What do I value?
Companies that strive for holistic sustainability through comprehensive and transparent review.
What do I envision?
Company projects that effectively enact sustainable means to reach their business ends.
What intervention can work towards this?
Strong and Enforceable Environmental Law for business developments!
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For those of you who don't know, Canada amended their Environmental Impact Assessment Act in 2019 (IAA2019) which requires Impact Assessments to consider:
♦️ A Project's contribution to sustainability and fulfillment of Canada's Environment and Climate Change Commitments
♦️ Positive and negative environmental, health, social, and economic effects and their interactions
♦️ As well as the need for the project at all
The IAA also extended the time required for reviews to be accomplished, so project planning initiated in 2019 under the new law have yet to be finalized, meaning we have yet to see how these amendments will play out in practice. However, my personal hope is that this new Act is able to enforce the stronger environmental law it publicizes, and we can continue to see increasingly stronger environmental law such as IAA2019 in Canadian legislation. #UnleashValues
IAA2019 is sure to increase transparency through its new reporting requirements, and I'm cautiously optimistic about the progress this bill makes in mandating that Indigenous knowledge and stakeholders have sway in the process. I would further call, however, for these ideas to be extended to other level of governments and other federal environmental processes. If I remember correctly, projects on provincial "Crown" land, and those under the jurisdiction of the NEB are exempt from IAA2019? If that's correct, this legislation is woefully small in its scope for addressing corporate transparency in extraction industries–but please correct me if it has wider impacts than I think!
Hi Megan, I love the formatting of your post. Your values and visions are straightforward. Thanks for mentioning IAA2019. It's good to know that the Canadian government is working toward more sustainable future.
Despite (very) vaguely knowing about the existence of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act, I did not know that these three amendments were made in 2019! Thank you for sharing this Megan and I too look forward to seeing if/how they cause changes.
Hi Megan, thank you for explaining what the IAA2019 is! I wasn't familiar with it in such detail.
Hi Megan,
Thank you so much for bringing up IAA2019! I was also not aware that Canada had an Environmental Impact Assessment Act and believe that this will help enforce stronger environmental laws for current businesses and developing businesses.
Hi Megan,
Thank you for the really informative post - I didn't know that we had an Environmental Impact Assessment Act and it was really interesting to learn details about it. I also feel the same - we definitely need more stricter environmental laws, especially directed towards businesses, hopefully this new Act will take us one step closer to achieving more sustainability!
Hi Megan, Love that you shared this information in so much detail! I also hope the act helps enforce environmental laws publicized!
Great post!! I found it interesting that you included the details of the IAA2019
Great post Megan! I was unaware of this amendment. I especially like the last bullet point about whether there's a need for the project or not. This last assessment criteria will help reduce the number of meaningless projects and save resources in the process. I'm interested to look into the IAA2019 in more detail!
Hi Megan Francisco, thank you for sharing the details of this environmental law IAA2019, I didn't know much about it before! I agree, laws need to be more rigorously enforced with incentive or repercussion, which I hope this particular one will accomplish as it seems to have a lot of potential.
Thank you for shedding light on this specific amendment! It’s good to hear about newer policy frameworks like these, with how bleak the course material gets sometimes. It’ll be interesting to see what the Impact Assessment Agency can accomplish with its expanded mandate.