Expert Panel Report On Environmental Assessments

On April 5, 2017, the Expert Panel appointed by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Catherine McKenna, to review the federal environmental assessment processes released its final report. The Panel had been consulting the public, stakeholders, and Indigenous groups since last August to determine how to develop a more effective and fairer environmental assessment process.

The report endorses broad changes be made to the current regime. At the outset, the report calls for "environment assessments" to be replaced with "impact assessments", in order to better reflect a more comprehensive review process that considers all impacts on society rather than only environmental effects. The report makes a number of recommendations to that end, including: