What is the purpose of the Environmental Protection Act?

The purpose of the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) is to support and promote the management, protection, enhancement and wise use of the environment, while recognizing the following:

• Preventing, mitigating and remediating environmental impacts is important in making decisions and taking actions.
• Where there are threats of serious or irreparable harm to the ecological integrity, lack of complete certainty is not to be a reason for postponing reasonable environmental protection measures.
• All persons are responsible, financially and otherwise, for impacts on the environment as a result of their actions or inaction.
• Administrative, management and regulatory processes need to be adaptive, responsive, fair, effective and timely.