The application of Sustainability Assessment (SA) within Canadian municipalities is a recent notion, but is quickly becoming widespread. The Government of Saskatchewan alone has already released two SA checklists. However, such tools are normally aimed at communities of all sizes, ranging from rural municipalities to big cities, without considering differences in the capacity base, needs, and conditions among those types of communities. Additionally, practical implementation of SA often does not reflect the scope of scientifically established criteria for SA tools. This paper will present the analysis of the 2009 Saskatchewan Sustainability Checklist for Municipalities (comparing it to one of the most prominent frameworks for SA and other similar checklists developed in Canada and internationally) in order to identify possible areas for improvement so that the Checklist reflects established SA principles and is sensitive to a small town context. Based on the results of interviews with 16 small town administrators in Saskatchewan, this thesis demonstrates that, from a theoretical perspective, both of the existing SA tools are deficient in a number of important ways. The tools mainly focus on evaluating the municipal and service provision, rather than evaluating the sustainability of a community as a whole, including such areas as environmental conditions; social equity; livelihood sufficiency; resource maintenance; and intragenerational and intergenerational equity. However, the research reveals even if all of the above-mentioned criteria are integrated within the existing tools, it will be challenging for municipalities to perform a full sustainability assessment, since small towns’ administrations often have limited financial and human capacity to perform such exercises. Additionally, there is a lack of understanding on how to integrate the results of an assessment into decision-making, and a perceived inability to change some of the existing economic or social conditions in a town, due to the limited scope of influence that local municipalities have. There is a need for an alternative approach to sustainability assessment in the case of small towns; one that is sensitive to their unique pressures, circumstances, and capacities to enact change.

Does the lead industry have a future, in the face of the developing environmental challenge? This thesis addresses this question and concludes, it should have for the foreseeable future, providing it adopts the changes detailed. These changes are posited within a framework, which consists of a strategy, approaches and tools. The changes are both technical and philosophical. They are technical, in the sense that the tools and approaches provide practical means whereby the environmental `risks' may be identified, assessed and managed. They are philosophical, because they set out and identify the features of a new conceptual paradigm, whose basis is in the concept of the `risk society'. The paradigm is significantly more holistic, multi-dimensional, inherently flexible, and is intended to be reflexive. Adoption of the elements of the framework, will facilitate a more effective establishment, and management of environmental `risk' credentials, which will help encourage better environmental decision making. Hence, it will facilitate, the balancing of resource consumption and environmental impact costs, versus social and economic benefits, in an improved manner. The modelling approaches, and selected inventory and environmental impact assessment tools, enclosed within this thesis, have been designed to facilitate the development of, and to function within, the new paradigm. These have been developed for BRM and MIM case studies, and function at the site-specific and the cradle-to-gate scales. The former consider the company site of Britannia Refined Metals (BRM) Ltd., where refining to produce primary and secondary refined lead products takes place, whilst the latter consider the life-cycle of the refined primary lead products of MIM Ltd. The modelling approaches have also been designed so, that they may be re-aggregated into models able to operate at many different scales, as required. The framework, and its elements, are applicable for all industries facing similar challenges.