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ARTICLE · 13 JANUARY 2014

Public Access To Documents Through The Environmental Registry

Siskinds LLP
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In two cases we blogged about last month (Brimley Progress v. Director, MOE and Environment Hamilton v. Director, MOE), the ERT found that the public should have access to the documents that support Environmental Compliance Approval (ECA) applications, or form part of their the final ECA’s terms and conditions.

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In  two cases we blogged about last month ( Brimley Progress v. Director, MOE and  Environment Hamilton v. Director, MOE), the ERT found that the public should have access to the documents that support Environmental Compliance Approval (ECA) applications, or form part of their the final ECA's terms and conditions. The place where they should, in theory, have been able to access these documents was through the Environmental Registry.

However, in his most recent Annual Report, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Gord Miller, critiqued the quality of the Registry notices and found that supporting documents are often not included in the postings.

Created by the Environmental Bill of Rights, 1993, the Environmental Registry is intended "to provide a means of giving information about the environment to the public". Certain Ministries are required to post notices of proposals for environmentally significant policies, acts, regulations and instruments on the

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