Waste regulations in Canada are a tangled web of federal, provincial, and sector-specific rules, this post breaks down the basics so you can understand who regulates what, why it’s so complex, and how it all fits together before we dive into waste types.
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Last time we chatted about why we should care about waste management, and if you didn’t get a chance to read it, you can check it out here.
At the end of the last post, we said we would chat about the different kinds of waste and how the regulations work, but first, I need to set the foundation and explain some of the basic regulations.
Let’s start with how the regulations around waste work.
Not to turn this into a social and history lesson, but essentially, Canada follows this thing called federalism where the powers are divided between the Federal government (+ 3 territories) and the 10 Provincial governments, and this is set by Canada’s constitution. This is why the Feds oversee certain things, why the provinces can do their thing for areas that concern matters of local nature, and sometimes things fall under both.
(click this link to learn more about who does what - https://www.canada.ca/en/intergovernmental-affairs/services/federation/distribution-legislative-powers.html)
Typically, each province (and territory) will have some sort of high-level Act that sets the broad and foundational requirements on specific topics (like environmental protection). Provinces will then create Regulations under an Act, that outline the nitty gritty details on how to implement what the Act says you have to do.
Ok, back to waste - waste is one of the things that is managed through the provinces, therefore each province has their own set of Acts and Regulations that you need to follow.
So, there are (at least) 10 different sets of rules (13 with the Territories, 14 with Federal rules + more accounting for provinces with split authority) on how to manage waste in Canada.
Even though the rules vary between what province you are in, generally, they are pretty similar across the board, but also not at all at the same time. Confusing, I know…
This causes compliance challenges for large companies who have operations in multiple provinces. Even I get lost sometimes trying to remember the little details for each province.
To make things a bit more complicated (because who wants to do things easy), you can have provinces where they split the oversite of Acts into different regulatory authorities.
In Alberta, we have the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act (EPEA), which is the main piece of environmental legislation that sets the regulatory requirements to support and promote the protection, enhancement and wise use of the environment within the province.
Both, Alberta Environment and Protected Areas (AEPA) and the Alberta Energy Regulatory (AER) play specific roles under the EPEA. Generally, AER oversees energy and mineral resource development, and AEPA takes care of everything else.
In addition to their role under EPEA, the AER also has the Oil and Gas Conservation Act and Rules (OCGA/R) under their belt, that enables them to oversee how oilfield wastes are regulated.
So, depending on whether your site is regulated under the AER or AEPA, you will have different rules to follow.
AEPA uses EPEA and the Waste Control Regulation (WCR) (and a bunch of other supporting documents) to oversee hazardous and non-hazardous wastes, and the AER uses the OCGR and the AER Directives to oversee dangerous and non-dangerous oilfield wastes.
Little fun fact – sometimes you will be regulated by the AER but are required to use AEPA waste processes. (This usually happens due to certain zoning designations within the province).
Now, there is an established understanding between AEPA and AER, and the rules for waste are similar, but as I said above, same-same but different. Not every AER rule aligns perfectly with AEPA, and vise versa. So, take care to understand what rules you need to follow, and if you need support, reach out.
Why don’t we add another layer of complexity to this.
With each government (Fed & Provincial) sometimes doing their own thing, and sometimes working together, we find ourselves in a unique predicament when it comes to transporting waste.
Transportation of materials in Canada is shared between the provinces and the federal governments. Generally, the feds oversee international and inter-provincial (between provinces) transportation, and the provinces oversee intra-provincial (within the province) transportation.
With that being said, Transport Canada developed the Transportation of Dangerous Goods (TDG) Program to promote public safety for the transportation of dangerous goods in Canada and to align with international trade requirements. Dangerous goods are a subsect of materials that have some sort of property to them that increases the… for lack of a better term…level of dangerousness of the material. (Future blog topic).
Transport Canada worked closely with all the provinces and signed agreements respecting the administration of the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act (TDGA), and the provinces also created provincial legislation to enable federal TDGA (+/- a few things here and there for certain provinces).
With that making no sense at all – all you need to know is that if your waste is ALSO a dangerous good – you need to follow TDG.
This will become important when we talk about characterization and classification of waste because the problem is that provincial waste classifications don’t align perfectly with TDG classifications. Topic for a different post.
Yes – that is a thing too, probably the largest volume of waste generated is non-hazardous and non-dangerous. Every province has their own legislation that usually covers the transportation of these materials.
Kind of a theme here – there are a lot of regulations that you need to know about and follow.
With waste being provincially regulated, and transportation (sometimes) being federally regulated – the provinces had to come up with a solution to ensure the parallel requirements for waste and transportation documentation are being met.
To make it work, each province came up with their own specific waste documentation that meets the minimum requirements under TDG. We can explain this further in another post because as I said above, sometimes you have different authorities overseeing things. This means lots of different types of movement documents.
If you are wanting to transport a hazardous waste across a provincial or international border, federal legislation under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) kicks in. Additional requirements listed in the Cross-border Movement of Hazardous Waste and Hazardous Recyclable Material Regulations (XBR) need to be followed.
I know this is a lot – but it is because there is a lot to know. Regulations are nuanced and complex, making waste management burdensome and intimidating.
I don’t want this post to be too long, so if you want a breakdown of each legislation reach out to us at support@wiqtech.com and we can dive into those a bit more.
In our next post, I promise to get into the different waste types, and the whole characterization and classification process.
Thanks, Waste Wizard Out!
