Funded by Health Canada and built on decades of practitioner expertise, the bilingual web application helps communities, practitioners, and decision-makers trace how major development projects affect well-being — arriving as Canada accelerates approvals for nationally significant infrastructure

Toronto, ON – April 2026 – Manyways Inc. has designed and launched the Pathways of Effects (PoE) Navigator — a bilingual, public-facing web application that helps Canadians understand the downstream health, social, and economic impacts of major resource and infrastructure development projects. Available at pathwaysofeffects.ca, the tool was developed in collaboration with Intrinsik Corp., a leading Canadian environmental health sciences consultancy, with funding and subject-matter support from Health Canada.

The launch comes at a pivotal moment for Canadian infrastructure policy. The federal government has established a Major Federal Project Office and committed to rendering final decisions on major projects within two years — down from five — through the One Canadian Economy Act. British Columbia’s Infrastructure Projects Act and Alberta’s Expedited 120-Day Approvals Act signal the same urgency at the provincial level. As timelines compress, the pressure on practitioners, communities, and regulators to understand complex downstream effects quickly and thoroughly has never been greater. The PoE Navigator was built to meet precisely this need: giving stakeholders a structured, interactive way to explore how project activities ripple through environments and communities, so that faster approvals do not come at the expense of informed, equitable outcomes.

The PoE Navigator allows users to explore pathways of effects — sequences of possible events triggered by project activities — through an interactive, step-by-step visualization. Users select a project type and phase (construction, operations, or decommissioning), then apply filters across structured dimensions including project activity, pathway theme, pathway factors, effects, impacts, population groups, and direction of change. The result is a visual diagram that traces connections, including feedback loops, between contributing factors and downstream risks or benefits. Users can share their filtered view via a persistent hyperlink or export it as a PDF for use in meetings, consultations, or assessment processes.

The tool’s underlying data draws on Health Canada’s Health Impact Assessment Guidance and decades of practitioner expertise contributed by representatives of Intrinsik, Health Canada, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and Environment and Climate Change Canada. Social and economic pathways are informed by a recent literature review conducted by British Columbia’s Northern Health Authority and Health Canada. This breadth of sourcing is deliberate: environmental assessments have historically underrepresented social, economic, cultural, and psychosocial interactions, and the PoE Navigator breaks new ground by mapping the connections among these domains in a single, navigable interface.

The tool is designed for a broad audience — community members, impact assessment practitioners, government staff, project proponents, and researchers — and requires no technical background to use. It supports both English and French, with content approved by Health Canada and Intrinsik for public use. The PoE Navigator is not a decision-making tool or official guidance; it is a learning and screening resource that supports understanding and discussion, complementing (rather than replacing) professional judgement, community knowledge, and formal impact assessment processes.

Within its first month since launching on April 1, 2026, the tool has been utilized by approximately 1,000 users, with an average engagement time of over three minutes on the main exploration interface; a strong early signal of sustained, purposeful use rather than casual browsing.

Manyways originally co-designed the PoE Navigator concept with Intrinsik, Health Canada, and Scout Environmental during an earlier conceptual phase. In this second phase, Manyways was responsible for finalizing the user experience design, engineering and building the web application, conducting quality assurance testing across browsers, implementing bilingual support, deploying the application to production infrastructure, and integrating analytics and feedback mechanisms. Intrinsik served as the project lead and primary client, managing the relationship with Health Canada and supplying the structured pathway data and approved public-facing copy that powers the tool.

“Canada is rightly focused on getting major projects approved faster but speed without understanding creates risk and problems down the road. The PoE Navigator gives communities and practitioners a structured way to see how project activities connect to real health and social outcomes — not as a barrier to progress, but as a foundation for better decisions made more quickly, which is what we specialize in at Manyways.” — Steph Bigue, Founder & CEO, Manyways Inc.

About Manyways

Manyways is a Toronto-based software company that designs decision support systems for organizations that require accuracy, transparency, and trust in complex interactions. The company has delivered more than a dozen public-sector and public-facing decision support tools, helping governments and institutions translate expert guidance into clear, actionable digital experiences.

About Intrinsik

Intrinsik Corp. is a Canadian environmental health sciences consultancy headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. The firm provides specialized consulting services in toxicology, risk assessment, and environmental health, supporting public and private sector clients across Canada in understanding and managing the health implications of environmental exposures and major development projects.