Updating the Ministry of Long-Term Care's Statement of Environmental Values

The Ministry of Long-Term Care (MLTC) has created a new Statement of Environmental Values (SEV) in part by building on sections of the former Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care’s (MOHLTC) SEV.

The SEV is:

• required under the Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR) and provides MOH’s commitment to the purposes of the Act;
• must be considered when environmentally significant decisions are made within the ministry; and
• provides the ministry the core principles that it will apply during decision making related to polices, acts, regulations and instruments that might affect the environment.

The EBR requires that the ministry’s SEV explain:

• how the purposes of the EBR will be applied when decisions that might significantly affect the environment are made in the ministry; and

• how consideration of the purposes of the EBR will be integrated with other considerations, including social, economic and scientific considerations, that are part of decision-making in the ministry/

In the Summer of 2019, the MLTC and Ministry of Health (MOH) were created and assumed the EBR obligations of the former MOHLTC.

In addition, in the 2019 Annual Report of the Auditor General, the MOH was one of many ministries that were required to update their SEVs to include the term “climate change” among other changes. The MLTC has proactively assumed the SEV update obligation as well.

In addition to creating an SEV for MLTC that reflects the ministry’s structure and mandate, the ministry is proposing making the following changes to sections it used from the former MOHLTC’s SEV:

• add a section that commits the MOH to continue to mainstream climate change adaptation into natural resource management;
• update the ministry’s vision and mandated activities;
• add a commitment to review the SEV every five years;
• affirm the important role of Indigenous peoples’ participation in ministry decision-making; and

revise and update the SEV’s principles based on current management practices and provide clear and practical principles to facilitate SEV consideration.