Resumen de The Environmental, Democratic, and Rule-of-Law Implications of Harper´s Envioronmental Assessment Legacy

Jocelyn Stacey

• The article argues that Harper's dramatic changes to federal environmental assessment give rise to a two-dimensional legacy in environmental law: first, a legacy of impoverished environmental decision-making that reflects a narrow, resource-oriented vision of the environment, and second, a legacy of undermining democratic and rule-of-law values in environmental law. The crux of this latter legacy is theargumentthatenvironmental assessment law provides an essentialframework for publicly-justified decision-making in the Canadian environmental context. Indeed, as I suggestin this article, environmentalassessment presently performs a quasi-constitutional role in Canadian environmental decision-making in the sense that it is constitutive of legality; that is, it provides the means by which the federal government fulfills its obligation to govern the environment in accordance with the rule of law.