Social impact follow-up in Quebec, Canada: 25 years of environmental impact assessment practice

Abstract

Quebec, Canada, has 25years background in EIA and follow-up. However, the broadcasting of social impact follow-up results seems neglected by various stakeholders. Proponents (parapublic organizations and private industries), the provincial government, universities and local community groups have developed the capacity to carry out such studies, but only few reports are easily accessible to the public. This paper reports on the practice of social impact follow-ups in Quebec since EIA was implemented in 1980, and identifies benefits and constraints to the dissemination of the results. To improve the situation, the selected reports were integrated in an on-line reference database on environmental follow-up.

Keywords:

• social impact follow-up
• SIA follow-up
• information sharing
• Quebec
• SEFA