Chapter 2

Question 1

_________ own the majority of resource rights in Canada and have power to make laws dealing with the ________________ of nonrenewable resources and forestry resources (Thompson, 2013). Cotton and Zimmer (1992) explain that the federal government derives its authority to legislate with respect to environmental matters from several sections of the Constitution Act—namely, those that deal with _______________

Answer 1

Provinces; development, conservation, and management; criminal law, navigation and shipping, federal lands, fisheries, taxation, and Indigenous reserve lands.

Question 2

_________was the first province in Canada to legislate EA, in __________

Answer 2

Ontario, 1975

Question 3

EA in British Columbia was first introduced by way of ________________, with assessment processes developed ____________. The province’s first comprehensive EA legislation was introduced in ___________under the _________, coming into force in _______. The act was repealed and replaced in 2002 with a new Environmental Assessment Act. Projects subject to EA in British Columbia are defined in the province’s Reviewable Projects Regulation, which lists projects and project thresholds (e.g., project size or production capacity) that will trigger assessment. The EA process applies only to “major projects,” meaning that smaller projects that fall under the size threshold, such as clusters of individual run-of-river hydroelectric projects, do not trigger EA review.

Answer 3

policy guidelines; separately for different types of projects—such as coal mines and energy projects.
1995; Environmental Assessment Act; 1996
2002

Question 4

Unlike British Columbia’s EA legislation, Alberta’s Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act, introduced in 1993, consolidates environmental legislation in the province, meaning that EA is only one part of the act. The consolidation was, in part, an effort to streamline regulatory processes so as not to hinder development. Hanna and Parkins (2016) suggest that whether this approach has resulted in better environmental protection is debatable. Whether a project will undergo EA is determined in part by the complexity of the project, the potential for significant impacts, and the scale of the undertaking. Regulations under the act identify projects that are always subject to EA, such as pulp and paper mills, sour gas processing plants, oil sands mines, and coal mines of a certain production capacity and projects that are exempt from EA, including small-scale operations such as drilling an oil well. Inclusions and exemptions are usually determined based on the size of the project operations, such as production capacity or emissions, or technology. A long-standing issue in Alberta is the effectiveness of EA application in the oil sands industry.