Responsible Business Conduct and Impact Assessment Law

Extractive companies play a major role in the Canadian economy, and their actions have multi-faceted effects on the communities in which they operate, whether within or outside of Canada. Currently a wide range of Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) guidance tools, often embedding human rights due diligence, are promoted to extractive companies. At the same time, companies must comply with Impact Assessment (IA) laws in the jurisdiction in which they operate. While the legal framework of IA and the various RBC tools have some obvious overlaps, their interrelationship has been understudied. This project aims to illuminate the interrelationship and to encourage further research with the aim of facilitating an effective and human rights respecting approach to the integration of IAA and RBC in Canadian law and policy.

This research is funded by a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant: Informing Best Practices in Environmental and Impact Assessments led by Professors Sara Seck and Penelope Simons (Ottawa) with collaborators Professors Meinhard Doelle and Naiomi Metallic and doctoral candidate Bayo Majekolagbe as lead graduate researcher.