Alberta's Top Court Says Ottawa's Rewritten Impact Assessment Act Is Still Unconstitutional

Alberta's Court of Appeal has found that the federal Impact Assessment Act, in its revised form, remains unconstitutional. The court's reasoning centers on reach: the act, it found, still grants Ottawa the power to halt a project inside provincial jurisdiction if that project has even the smallest impact on federal jurisdiction — a threshold the court treats as too broad a hook for federal authority over projects that are otherwise provincial business. The decision keeps alive one of the sharper federalism fights over who gets to say yes or no to major energy and infrastructure projects.