Government of Canada

Backgrounder

Regulatory Package for Infrastructure Projects Under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act

A regulatory package has been developed under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (the Act) that provides targeted adjustments to the federal environmental assessment process for projects funded under the Building Canada plan. The initiative is consistent with efforts over the last several years to focus federal environmental assessments on appropriate projects, and to identify better means of integrating federal and provincial assessments.

The regulations will be in effect until March 2011. During that two year period, a more comprehensive reform of the Act, applicable to all industry sectors will be considered.

Exclusion of projects that have insignificant environmental effects

The exclusion list has been in place since the Act first came into force in 1995 and has been expanded several times to exclude projects that did not warrant a federal environmental assessment. Additions to the Exclusion List Regulations, 2007 remove the requirement to conduct a federal environmental assessment for infrastructure projects with insignificant effects. Examples of such projects include a variety of buildings, bus and rapid transit systems, and new water supply systems.

The classes of projects that are now exempted have been shown to have insignificant environmental effects based on experience gained through environmental assessments of similar projects. These projects will continue to be subject to applicable municipal, provincial and federal environmental laws and approvals.

For projects, such as roads, bridges and transit projects, located near environmentally sensitive areas, an environmental assessment will be required unless specific criteria are met to provide environmental protection. In order to be excluded, these projects must be consistent with any law or management plan that is in place for that area. In addition, where the sensitive area is protected by the federal government, the total costs of the project must be less than $10M and measures must be in place to protect the area in order to be excluded.

It is estimated that as many as 2000 infrastructure projects over two years may be exempted from the requirement for federal environmental assessment as a result of this regulation, which represents approximately 90% of environmental assessments for these types of projects.

Substitution of federal environmental assessment process

The new Infrastructure Projects Environmental Assessment Adaptation Regulations enables the federal environmental assessment process, with the approval of the federal Minister of the Environment, to be substituted by a provincial environmental assessment process. The Minister must be satisfied that the process to be substituted includes consideration of the factors set out in the Act (e.g. significance of adverse environmental effects), and that the public has access to environmental assessment documents and will be given an opportunity to participate in the environmental assessment.

Federal responsible authorities will retain decision-making responsibilities at the end of the environmental assessment which will have been informed by a provincial environmental assessment report. The federal Minister of the Environment will retain the ability to refer a project to a review panel under the Act.