In a January 20th letter, Canada’s Environment Minister, Peter Kent, assured Canadians that the Canadian Government, despite having withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol, nonetheless has a plan on climate change.  But reading the letter, it’s pretty clear that that there is no real plan, unless you count planning to do nothing.  Not only have experts shown that the pieces of this plan will not achieve its goals, but a climate change plan does not address Canada's energy needs is no climate plan at all.  If we want to see what a real climate plan might look like, let’s look to the U.K., where successive Labour and Conservative governments have, unlike Canada’s governments, put in place real climate plans, and backed them up with laws and policies to achieve real results.

A new, ground-breaking report from West Coast Environmental Law – Climate Change and Professionals – is asking professional associations to ensure that their members provide responsible advice on climate-related issues. Folks in Delta, Richmond and other regions subject to flooding from rising sea-levels will want to know that professionals designing and implementing strategies to protect them from these impacts have the training and direction related to climate change that is required to do these tasks well. The same goes for other professionals carrying out other climate change-related tasks. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week 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 Provincial and Territorial Climate Change Leadership conference.

We’re proud to be among the more than 80 labour, faith, environmental and other groups making up Canada’s Climate Action Network.

I thought that I would quickly list the top 5 things I learned at the conference.

Several days spent at the end of September at UBCM, the annual gathering of local government officials from around the province was a perfect opportunity for West Coast Environmental Law to connect directly with some of the individuals working on the frontlines to make their communities great places to work and live. West Coast was very happy to see UBCM voting delegates endorse Resolution B91, which recommends that the Province of BC develop a science-based nature and climate conservation strategy.  Kudos to the District of Tofino and the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities for bringing Resolution B91 forward.

Companies that are emitting a lot of greenhouse gas emissions – including Canadian companies – should take notice of a recent court decision from the Virginia Supreme Court which suggests that their insurance coverage might not extend to lawsuits brought by the victims of climate change. The Court in AES Corporation v. Steadfast Insurance held that the insurance policy held by energy giant AES Corporation did not cover the costs of defending the energy company in a climate-related court case brought by the Alaskan village of Kivalina because the greenhouse gas emissions alleged in the lawsuit to have caused damages to the village were not an accident, but were alleged to be the inevitable result of AES’s greenhouse gas emissions.