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Global rules on foreign direct investment (FDI)
Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
Canada | Publication | June 29, 2020
On June 9, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy in British Columbia made Ministerial Order No. 182 (MO 182), which amends the Contaminated Sites Regulation (CSR) to align with Bill 17, the Environmental Management Amendment Act (Bill 17). Together, these amendments alter the contaminated site identification process in BC.
Bill 17 was approved in May of 2019 after a multi-year review and consultation process that identified a number of weaknesses in the contaminated site regime. The amendments will take effect on February 1, 2021, and are intended to streamline site identifications while capturing contaminated sites that were previously left unregulated. Bill 17 makes the following notable changes to the Environmental Management Act:
MO 182 provides complementary amendments to Bill 17. Effective February 1, 2021, the CSR, which houses exemptions to submitting site disclosure statements, will include clarified and new provisions to capture sites where proposed developments or redevelopments in land use are occurring. While the amendments are intended to bring more contaminated sites into the identification process, they also provide for new exemptions that exclude developments undergoing minor changes. Further, the CSR amendments place greater responsibility on an owner or operator of a contaminated site, as well as on municipalities in their duty to oversee the site identification process. The following are notable features of MO 182:
In addition to these amendments, the ministry also intends to improve waste soil relocation regulations within the contaminated site regime. For more information on the ministry’s proposed soil relocation amendments, please see this legal update.
The author wishes to thank law student Max Waterman for his help in preparing this legal update.
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Cross-border acquisitions and investments increasingly trigger foreign direct investment (FDI) screening requirements.
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European asset managers are excited about the revised European long-term investment funds (ELTIF) regime and hope that the greater flexibility for managing and distributing ELTIFs will open up new markets for their long-term investment strategies.
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The recent publication of the Investment Association’s Second Interim Report on Fund Tokenisation and regular news articles in the financial press evidence continued enthusiasm for the adoption of digital technologies such as tokenisation amongst players in the financial services markets. Indeed, the global market for tokenised real-world assets is already currently estimated to be around $600 billion and has been predicted to reach $16 trillion by 2030.
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