What kind of fines do industrial polluters face in Canada?

In today’s The Big Story podcast, there are some large companies in Canada that have a history of breaking environmental laws. It might be a genuine accident, it might be sloppiness in the haste to complete work, or corners cut in an attempt to save money. 

The penalty for this pollution is almost always monetary, and this is where things get tricky.

Many of the companies who break these rules are massive, and are doing massive business.

The framework for fining them can be complex, and often struggles to make the larger businesses actually feel financial pain. 

Ben Collison is a PhD student at Dalhousie University studying natural resource management and freshwater systems. He wrote a piece in The Conversation “The fine is going to be relatively small compared to when you’re dealing with a very large company that’s repeatedly polluting the environment, but still even regardless of whether it’s an individual or a large corporation these fines can range a lot depending on what court it is, what province it’s located in, and what piece of environmental law is being broken,” said Collison. 

How does this system work? Or does it? How could we adapt it for a world in which the pursuit of profits that cause environmental harm will become more and more dangerous?

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