Environmental Law Alert Blog

Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast keeps you up to date on the latest developments and issues in environmental law. This includes:

  • proposed changes to the law that will weaken, or strengthen, environmental protection;
  • stories and situations where existing environmental laws are failing to protect the environment; and
  • emerging legal strategies that could be used to protect our environment.

If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. We welcome your comments on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.

2020 Canadian Law Blog Awards Winner

So what does last week’s federal court win by Josette Wier, a pesticide activist based in Smithers, against Health Canada mean for pesticide regulations in Canada?  Josette, with help fro

In preparing a presentation about the collapse of the enforcement of environmental laws in British Columbia over the past decade, I noticed something interesting: violators of the Wildlife Act – primarily hunters and fishers - are almost 4 times as likely to be convicted as violators of the Environmental Management Act – who ar

As part of the Premier’s drive to promote mining, the BC government has introduced legislation (Bill 19) to remove permitting requirements

You know those little letters that come after people's names that indicate that they get paid the big bucks for giving people – and governments and corporations – advice?  Letters like (in addition to LLB or JD), RPF (

Throughout the debate about whether the Keystone XL Pipeline should be built, industry proponents have argued that if the tarsands bitumen doesn’t go to Texas, it will be shipped to Asia through Canada.  So, with the Keystone XL Pipeline on hold unt

Today (November 7th) I’m appearing before the BC Legislature’s Special Committee on Cosmetic Pesticides to argue in favour of a ban on cosmetic use of pesticides.  We’ve made a brief video below of the powerpoint and presentation that I’m going to give them. 

 

Today, November 7, 2011, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (the Agency) announced that Taseko Mi

On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week (November 1st and 2nd) I was in Montreal, where I joined with elected officials, civil servants, labour activists, environmentalists, members of faith organizations and others to discuss climate change.  The occasion was the Climate Action Network’s

A Guest Post by Bonnie Docherty, Lecturer on Law and Senior Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic

In a recent story we reported that Mr.