Environmental Assessments: Where Conservation Meets Development ft. Kim Milligan (Yukon Government)

Our next episode covers a topic that is so deeply important for businesses and leaders actively pursuing a better future. As someone who has volunteered on the conservation side and worked on the development side (through my time in renewables and green buildings), I have seen this topic play the deciding role. Truly at the intersection of environmental and social protection and economic development is the topic of environmental assessment. 

Our next guest is an expert in the field and shares incredible insights into her work on this episode of The Resilience Report. 

Kim Milligan is an environmental assessment practitioner based out of Whitehorse, Yukon. She has worked on projects in various industries and jurisdictions across the country as a consultant, and in her current role with the Yukon Government. Her work in the past few years has been largely focused on major projects undergoing environmental assessment in the Yukon, and trying to find ways to balance the interests of Yukon First Nations, industry, regulators, and others. She also recently tried her hand as a university instructor, teaching a course in environmental assessment at Yukon University last winter. 

Kim is originally from the South Shore of Montreal and considers herself both a Montrealer and a Yukoner. She’s as happy sitting on a terrace with friends as she is out in the snowy trails with her dog. She loves superhero movies, all things Tolkien, and generally trying to do the right thing for the environment in day-to-day life and through her work. 

On this episode, she helps us to better understand this role, how environmental impact assessments have evolved to include social considerations, the differences between environmental protection from province to province to territory, the limitations of renewables given current infrastructure and more. 

Kim is a brilliant, warm force for good, and I know you’re going to learn a lot from her over the course of this episode!

** 

Welcome to The Resilience Report podcast, Kim. I'm really happy to have you on this episode.

To start things off, would you mind providing our listeners with a little bit of background as to who you are and how you got to where you are in your professional journey?

So, my name is Kim Milligan. I am an environmental assessment practitioner. I have been for about 10 years. I am from Montreal originally – specifically St. Lambert, like Lauren.

I left Montreal in 2013, moved to Vancouver. That’s where I really started my career; I got my first job there. Stayed and worked there until 2019, and then my partner and I made the move up to the Yukon where we both still live today. And yeah, have been working in environmental assessment ever since. 

So going back a bit, I did my bachelor’s at McGill and then went to Concordia for my masters. I did my bachelor’s in geography and international development studies, and then found a master’s program in environmental assessment at Concordia. So, I went back to school and did that. 

Shortly after my masters, I got my first job – my first real job – in Vancouver. I was working for a wind energy consulting company on their permitting team, so doing environmental assessments pretty much exclusively for wind projects. Stayed there for a few years, then moved to a different consulting company, where I still got to focus a lot on wind projects, but also lots of infrastructure type projects, so highways, bridges, port projects in Vancouver. I stayed there even after moving up to the Yukon, I stayed on with that company for a couple of years and then moved over to the Yukon government about two years ago, with their major project unit. Still working in environmental assessment, but the type of project has shifted a little bit: mining work now. It's hard to stay away from mining when you work in the Yukon. And then I've got a lot of hydro projects that I'm looking into. 

It's really interesting, and I think probably a lot of people will be familiar with the term of environmental assessments, but for those who aren't, would you mind just running through the basics as to what that implies?

I think what it really boils down to on a really just sort of practical level is this “look before you leap” idea. So, before you go ahead with the project - and that's a pretty key piece is that the time in project development that it occurs is really before your project goes ahead, like before any kind of groundbreaking activities at all, you do your assessment beforehand. 

It's funny, I was thinking about this because it's like a year-long process often. But I think the key components that's really: identifying the environmental effects of your project again before you proceed, coming up with measures to avoid or mitigate or reclaim or offset, the measures to address those environmental effects, the best they can. And then making a decision on whether or not that's acceptable and whether or not the project should proceed. 

I like that idea of looking before you leap. Is that always required? What kind of project requires an environmental assessment? You mentioned breaking ground, is that the criteria? Is there a way that people can kind of wrap their brains around as to when it must happen?

