The Complicated Intersection of Politics, Administrative and Constitutional Law in Nunavut's Environmental Impacts Assessment Regime

In Canada, it is somewhat unique that environmental impacts assessment is carried out by both the federal and provincial governments, under separate but complimentary assessment regimes. Even more unique is the environmental impacts assessment regime which exists in the territory of Nunavut, Canada’s youngest jurisdiction. What makes environmental impacts assessment most unique in Nunavut is the complicated intersection of land use planning, administrative rules and procedures derived from a constitutionally-protected modern day treaty — the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA or Agreement), and the infusion of fundamental, rudimentary or bare politics. Whereas the majority of jurisdictions in Canada base their environmental impacts assessment regimes on a commonly developed and accepted framework that divides assessment based on jurisdiction and project type — and leaves land use planning to provincial municipalities — the regime in Nunavut is based almost entirely on a process laid out in the NLCA and has as its aims the preservation of the Aboriginal rights and interests of Inuit beneficiaries protected by and under the Agreement. Upon closer scrutiny, however, it is apparent that the environmental impacts assessment and land use planning regimes prescribed in the NLCA, and supplemented by the federal Nunavut Project Planning and Assessment Act, are not only significantly different from other regimes in Canada but, also, that these very regimes which were designed or intended to promote and protect those rights and interests which Inuit obtained through negotiation and ratification of the NLCA may in fact undermine and fragment them.

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