Nature Canada stood up for nature at the Supreme Court of Canada on March 21 and 22. The Supreme Court will decide whether or not a key federal environmental law—the 2019 Impact Assessment Act (IAA)—is constitutional. Nature Canada is intervening to speak in favour of the law and is being represented in court by West Coast Environmental Law.

The IAA is the primary tool that lets the federal government assess environmental and social impacts of major developments such as mines, pipelines, and dams that fall within some federal jurisdiction. The IAA is all about looking before you leap. Common sense—especially given global climate and biodiversity crises—says that any government must carefully consider possible adverse effects before making decisions enabling a development to proceed.

In May 2022, the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled that the IAA was outside federal constitutional authority. Nature Canada will be arguing that the Alberta Court majority decision is incorrect, just as it was incorrect in ruling that the federal carbon pricing law was unconstitutional. A majority of the Supreme Court of Canada overruled the Alberta court in that case. Nature Canada expects a similar result for the IAA with the judges upholding it as good law within federal constitutional authority.

Nature Canada’s legal position is that the IAA is reasonable, justified and falls squarely within federal jurisdiction. Other Supreme Court decisions support this view. In the 1992 Oldman decision, a majority upheld the first federal environmental assessment law as an “integral component of sound decision-making.”

The Impact Assessment Act reviews a wide range of impacts, including positive and negative environmental, social, economic, and health effects, as well as impacts on Indigenous rights. This is a smart way to approach environmental decision-making, not jurisdictional overreach, as the Alberta Court claimed.

Opponents of the IAA have sowed fear that development will be delayed indefinitely with negative impacts on the economy. The reality is that few projects are assessed under the IAA—far fewer than under predecessor laws—and those that are assessed are rarely rejected.

In fact, the biggest issue with the IAA is that projects that are bad for climate and nature—cement plants, divided highways, and nuclear reactors in Ontario; coal, peat and silica mines in western Canada; and gold mines in Nova Scotia—are not being properly assessed by any government.

All levels of government in Canada have important roles to play to halt and reverse nature loss and avoid catastrophic climate change. Nature Canada is confident that in this case, the Supreme Court will not tie federal hands that are desperately needed to do their share in tackling these environmental emergencies through the Impact Assessment Act.