Our argument is that section 24 is very limited to environmental assessments that were carried out for the same sort of activity.
At AECL's Chalk River Laboratories there have been about 37 environmental assessments carried out since the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act came into effect. Yet they're still continuously triggering environmental assessments, even though that site is very well studied.
It has exhaustive environmental monitoring programs—ISO-14001-compliant environmental monitoring programs—targeted at identifying potential environmental effects. But small projects like the replacement of a concrete weir in a stream—routine maintenance—are triggering federal EAs under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
So some precedent value needs to be allowed, as a result of those existing EAs and studies, so that those resources are....