Good question.

Totally different depending on where you are. So, in the Yukon, you don't have to do much before you need an environmental assessment. Backing up a little bit, each jurisdiction, so each province or territory has their own requirements for when an environmental assessment needed.

In the Yukon, it's a list. It's an actual list that says for this type of project or activity, some of it's not fully project based, but like one of the triggers is using heavy machinery off of the road. It doesn't really matter what your actual project is; if it involves that kind of activity, then you need an assessment. 

So, in the Yukon, most stuff, especially on Crown land, most on the land types of activities that have any kind of disturbance associated with them, most will meet an assessment. 

In BC, the thresholds are actually a lot higher for a full like capital “E”, capital “A” environmental assessment. They have different processes for smaller projects, but for the full shebang environmental assessment is really only required for sort of larger projects. Like for wind, for example, it's a 15 MW project, which is a pretty decent-sized project.

You were mentioning the timing. 

 It sounds like environmental assessments can take a while; they can take, you were mentioning, around a year and it happens before breaking ground. Does it only happen before the project starts and it's one and done? Or are there checkpoints throughout the project to make sure that there's no greater impact than what was originally predicted. What does that look like?

Yeah, you'll only assess the project once, so unless it changes - unless you have some other new change, then it needs to go back for assessment. 

But assuming you're going ahead with the same project that you've proposed, it only goes through that full assessment process (predicting effects, developing litigation, making a decision on whether or not it should proceed), it will only do that once. But then kind of baked into the tail end of EA - or sort of its own separate environmental management practice I guess - is this idea of the implementation of the requirements and recommendations that came out of this assessment process. 

So, you have to start doing the doing. There's compliance monitoring involved in that. So, you start implementing all of the requirements that came out of the process and there's still the compliance presence there. 

In BC, the Environmental Assessment Office actually has a compliance and enforcement arm, so they'll stay on to make sure that all the things that became part of your permit are actually happening. In Yukon, it's kind of similar. It's not actually the Yukon Government that does the EA in the 1st place, it's a board and then the compliance piece was shipped over to Yukon. 

You're constantly monitoring and adapting, so the EA process being very predictive by its nature, there are processes in place afterwards to make sure that those predictions are actually right, that the mitigation we proposed is actually working and to adapt and come up with new ways if we need to as you go. Long story short, the project will only get assessed once, but then there's lots of other management tools in place as the project moves along.

Very interesting. I'm convinced that your job is so critical in moving the economy, but also the environment forward. You're often kind of that final frontier and crossroads between environmental protection, but then also growth of communities. 

And you play a really critical role in stakeholder engagement and those who are being impacted by whatever project is in question. What has been your experience in terms of that stakeholder engagement (and maybe that's evolved depending on where you are, but I'm very curious to know more about that.

That is a super interesting, always challenging - but good in a good way challenging - where you're being challenged and you have to think about it. 

By the way, that's a super key part of the job. But also key to EA - like EA being done well and not just being sort of a rubber stamping or kind of steam rolling exercise. Really understanding what's important to people, like I mentioned before, the open outcome of the EPA process is you decide whether or not the impacts are acceptable. 

The key question is “OK, well, acceptable to who?” Because not everybody will have that same level of acceptability. So, really sitting down with people, understanding what's important to them and the details of it. Why is it important? Where is it important on the land? How is it important, really can help sort of develop ways to mitigate the effects. 

And it's been really interesting, I think everybody will initially (most of the time anyway) everybody will come into the room a little bit positional - they know exactly what they want to get out of the meeting. They think they know what those solutions are. And it's been super interesting to sort of get in a room with everyone and a lot of times (more often than not, I'd say) people have the same end goal. And it's just sort of understanding how we can all get on the same page and what those commonalities are. And what the differences are and how you can address those. 

So, I'd say, generally it's a way more collaborative process than I think a lot of people might think. It depends on the project, depends a lot on the project proponent like whoever the developer is, it depends on who you're engaging with, it depends on a lot of pieces, but most of the time it can be pretty collaborative and constructive.

