a team real money when it is caught upstream instead of during a late-stage scramble.
From a pro-development perspective, that is the prize: better front-end intelligence, fewer surprises, less rework, lower carrying costs, and a straighter path to approval.
Or, put less formally: if Sasquatch is out there, you would rather know before you mobilize.
Final Tracks
Bill C-39 is trying to do something the industry has wanted for years: make major-project approvals more coordinated, more predictable, and faster.
That is a worthy goal.
But the success of a one-year system will depend on whether proponents, consultants, and regulators can agree on what a complete picture of the land actually looks like. And sometimes that picture comes from survey plots, desktop reviews, and permit matrices. Sometimes it also comes from knowledge holders who have been reading that landscape for generations.
So this October, our Species of the Month reminder is simple: don’t laugh at the footprints.
In regulatory work, the things you cannot easily map are often the things that matter most.
Until next month, keep your files tight, your baselines tighter, and if you see something large and fuzzy at the edge of the corridor assessment… maybe invite it to the scoping meeting.
