Implications of Ontario Bill 133

摘要

Encouraging compliance with environmental laws and regulations by significant and chronic offenders of such laws is a challenge for government. Unfortunately, responsible operators and "good corporate citizens" can be the victims of collateral damage in such regulatory efforts. One such example is the introduction of Environmental Penalties (EPs) by the Ontario government in its recently introduced Bill 133. The bill has several key elements of which EPs are but one. The bill also includes increased fines for conventional offences, new sentencing guidelines, and a change of threshold for offences from "likely to occur" to "may occur."