Federal Environmental Assessment – What's Next? – Proposed New Triggers

Last week we summarized the recommendations set out by the Expert Panel established by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change in its report entitled Building Common Ground – A New Vision for Impact Assessment in Canada, The Final Report of the Expert Panel for the Review of Environmental Assessment Processes (the "Report"). One of those recommendations was to change the way projects "trigger" the federal environmental assessment ("EA") or impact assessment ("IA") requirement. This post provides an overview of the former and present triggers for federal EA, and the proposed new approach in the Report.

The Previous Approach: CEAA 1992

Under the previous legislation, thousands of projects per year "triggered" the federal EA requirement because they needed a federal permit, licence, or other approval under one or more of the numerous legislative provisions listed in the old Law List Regulations. This broad net approach meant that many projects triggered a