Private law in the energy sector.

The CSA charges $180, per person, to access electrical law. Trade schools teaching electrical compliance are likewise charged because the subject matter is now CSA’s property. The CSA charges royalties to contractors who post jobsite safety information because CSA drafted some of those laws. Never mind that contractors are required to post that info, in complying with law the contractor is now obligated to pay whatever CSA wishes to charge. It’s a blank cheque. And it gets worse.
It’s not merely the sale of access to legislation, but the drafting of that legislation is for sale too. In 2014, CSA was outed for selling votes at set prices on legislative committees, selling seats at legislative committee to the highest bidder, and selling “custom” legislation at floating prices of a few hundred thousand dollars each. The CSA has been monetizing the legislative process.
The CSA has also started positioning itself as a new regulatory layer in the energy sector. They’ve opened an office in Calgary and are specifically targeting oil sands and pipeline entities. As their CEO admitted in 2013, “We have been trying to get in there and say, ‘we can help you develop standards,’ [and] we are starting to make some progress” at getting established in the sector.
The CSA has a long history of entering new market sectors promising to help coordinate environmental or safety standards of a purely voluntary nature. Once established however, the standards they develop are referenced as “regulations,” parties voluntarily not participating are deemed materially non-compliant. These regulations are then incorporated by CSA into legislation and are enacted as laws. Thus, voluntary standards today become laws tomorrow, industry agreeing to the one are not consulted on transition to the other.
The issue isn’t so much an increase in project cost as a financial veto over project development. That is, having legislative authority over the sector, combined with private ownership of regulations, means that CSA or their committee members have the power to force royalty payments at extortionate rates in exchange for regulatory compliance or, worse, to deny regulatory approval entirely to the preferences of their members. The CSA committees in the sector are assembled at CSA’s discretion on a “balanced matrix,” comprised of industry, interest groups, environmentalists, and other CSA members. The energy sector does not control the composition on the committees and does not have most votes thereon.
In practical terms, then, the energy sector is facing a new layer of regulatory authority, this time run by committees comprised in the main of opponents of the energy sector. That’s dangerous, given that under the Court ruling energy companies now have no right to read or otherwise access the regulations that apply to them, no right to comply with regulations without payment or penalty, and no right to government inspection, permitting, or approval without CSA permission. And all that comes at CSA’s pleasure, and at whatever cost they wish to charge.

Is the Saskatchewan government paying attention yet?

On November 25, 2016, in a small office of Provincial Court in Toronto, and before a Justice of the Peace, a series of criminal proceedings were commenced against certain of the leadership of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA).
RestoreCSA was there, it was our submission.