The Conservative government has cancelled federal environmental assessments of nearly 600 projects in Ontario after its 2012 budget bill eased environmental review laws.
In Ontario, the list of proposed developments that are no longer to be subject to a federal review for potential environmental damage by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency is wide-ranging and raising red flags.
It includes everything from flood protection plans for the lower Don River, a plan to fill in 5,000 square metres of Toronto Harbour waters to deter wayward boats from nearing Billy Bishop airport runways, to the decommissioning of an old plutonium recovery laboratory and construction of new nuclear fuel storage capacity in Chalk River.
Ottawa has also dropped its assessment of TransCanada PipeLines to build a 13-km pipeline as part of an expansion that would cross the Credit River and, according to Greenpeace, 15 other waterways.
Nationwide, Ottawa’s “cancelled” list covers nearly 3,000 projects ranging from small roadways and bridge construction projects to bigger hydro and pipeline expansion plans.
