Indigenous Rights Assessment

In 2019, the Canadian government passed Bill C-69 into law, which enacted the Impact Assessment Act (IAA) and introduced important changes to the federal environmental assessment system in Canada, including a broadening of assessment requirements relating to the rights, interests, and knowledge of Indigenous peoples. The new IAA now requires consideration of the impacts that development projects may have on any Indigenous group and on their asserted and established Aboriginal and treaty rights.

IEG regularly uses the rights impacts assessment (RIA) framework in our work with communities to examine impacts to Aboriginal and treaty rights, including impacts on the conditions required for community members to access the land and conduct traditional land uses. We work with communities to customize an appropriate RIA approach for the project or challenge that the community is facing. IEG has applied the RIA approach to traditional land use (TLU) studies, cultural impact assessments (CIA), and cumulative effects assessments.