Canada’s Impact Assessment Act, 2019: Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Sustainability, and Environmental Justice

Stephen R. J. Tsuji
Additional contact information
Stephen R. J. Tsuji: School of Environmental Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-52

Abstract: It is well documented that the colonizers of Canada have long coveted the ancestral homelands of the Canadian Indigenous peoples for settlement and development. With this end goal in mind, it is not surprising that there exists an extensive history of assimilative efforts by the colonizers with respect to the Indigenous peoples of Canada—for example, legal assimilation through enfranchisement (voluntary and involuntary) and blood quantum requirements, and cultural assimilation through residential schools and the “sixties scoop”. Another form of assimilation is environmental assimilation, that is, colonial development on Indigenous homelands to the extent whereby Indigenous cultural activities can no longer be supported in the development-transformed environment. Herein, I examine Bill C-69, a Government of Canada omnibus bill, through an environmental justice lens in the context of development across Canada on Indigenous homelands and impacts on Indigenous cultural sustainability. Specifically, Part 1 (i.e., the Impact Assessment Act, 2019 ) and Part 3 (i.e., the Canadian Navigable Waters Act, 2019) of Bill C-69 pose significant threats to Indigenous cultural sustainability. Through an environmental justice lens, procedural aspects include the use of the project list and scheduled waterways, the discretionary decision-making powers of the Government of Canada representatives, and the lack of acknowledgement of procedural elements of the environmental assessment processes that are constitutionally protected in comprehensive land claims. While, distributive justice aspects consist of unsustainable development from an Indigenous perspective, whereby environmental costs and benefits have been (and will be) distributed inequitably. Bill C-69 is a flawed statute that reinforces the colonial policy of assimilation.

Keywords: Impact Assessment Act, 2019; Indigenous peoples; cultural sustainability; environmental justice; assimilation; environmental assessment; Canada (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/6/3501/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/6/3501/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:6:p:3501-:d:772691

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().