What is the environmental review process under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act?

The review process provided for in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is, when reduced to its simplest terms, not a complex process. But given the myriad of situations to which it must apply, and the various forms of assessment that are open, its description in the Act is quite complex. It is admirably summed up in the reasons of Mr. Justice Linden in Bow Valley Naturalists Society v. Canada (Minister of Canadian Heritage)20. Mr. Justice Linden wrote at paragraphs 17 to 19;