Human activity has always had a negative impact on the human environment. To make matters worse, the industrial age fostered conditions in which environmental degradation in proportion to productivity became a fact of life.
While our standard of living has improved enormously, our environment has seen its share of degradations and industrial disasters.
During the 1960s, "pollution" and "environment" became part of our daily vocabulary, and governments in all industrialized countries were forced to introduce laws and regulations aimed at protecting the environment.
From the Environmental Protection perspective, Environment Canada administers two acts. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act 1999 (CEPA, 1999) which was passed by Parliament to replace the Canadian Environmental Protection Act of 1988, and the pollution prevention provisions of the Fisheries Act (FA). We have enforcement officers, designated under CEPA, 1999, and inspectors/fishery officers, designated under the Fisheries Act, whose job it is to ensure compliance with the two acts and corresponding regulations. We also adopted an enforcement and compliance policy to guide enforcement officers in the performance of their duties.