I have a question that popped up actually while you're speaking: you currently work Yukon Government, is the environmental assessment always done by the government? Can it also be done, for example, by the developer or a citizens’ group? I'm curious as to whether that can come from multiple places.

Usually, so the developer, yes, they'll do their own assessment. 

They're the ones that submit. They go out, they collect the data, they hire a team of independent technical experts to develop their own application for the assessment agency. 

And then the Assessment Agency will run through the application, figure out if they need the data. And then it's really on the proponent to provide these (proponent being the developer), it's really on them to provide the information.

The processes, environmental assessment processes in Canada are always public like they have. It's all in the Yukon. It's all in the online registry, but I'd say across the country, there is some kind of online registry and opportunities for public comment. So, any kind of interested party can make comments that get factored into the assessment. Usually, you are going through a set government or government adjacent process.

And in your work right now, are you working on any projects in particular that you're really interested or excited about?

These hydro projects that I'm working on are super cool. And actually, I said before you only do environmental assessments before the project goes ahead but that's not the case with these hydro facilities. There are three of them in the Yukon that are that are already operating and they were built decades ago and their ongoing operations, because of the way that the regulations are written in Yukon, the ongoing operations need to be reassessed every now and then. And those have been super cool projects to work on. 

So, there's three of them right now. The first one has completed its assessment. My role at YG, like our branch, is the decision maker on major projects. So, we make those decisions based on consultation with the affected First Nations. And so, in consultation on the first hydro project, what seemed pretty clear was that the assessment process doesn't cover everything. Like it didn't cover all of the concerns and interest that this First Nation had, just like the assessment process is bound to its legislation and what it's planning that through. And what this First Nation was interested in is having more of a say in the management of the facility and being more involved in like energy decisions in Yukon in general and energy funding. So, we did get to the point where we issued a decision saying, yes, this project is allowed to continue operations. But then there was sort of this separate process set up where the Yukon government and the First Nation entered into agreements together (a binding agreement) to address some of these other concerns. So, like long term commitments to work together, so they were signed by our Premier, they were signed by that First Nations Chief. It's been a really good example I think of “OK, we have our box that we work within. But what happens when the concerns can't be addressed through that?” 

And then I mentioned there's two other hydro facilities that we're doing the same thing on. And we're applying that exact same model with on different projects with different First Nations, but everyone's sort of really excited about this new way of being able to do things so. Yeah, I'm pretty into those projects.

And in talking about new ways, do you feel like technology (and advances in technology) are changing the way in which we do environmental assessments?

There's some aspect of technology, I'd say. In the like the environmental field studies, mostly, that lead into the environmental assessment. And there's lots of cool changes going on around that I won't get into because I’m not a biologists and they're great technical. But what we're seeing with environmental assessment and then it's not a technology, is more of a process. But we are seeing changes in the process and how it's how it's being rolled out. EA came about in like the 60s and 70s, and it hasn't changed a ton since. When it first came about, it was really to address the concerns at that time, which were like pollution, and disturbance of communities, all very discrete types of issues. 

Now when you have an environmental assessment, the issues that are brought in are all of these broader issues that we're all facing: climate change, sustainability, biodiversity loss, indigenous rights, which are increasingly actually being addressed more than they were in the past. It's not the best tool to address those things, but you can't just leave them hanging either. Like just sort of have these issues that aren't / that are completely unaddressed through the decision making. 

There are some shifts happening where, rather than just looking at one project at a time, which is (right now) EA is largely project based in practice. And we're seeing a lot of movement towards cumulative effects assessment. So rather than looking at one project at a time, what do all of the projects, with past, present and future look like on a landscape. It's so complex. It is so hard to actually figure out. There are some good examples of it starting up here and there, but there is such a huge past, that it's very, very slow to get going. In BC, there was recently a court ruling that that kind of got the cumulative effects on their people and we're seeing the ripples of that up here and across the country for sure. So yeah, changes in the process, I think, are coming up to be able to address some of the bigger issues that we're facing that weren't really around when EA first came about.

