Ontario Releases Draft Regulations To Implement New Environmental Assessment Regime

On November 26, 2021, the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (the Ministry) released four draft regulations that offer project proponents greater clarity about whether their projects will need to undergo an environmental assessment (EA) under Ontario's recently amended Environmental Assessment Act (EAA). The passage of a series of amendments to the EAA on July 21, 2020, formally set in motion a fundamental reorientation of Ontario's EA regime towards a “project list” framework, which ties the requirement to undertake an EA to whether a project involves activities matching one of the project descriptions on a project list (see our Blakes Bulletin:  Ontario Government Proposes Overhaul of Environmental Assessment Act). This change not only aligns the EAA with its federal counterpart, the Impact Assessment Act, which uses a project list approach to designating projects for assessment, but also means that private sector projects that were previously