The federal Liberal Party made a number of important commitments during the last election campaign on improving environmental protections. In an era when political promises often bring low expectations, it is important to note that this government has made progress on some commitments, like setting out a pathway for increasing our protected areas and taking action to help species of risk. But there is still a long road ahead, especially on issues like modernizing our environmental assessment process to properly consider the cumulative impacts of many different human activities on wild landscapes. Here the government has simply not done enough to fulfill its promise to reform the broken current system – one that leads to piecemeal decision making and a piling on of impacts on wild species.