Assessing the Intersections of Sex, Gender, and Other Identity Factors in the New Canadian Impact Assessment Act

• Author: Heidi Wa lker and Maureen G Reed
• Pages: 257-276

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Assessing the Intersections of Sex, Gender,

and Other Identity Factors in the New

Canadian Impact Assessment Act

Heidi Walker and Maureen G Reed

A. INTRODUCTION

Researchers, practitioners, and nearby residents have long understood

that the benets and burdens of resource development projects are not

shared equally or equitably.1 For example, women and men, Indigenous

peoples and settler populations, senior citizens and youth, high- and

low-income earners, and people living nearby or far away from develop-

ments will all experience the benets and burdens of such projects dif-

ferently. Additionally, development projects are oen introduced into

regions where residents may already feel excluded from many of the

benets of economic and social life that are taken for granted in other

parts of Canada. Because some groups may be more disadvantaged to

begin with, blanket eorts to address the negative impacts or share the

positive impacts of development projects will not be received in the same

way across these dierent groups. Researchers have suggested that if we

do not pay attention to existing social contexts and power relationships

before new resource developments are introduced, new development

1 Linda Archibald & Mary Crnkovich, If Gender Mattered: A Case Study of Inuit Women,

Land Claims and the Voisey’s Bay Nickel Project (Ottawa: Status of Women Canada,

1999); Sara O’Shaughnessy & Naomi T Krogman, “Gender as Contradiction: From

Dichotomies to Diversity in Natural Resource Extraction” (2011) 27:2 Journal of Rural

Studies 134; Erik Kojola, “Indigeneity, Gender and Class in Decision-Making About

Risks from Resource Extraction” (2019) 5:2 Environmental Sociology 130.

      258

projects may simply exacerbate pre-existing inequalities (e.g., employ-

ment and income inequality, social marginalization, and exclusion) rather

than reduce them.2 This realization is at the heart of impact assessment

(IA) that accounts for the “intersections of sex, gender, and other identity

factors,” as required in the Canadian Impact Assessment Act (IAA).3

Canada has been committed to applying gender-based analysis to

federal policies, programs, and legislation since at least 1995 when it

ratied the United Nations’ Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

for working toward gender equality.4 The rst formal requirement —

though not a legislated requirement — for gender-based analysis in

Canadian environmental assessment occurred in 1997 for a proposed

nickel mine at Voisey’s Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. The desig-

nated environmental assessment panel for the project draed the

environmental impact statement guidelines, through which it required

the proponent to consider how the project would dierently aect men

and women.5 This was a progressive step, resulting in the inclusion

of some gender-disaggregated data in the environmental assessment

report. Several deciencies, however, were noted: limited opportunities

for women’s organizations to meaningfully participate, the prioritiza-

tion of men’s traditional ecological knowledge, and “very little analysis

or insight into how the dierential impacts aect Inuit women.”6 From

that time to the implementation of the IAA, gender-based analysis in

Canadian assessments has been directed only on an ad hoc basis and

without standardization from one project to the next.

Since the 1990s, Women and Gender Equality Canada (formerly

Status of Women Canada) has claried that other identity attributes of

women and men, such as age, education, geography, culture, language,

2 See, for example, Amnesty International, Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Gender, Indigenous

Rights, and Energy Development in Northeast British Columbia, Canada (London, UK:

Amnesty International, 2016), online: www.amnesty.ca/outofsight; Christine Hill, Chris

Madden & Nina Collins, A Guide to Gender Impact Assessment for the Extractive Industries

(Melbourne: Oxfam, 2017), online: https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/

a-guide-to-gender-impact-assessment-for-the-extractive-industries-620782; Elana

Nightingale et al, “The Eects of Resource Extraction on Inuit Women and Their Fam-

ilies: Evidence from Canada (2017) 25:3 Gender & Development 367.

3 SC 2019, c 28, s 22.

4 Erin Skinner, “Lessons from the Field: Policy Matters and Gender-Based Analysis Tools

in Canada” (Halifax: Maritime Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health, December 1998).

5 Archibald and Crnkovich, above note 1.

6 Ibid at 23 & 24 [emphasis added].