The Environmental, Democratic, and Rule of Law Implications of Harper's Environmental Assessment Legacy
The article argues that Harper's dramatic changes to federal environmental assessment give rise to a two dimensional legacy in environmental law: first, a legacy of impoverished environmental decision making that reflects a narrow, resource oriented vision of the environment, and second, a legacy of undermining democratic and rule of law values in environmental law. The crux of this latter legacy is the argument that environmental assessment law provides an essential framework for publicly justified decision making in the Canadian environmental context. Indeed, as I suggest in this article, environmental assessment presently performs a quasi constitutional role in Canadian environmental decision making in the sense that it provides the means by which the federal government fulfills its constitutional obligation to govern the environment in accordance with the rule of law.