Objective

As part of its regular program assessment, Environment Canada required a review of the indicators in its Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators suite to assess whether:

• the indicators remain appropriate and, if not, whether there are suggestions for suitable alternatives
• there is room for improvement of particular indicators and, if so, what are the improvements required
• the presentation of the indicators to the public is appropriate (i.e. understandable and relevant for Canadians)
• there is sufficient detail for more interested audiences (i.e., researchers, policy analysts) and, if not, what changes would be required to the presentations of the indicators.

Our Role

As part of a review team, Midsummer Analytics reviewed each indicator in the CESI suite and prepared a report with our observations and recommendations for improvement. We participated in a teleconference with the other reviewers to present and discuss our findings and help Environment Canada come to an overall conclusion regarding the on-going suitability of the CESI indicator set.