I'm glad you mentioned some of the nuances, and I would love if you could dive into that a bit further. So, you've worked in Quebec, in BC and now in Yukon. Do you see the way we approach sustainability  being very similar or different depending on where you are even within the same country?

Yup. One thing that really came to mind is that, in the Yukon like we're so, we're just in such a different place in terms of development than BC or Quebec. There’s already been a lot of development on the landscape in both those provinces and the Yukon is still relatively undeveloped with yes, it's all relative. 

But what we're kind of seeing is that the attitude isn't “ohh we’ve got so much room to do stuff, let’s just cut the deal; let’s just go for it”. There's a big, the sense is more like “let's not become like that with this sort of piecemeal, unplanned development. Let's try to plan for it. Let's be more intentional about the development that goes on. You don't often come across some real “no development allowed types of attitudes”. I think it's a bit of a Yukon thing like it's very, you know, the history of prospecting, gold mining. There's, I think, a willingness to have projects and have development go ahead, but also in a way that's really intentional and responsible. So yeah, between Quebec, BC and the Yukon,  I’d say that’s a big difference that I've seen. 

The other is the First Nations engagement up here in the Yukon. Up here, the First Nations, most of them have signed final agreements, so they are governments. So, the way that we consult with them and the way that they are engaged on projects is, to me, a lot more meaningful than what I've seen in BC especially. And it could be too that BC might have improved since I left; I haven't worked there in four years, so it could just be that's the way that there's just improvements across the country and across industry, but that's a big difference that I noticed coming up here.

Returning to your time and BC, you chaired Clean Energy BC’s Wind Committee, correct? 

Yup.

I'm curious as to how you've seen the renewables landscape evolve maybe during that time and also since then. It's certainly top of mind for everybody right now as we're talking about reducing emissions of the grid. What has that transition been for you of kind of being involved and seeing the process since then?

To be honest, I have been a little out of the loop on wind since moving up here. We don't have a ton of projects in the Yukon. What I have seen, I still kind of try to keep an eye on the wind industry and sort of see where things are going. I just saw a headline this week that Alberta, of all places, (not where you'd expect) but Alberta has now their energy production from renewables just passed coal. So, I think there's a lot of surprises in the renewable energy landscape across Canada. 

And then up north, one project that I worked on before coming to YG was the Inuvik wind project. So kind of a little, well one - one big turbine up in Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. Pretty groundbreaking, I’d say because across northern communities in Canada, it's not really something that there are a lot of examples of. There are a lot of off-grid communities in the Yukon, so powered by diesel generation. So, lots of new lots of opportunities to get off of diesel and build renewable energy projects with the community. In a way that benefits from not just, it's not just the environmental benefits, but all the benefits that come with having part ownership of the project or full ownership. 

And I've sort of seen that in other parts of the country a little bit - I worked on a project in Alberta that was focused on getting a rural community off of diesel. But it's not something that I've seen up here yet, so I think that there’s a pretty big opportunity there. 

Yukon also struggles with winter power, it’s very cold up here with everything freezing and needing to heat homes. In the wintertime, a lot of our power just comes from diesel. Even in White Horse, the main power generator, Yukon Energy Corporation (YEC) - they're the ones that own the hydro facilities, there's a lot of solar (like small scale solar) going on too - YEC just fires up a bunch of diesel generators at the point where it gets too cold and energy needs spike, and their production is down because mostly hydro. So, they fire up a bunch of diesel generators to power people's electrical baseboards. They come from diesel generation most of the time, so lots of opportunities still for that winter power, especially that comes from wind.

Do you see that as being the biggest opportunity up north then? Seeing how we can find additional sources of power in those winter months? It sounds like a very unsettling, but silver lining of climate change. Do you think it will actually open the door to accessing additional sources of renewables up north?

