OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled a federal law assessing how major infrastructure projects like pipelines impact the environment is largely unconstitutional, a decision that will likely spur an overhaul of the environmental approval process.
The decision is a win for Alberta, Canada’s main oil-producing province, which has opposed the Impact Assessment Act (IAA), formerly known as Bill C-69, on the grounds it gave the federal government too much power to kill projects.
“The balance of the scheme … is ultra vires (beyond the powers of) Parliament and thus unconstitutional,” Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote in the ruling.
The IAA was drafted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in 2019 in a bid to streamline and restore trust in the environmental approval process for major projects.
“Environmental protection remains one of today’s most pressing challenges, and Parliament has the power to enact a scheme of environmental assessment to meet this challenge, but Parliament also has the duty to act within the enduring division of powers framework laid out in the Constitution,” Wagner said.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Nia Williams; Editing by David Ljunggren)
