Last November Laura Bowman wrote a blog post about Alberta case law which might shed some light on how “interested party” status under the new federal Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 (CEAA 2012) might be interpreted, particularly as it relates to who is deemed to be “directly affected”.   To have a right to participate in hearings under CEAA, parties must establish they are an “interested party”, and to be an interested party, the party must either be “directly affected by the carrying out of the designated project” or have “relevant information or expertise”.

Subsequent to Laura’s post, we learned of a decision of a Federal Review Panel (the Panel) constituted under CEAA which explored this question.

Continue reading “A small victory: decision grants broad rights to participate in environmental reviews, but changes to scope of EAs and cuts will hamper access, result in less thorough reviews”