I hope so. I would really like to see that. 

There's some geothermal potential up here too. I know there's a few different companies or even individuals that are really turning their minds to that and trying to make it happen for the north. I think one of the issues that we struggle with is just that it’s really hard to get to any kind of like economies of scale up here. We don't have the power needs for a 200 megawatts wind farm, so if you're only building one or two turbines, I think it's just tough to tough to make it work. 

There are actually one project here in town, there's two turbines on the hilltop (I can see it from my house) and they haven't been working for a little while, and there's a developer going in to retrofit them and build new ones. So, we will have one operational project here in town pretty soon.

Well, on top of everything else you're doing with the Yukon government, you're also teaching about environmental assessment at a local university. Would you mind sharing a little bit about this and then maybe what surprised you most in this teaching experience?

I am coteaching. So, there's a woman from - another Montrealer, actually - who I am co-teaching the environmental assessment course with at Yukon University. We've got about 25 students. It's one of the bigger courses there. And it's been - there's a few things that have been pretty awesome about it. 

The kids are - the students - are still, I find, really optimistic about fighting the good fight. And they've grown up in a really different sort of environmental context than you or I did. They've grown up with the effects of climate change in that it has been a big thing from early on to them, whereas it's still sort of new for us in the grand scheme of things. 

So, I wondered if maybe they might have a different point of view on it all; sort of a less optimistic point of view. But I found they are still ready to fight the good fight, but I've noticed there's a bit of an edge to it. When I was in university, we would just sort of learn what was going on and be like, hey, I can do that - I'm going to go and do that. They really challenge us to be like, does it work? Does this process that you're talking about; does it work? What else do you need to be doing? 

So, there's this sort of thinking / of questioning that I do not remember having or anyone in the class really having back when we were students. So that kind of those sorts of challenges that we get from them and that we think about it. I've been pretty surprised by that optimism, with a little bit of an edge to it.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, they're kind of challenging whether the environmental assessments being done are enough. Is that correct? OK, it's a little bit of skepticism as to status quo.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Very, very interesting. You mentioned your studies and having studied in geography, correct? And then you did environmental assessment on top of that. If you have recent graduates coming through the program, or even maybe someone who is looking to do a career move into environmental assessment, would you have any advice to those individuals?

You know, I really enjoyed consulting as a way to start my career. You have to form good work habits because it's a lot of, it's pretty fast-paced and it's a lot of work, but I also found it to just be so fascinating and interesting, like you get exposed to so many different kinds of projects - you get to see it all rather than starting a career where you're pretty focused on one type of project and one part of the process or something. 

In consulting, you get various types of projects: you get to work in all kinds of different parts of the process throughout the official EA process, then with the ongoing monitoring. Even before - collecting the baseline data during the analysis beforehand, you just get to see you get to see it all. So that would be for me anyway, and I know consulting is not everybody's, but I thought that was just such a good way to get started. 

Another thing that I thought of was just, like I mentioned before, it's easy to like there's so many different parties (kind of have your hat on of who you were representing). But one thing that I think I've really learned over the years is sort of take / put your hat on a little bit, but really just be solutions-oriented. Be really authentic in the way that you're participating. Be open to other ideas, think about how you can make them work, and fit with your goals and just develop common goals. And that's really hard when you come in with sort of 1 idea of what you want the outcome of the meeting to be. I think there's no wins or losses; it's just trying to get to a better project or trying to get to a good outcome for as many people as possible. Just try to try to participate in that way without getting elbows up after being too rigid. 

And then move to the Yukon. There's so much interesting work going on up here. And there's actually - I was thinking about it and there are and actually we're not supposed to tell people to move. It's apparently supposed to be a secret.

The secret’s out now!

There are at least five of us from that Master’s program at Concordia working in environmental assessment in the Yukon. And I keep adding to that list, but right now I know of five!

