Environmental impact assessment of frontier oil and gas development in Canada

Abstract

Economic development in Canada has traditionally been based on the extraction and processing of a variety of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. While the modern Canadian economy has become more specialized in the secondary and tertiary sectors, and the populat ion has become one of the most urbanized in the world, major resource development projects still play a vital role in economic development. However, no matter what the scale of the project in question, the extraction and processing of natural resources can raise major issues concerning the use and potential abuse of environmental systems. In fact, the very industrialization of the resource development process can be of itself the cause of major concern. Canada is a country of highly diverse and varied environments. Their nordicity renders them both productive and fragile. Thus, the location of the resources to be developed can increase the possibility of serious environmental impact. Concern for the environment is fortunately not a recent phenomenon in Canada; it can be traced to preConfederation days and the early recognition that the resource base is both vulnerable and depletable. Over time, many mistakes ha+e been made in exploiting the resources, but the inherent value of a high quality environment remains an essential element of Canadian culture. This is particularly true when dealing with environmental issues in the Canadian north. The rapidity of technological change, and the concomitant pressures on the environment, eventually reached a point where passive concern over environmental quality needed to be reinforced with more concrete measures for avoiding future problems. It is now a