ARCHIVED - Summary Report on the Public Workshops Assisting Environment Canada and Health Canada in Preparing for the Parliamentary Review of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999

3. Structure and Content of this Summary Report

CEPA 1999 is a sizeable, complex Act that addresses a varied and large number of topics. In order to provide some structure and manageability to the workshop discussions, the agenda and the government presentations were structured along four broad themes, as follows: Knowledge for Protecting Human Health and the Environment; Tools for Taking Action; Fair and Efficient Compliance Promotion and Enforcement; and, Information for Canadians. While a wide range of views were raised by participants, in most cases these views can be categorized by one or more of the themes proposed by the departmental representatives at the beginning of each session. (The presentation "slide show" used throughout the workshops is included in this Report in Appendix 2.) As a result, the summary of views presented in the following sections is organized in accordance with these themes. This Report strives to ensure that all of the issues that were heard in each of the sessions are presented fairly. However, "the details" that often accompanied a specific view, and examples used to illustrate these views are not presented in this Summary Report. Readers who participated in the sessions are cautioned that the issues they raised are not reported verbatim. However, workshop participants should be able to recognize the general intent and thrust of the issues that they raised in the sessions.

The facilitator stressed that the purpose of the sessions was to solicit the views of participants, and not necessarily to strive towards consensus with respect to any particular view. As a result, a particular perspective on CEPA 1999 that was proposed by one individual at one session is as legitimate and may be as important in helping the departments prepare for the Review as a perspective that was shared by many participants across sectors in all sessions.

As mentioned at the sessions, the views detailed in this Report are not attributed to any particular individual. In some cases this Report does attribute a particular perspective to a specific stakeholder interest (e.g., environmental organizations, or industry groups) where this is appropriate and helpful. In addition, this Report does identify "overarching" or "cross-cutting" messages where it seemed apparent that many participants across sectoral interests in most sessions tended to agree with a particular view. These are detailed in Section 4.1.