Businesses continue to be discouraged in the absence of any concrete steps towards unifying Canada’s patchwork of requirements for environmental assessments (EA). Overlapping responsibilities between provincial, territorial and federal levels of government, not to mention competing agencies at all levels, have predictably produced unbearable delays in the regulatory process. Making matters worse at the municipal level, land use planning and EA processes lack proper coordination, which causes long delays.

Without a doubt, the dream of a “one project-one assessment” approach to conducting environmental assessments across Canada has still a ways to go. But as this Bennett Jones update argues, there are signs of promise, particularly in the energy and mining sectors. Indeed, renewed efforts by a CCME task force is proposing some recommendations for a harmonized approach to make decisions on projects.

And at the federal level, the Major Projects Management Office (MPMO), an agency that falls under the purview of Natural Resources Canada was established in 2007 to support Ottawa’s new approach to the regulatory review of major resource projects. The hope is that this new approach will ensures a more timely and accountable review process.

As the Globe and Mail recently reported, Alberta, with some prodding from the oil sands industry, is (albeit controversially) considering lowering the regulatory burden for companies looking for approvals for certain types of projects.

As for the construction industry and the roll-out of infrastructure stimulus money, well, the timing of Montreal’s latest mess couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Some of our potential clients do not require detailed guidance text on legislation – they already understand the basics, they simply want updates on environmental legislation. They want to know what is changing, when, how and why. We have always offered updates as part of our various services, but now we are pleased to offer it as a stand-alone service. Priced at a very competitive 120$ per year per province and with all our Federal information free, we hope this new service will keep you on top of legislative changes. Sign up today and the first month is free.

Here is a sample of one our monthly updates.

A friend of ours, Shirley Segev, offers 1 day ISO 14001 crash courses in Toronto. You walk out of the workshop with a binder that helps you improve your environmental management without the cost or heavy paperwork required for a full ISO 14001 certification. Her workshop certifies you as a small business ISO 14001 company.

In the small business version of 14001, you are not required to have a legal or aspect-impact register – but it is recommended. As such, we are pleased to work with her and her clients to offer easy and low-cost ways to manage legal and aspect-impact registers. If you take one of Shirley’s workshops, we will offer you 25% of a Nimonik Subscription. Simply email us.

About a month ago, Isaac Rudik, from Compliance Solutions Canada, and I spoke about environmental management systems, green plans and other items of interest. Here is the edited video, please let us know what you think.

Business is about making choices so successful business owners understand how to measure risks when required to decide between two options. Weighing $3,500 against $20,000 is a no brainer. By Isaac Rudik at Compliance Solutions Canada – A Nimonik Affiliate

For as long as there have been poorly-done cop shows on television, bad guys have been getting caught because they make a stupid mistake. Whether robbers, killers, con artists or polluters, the typical plot twist leading to their arrest just before the closing credits roll involves them doing something idiotic, careless, forgetful or lackadaisical.

Keep Reading here.

When the writers toss greedy and penny-pinching crooks into the story, the episode takes on the feel of a Marx Brother’s movie.

Actually, if you put these ingredients together in one episode, it’s likely that producers would toss the writers and their script out the window for offering up a tale that is too far-fetched, improbable and unbelievable – even for television.

Yet not long ago, just such an implausible story line played out in real life in Ontario, where a trio of penny-pinching, not-too-bright polluters got caught in the act of dumping toxic waste in an open field in broad daylight. And while theirs is a tale of ineptitude and sheer idiocy, it shows that when it comes to disposing of pollutants, being penny wise and pound foolish brings hefty fines far more expensive than what it would have cost to dispose of the material properly.