"Business Beware: Upcoming Environmental Legislation Could Wreak Havoc on SMEs", Business Services West
2003As seen in Business Services magazine, fall 2003
OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS, THE FEDERAL, PROVINCIALand territorial governments across Canada will be monitoring how British Columbia implements revisions to its environmental clean up legislation - particularly in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. But interest is certainly not limited to those jurisdictions.
Small- and medium-size businesses throughout Canada - and particularly those in British Columbia because it's a leader in this type of legislation - are often at greater risk of encountering environmental liability than larger businesses. But all businessowners and their shareholders should pay close attention to this developing legal field in the next few years because this law is so tough that ignorance can literally kill a business unlucky enough to be snared in its web. Liability is so high that the cost of clean up can easily be in the millions.
Much of our environmental clean-up law casts a wide net. Smaller businesses are most often at risk because they are usually tenants, landowners or in some other sense the hands-on operators of industrial or formerly industrial land. That puts them in the front lines of lawsuits and government investigations if land is discovered to be contaminated - and the definition of "contamination" is unpredictable.
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