ABSTRACT
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in Canada encompasses a number of non-statutory processes, some long-standing, others still emerging. In 1990, Canada became the first country to introduce a dedicated, formal system of SEA of government policies, plans and programmes (PPPs), separate from project-level environmental assessment (EA). This process, which applies only to federal decision-making, has been subject to several, increasingly critical reviews and currently its future may lie in the balance. So far, there are no fully operational provincial or territorial counterparts, although other strategic processes have been or are being introduced. For example, joint-federal SEA regimes are in place to review oil and gas drilling off the eastern coast, Alberta is introducing regional strategic environmental assessment (RSEA) as a tool for cumulative effects management and similar approaches and elements are in place or proposed in other jurisdictions. These developments and particularly the future of the federal system and prospects for RSEA are the subject of active debate in Canadian assessment circles and may be of wider, international interest.
