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Most of the individuals appoint ed by the Harper government to the agencies that oversee offshore-petroleum drilling in Canada are former industry insiders or government officials with no stated experience in environmental issues.

The Conservative approach to such appointments doesn't mark a dramatic departure from previous Liberal governments -a review of regulatory agencies shows that their boards had a similar composition before the Tories took power four-and-a-half years ago.

But critics say the industry-friendly tilt of these agencies could be problematic under changes made by the Conservatives that hand more authority over environmental assessments to regulators, rather than review panels that often included environmental experts.

Additional excerpt:

"It'll mean that the people who are actually doing (the environmental assessments) will come from industry. Even the good people will have built-in biases in favour of industry," said John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada, an environmental advocacy group.