Guide to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act

This guide provides the reader with a detailed review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and serves as a resource to prevent business activities from having significant adverse environmental effects on the environment.

Topics covered in the manual include:

Part 1: Overview and overarching provisions
1.1 Overview of the CEAA
1.2 CEAA purposes
1.3 Timing of the EA
1.4 Enforcement

Part 2: Triggering the CEAA
2.1 Queue 1: Environmental assessment 
2.2 Queue 2: Determination (of significance of adverse environmental effects)

Part 3: Environmental effects and their significance
3.1 Interpretation issues
3.2 Significance of environmental effects
3.3 Panels and significant adverse environmental effects

Part 4: Environmental assessment
4.1 Factors of environmental assessment
4.2 Public registry on the environmental assessment
4.3 Environmental assessment processes
4.4 Substitution of Provincial assessment for Federal EA

Part 5: Decision-making
5.1 Environmental assessment decisions
5.2 Determinations and decisions (s. 67-69)
5.3 Justification for project proceeding with SAEEs

For more information on the Guide to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2016 Edition, please contact the author, or click here to order a copy from Lexis Nexis.

About the author

Rodney Northey, B.A. (Hons), M.A., LL.B., LL.M. is a partner in the Toronto office of Gowlings and a member of the firm's Environmental Law Group. Rod is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a specialist in environmental law and is in his 25th year of private-practice experience. Rod focuses on environmental approvals, hearings and appeals. He has in-depth experience with the full range of approval regimes involving the environment — including land use, resource extraction, and transportation, energy, waste and water infrastructure. Rod is an adjunct faculty member at Osgoode Hall Law School's Municipal Law LLM program for its course on environmental protection. He is recognized by his peers in national and international listings, including Who's Who Legal: The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers and Canada's Best Lawyers. Rod is also the author of an earlier annotation on federal environmental assessment published in 1994.