The “Class EA” was introduced to the Ontario environmental assessment process shortly after the Ontario Environmental Assessment Act was passed, in 1976. The purpose of Class EAs was said to be to streamline approvals for undertakings that were similar in nature (i.e. belonging to the same ‘class’ of project) and that generally had predictable and easy to mitigate effects and therefore did not need full environmental assessments. Class assessments were immediately used for municipal infrastructure projects. Class EAs are an attempt to balance many competing policy factors including reducing the cost of municipal infrastructure, avoiding duplication with other municipal processes and the difficulty of predicting environmental effects on a class‑wide basis. However, strong pressures to exempt an ever growing array of projects from full environmental assessments have led to the growth of Class EAs, and Class EAs have come to dominate EA practices in Ontario by a wide margin.

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