Working closely with legal counsel, MLi3 senior staff have undertaken important responsibilities for identifying and evaluating environment-related potential liabilities and opportunities for legal exposure arising from either divestiture or purchase of industrial assets. Contributions to environmental due diligence have facilitated transactions involving mines (base metal, rare earth elements), tanneries (Edmonton, Winnipeg, Pennsylvania), forestry operations, rocket-launch facilities, and other major assets.

The recognition of the rights of Aboriginal Peoples in relation to the Constitution Act is growing. Requirements to protect the "honour of the Crown", while protecting regulatory process timeliness, are becoming increasingly onerous. While caselaw on the "Duty to Consult" provides helpful guidance, working with government decision-making processes by means of delegated responsibilities without compromising regulatory process integrity is now extremely challenging. Thoughtful, proactive, and caselaw-sensitive engagement with Aboriginal Peoples is critical. MLi3's experience includes close collaboration with corporate legal counsel and public relations executives, and with government officials, to build process integrity through constructive engagement.

Engagement is now fundamental to most proactive corporate project planning, and all regulatory review processes. Engagement methods are proliferating. Digital methods are increasingly popular, but not widespread through all public demographics. Seeking means to engage with people's "better angels" is both art and science, especially if first impressions of a proposed project create misunderstanding and anxiety. MLi3's experience includes multilingual and multicultural dialogue in many of the more than 65 public processes it has designed and strategically managed. Public engagement processes, for either project planning, or as a critical component of regulatory review, have occured across Western Canada and Nunavut.

Since the Bata Shoe Decision (R. v. Bata Industries Ltd., 1992), corporate enviromental liability has become increasingly top-of-mind. Director responsibility grows in importance almost daily. Examining major corporate decisions through the lens of potential acquired liability, or insufficient due diligence, is now commonplace in all but the most reluctant of corporations, whether public or private. MLi3 has worked closely with corporate legal counsel to build evidently diligent corporate action, to identify potential corporate risk, and to support corporate risk-management planning. Perhaps our most effective work has been in project planning, and in the designs for strategic management of regulatory processes, when corporations prepare for major capital expenditures. Often, this has been expressed through multidisciplinary collaboration with corporate counsel, plant managers, public communications managers, and industrial process engineers, always attempting to preclude environment-related risk.

Triggering public review of a proposed project initiates a process of heightened public exposure and, frequently, unmanaged risk. Preparations for regulatory review processes are now as strategically important as CAPEX planning and finalizing a project site, project layout, process design, and in-service planning. More detailed focus on strategic management of anticipated regulatory review process where corporations have discretion to exercise is critical to securing the desired regulatory outcomes. This is especially so in seeking to preclude intrusive approval or license terms and conditions apparently arising from misunderstanding or inadequate public engagement. MLi3 has worked very closely with corporate legal counsel and senior executives to develop approaches to public review processes that seek more informed decisions, less residual risk (to all parties), enhanced corporate enviromental stewardship, and enhanced corporate and public socio-economic benefit.

Marrying science with empathy, and seeking always to understand local history and socio-cultural values, the best impact assessments build trust among stakeholders and the most truly informed regulatory decisions. At their worst, impact assessments are mere regurgitation of facts, without sensitivity to stakeholder needs and concerns, without creation of useful feedback to corporate project planners. Done well, EIA is transformational and relationship-building. Done poorly, it builds disrespect for both corporations and regulators. MLi3 has been privileged to work with proactive corporations, both public and private, who invest in EIA to make their projects better, to reduce "the carrying cost" upon surrounding ecosystems and communities. EIA projects have been completed for proposed highways, rocket-launch facilities, pharmaceutical R & D facilities, smelters, forest-management plans, a wide variety of manufacturing plants, tanneries, water-treatment plants, wastewater-treatment plants, wind farms, generating stations, and transmission lines. Our experience also includes providing independent 3rd-Party Peer Review of EIA documents prepared by other consultants.