Balancing Nation-Building, Speed And Certainty With A Constitutional Imperative

A prescient Supreme Court warning worth revisiting

In Clyde River, a 2017 decision that answered the extent to which the Crown can look to rely on regulatory processes to address Indigenous peoples' concerns regarding impacts to their rights, a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada issued a prescient warning, that "No one benefits — not project proponents, not Indigenous peoples, and not non-Indigenous members of affected communities — when projects are prematurely approved only to be subjected to litigation."¹

Streamlining vs. constitutional duty

The current trend to fast-track "nation-building" major projects through regulatory streamlining, via legislative efforts such as Ontario's Bill 5, BC's Bill 15, and federal Bill C-5, look to empower federal and provincial cabinets to exempt projects from various regulatory requirements, aiming for efficiency and expedience.