That is really, really neat to see that connection and to have kind of that micro community around you right now. It's clear that your connection to the environment has gone throughout your entire career. Was there a specific moment maybe when you were younger or maybe during your professional development itself, where you knew that you wanted to be involved with sustainability?

I do have a specific childhood moment. 

Yeah, I'm sure you do too. 

For me it was like we got Ranger Rick when we were kids.

Would you maybe mind explaining what that is for in case we have some non-Canadian listeners?

Is it Canadian?

I thought it was, but maybe it's a North American thing?

I think it's like National Geographic for kids.

Ok, so maybe it's a broader reach!

I think it's a little more advanced than Chickadee. But yeah, a magazine for kids about environmental issues and about nature that was awesome! I remember just really loving my Ranger Rick. 

So, I remember one - this is the one that has stuck with me ever since - it was about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. And this would have been probably a few years after it happened, because I think that oil spill was in 1989 - I don't think I was that young leading Ranger Rick. So yeah, probably a couple of years after Exxon Valdez was covered in a Ranger Rick issue. There were all kinds of pictures of wildlife covered in oil and stuff.  When I look back, that's one moment that just really stuck with me. No, this is not OK. I don't think I was quite like, “what do I do about this to fix it?”, but it was just this sort of realization that there were things like that going on in the world. 

 And then, career-wise (fast forwarding), it took me a little while, I think, to figure out what a career environment could look like. I don't think I was fully focused on, “OK, it's environmental assessment”. But I think I was trying to find what that could look like and then I came across the Master’s program at Concordia. And it just seemed like a really good, sort of practical type of career - like something that I could explain to my mom. She mostly gets it, I think, but like yeah, just something that I could sort of understand and really throw myself into so yeah, pretty late in the game I would say.

You mentioned seeing the oil spill as a young child and that marking you. And certainly, sometimes when we're reading news and hearing as to what's happening on the climate level, it can feel a little bit heavy. Are there any tips or tricks or resources that you use to keep yourself motivated even when it can feel, and I'm sure when you're doing the assessments as well, that there are moments where that feels like a lot. So I'm curious as to there's anything that you would share that helps you?

I think a couple of things. 

So, one is a professional network, and a lot of those people become friends too. People that work in the industry with you on maybe different parts of projects, maybe the same focus. And just making sure that you have those strong connections with other people who are living and working in the same type of field and being able to talk to them about different solutions. Or vent about issues! Whatever you need! But that to me is new like a lot of my close friends now are actually coworkers from previous jobs mostly and that is super valuable; just having people to be able to talk to you and talk about solutions with. 

And the other thing is just - I feel like this applies to all kinds of different problems - but just go outside. I think it's easy to get caught up in the doom and gloom of it. But there's still lots of really amazing things out there to go out and just sort of immerse yourself in. So even in the city, getting outside, enjoying being outdoors and seeing what's out there.
 
 

I agree with you and sometimes, just being outside, it also reminds you as to why we're doing this and it's really to protect that that beauty. And I agree with you; it's very energizing doing that. 

I always like to end every episode by asking my guest, what do you think it will take to make businesses and leaders more resilient going forward?

I hope you get this same answer a lot, but it's just do the work.

Don't keep out on the environmental stuff.

I think, in our current context, we will not save money in the long run. It's actually worth putting in the money and the resources and the time before it becomes a problem. So just take those environmental responsibilities seriously, instead of them being afterthoughts. I think even just in the past few years, when you or I would have started our careers, I think the environment was an afterthought; it was sort of pesky environmental person. So, I think it's changing - we're seeing a shift in that which is really exciting for professionals in the environment. I think that that's really important: bring in the professionals to help you and make sure that they have the resources that they need to be able to do their jobs, that's as important as the other sort of traditional business lines. If not, more!

Well, thank you so much for all of this information. I've learned a lot and it's really just exciting to see your career kind of continue to grow. I think we need more individuals like you out there fighting the good fight. So thank you for all that you do.

Thanks, Lauren. Thank you.