Implementation framework for the right to a healthy environment under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999.: En4-771/2025E-PDF

"In the first part, this framework builds on the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA) definition of a healthy environment by elaborating on substantive and procedural elements that are provided for under CEPA and that give meaning to the right. Specifically, it explains how CEPA contributes to an environment that is protected from harmful substances, pollutants, and waste, and that has clean and healthy air and water, a sustainable climate, and healthy ecosystems and biodiversity. The right also includes procedural elements of access to information and participation in decision-making. It then elaborates on Indigenous rights and on the principles of environmental justice, intergenerational equity, and non-regression, which are important for CEPA decision-makers to consider when making decisions under the Act. This framework also elaborates on five factors – scientific, environmental, health, social, and economic – which, among others, may be relevant in interpreting and applying the right and in determining the reasonable limits to which it is subject. This framework also provides a summary of research, monitoring, and studies undertaken by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and Health Canada (HC) that support the protection of the right, and highlights the importance of bridging, braiding, and weaving Indigenous knowledge with western science in CEPA decision-making. In the second part, the framework sets out how CEPA decision-makers can use this framework to consider the right in the administration of the Act by applying the guiding considerations included in section 6.1 of this framework, as appropriate, and through mechanisms that are well established and in place to support protection of the right. Examples of these mechanisms are also described in this framework"--Executive summary, pages 5-6.

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