The omnibus budget Bill C-38, recently passed by the Canadian House of Commons in a marathon amendments voting session, completely rewrites the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA, 2012) and eliminates screenings, subject to ministerial exceptions.

"Current screenings (including those that are still identified as on hold) will be systematically terminated and removed from the Internet site," the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency wrote in the email.

The news sent government workers scrambling to create their own internal databases of the cancelled assessments, before the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency made an about face and decided to archive the records for public viewing instead.

Isabelle Perrault, spokeswoman for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, at first denied that the records would be wiped from the system. Perrault later acknowledged: "the possibility of removing all elements of the old registry and developing a completely new registry with none of the old information was among the options we considered."