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

Some interesting recent developments in the US on regulating hydraulic fracturing, aka “fracking.” 

Last week, BC’s Minister of Forests and Range, Pat Bell, announced the introduction of a new Zero Net Deforestation Act.  Minister Bell explained:

In recent months there has been a sharp drop in public faith in climate science.  The collapse is not, as is sometimes suggested, in the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is occurring.  As West Coast has previously pointed out, despite embarrassing errors and some arguably unprofessional e-mails, the

The Honourable Mr.

Only weeks before the Copenhagen conference on climate change, climate skeptics gleefully released over a thousand e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia, claiming that these e-mails (which they branded climate gate) discredited not only the wo

Last week I read this announcement of the launch of Transition Canada – a national network to facilitate transition towns in Canada.  I haven’t been able to find much further information about this new organization, but there have been

West Coast Environmental Law has been working with communities along the controversial proposed Enbridge Pipeline and oil tanker route  to make sure that their views are fully considered in any government decision.

We are now 5 days into a stand-off between the Okanagan Indian Band and Tolko Industries at Browns Creek  on the west side of Okanagan Lake.  With Tolko in court today seeking an enforcement order to remove Elders, band members, supporters and Chiefs from Browns Creek, things are about to escalata further.

For me one of the most interesting observations in West Coast Environmental Law’s “Emerging Solutions on Clean, Green Power” Dialogue came from former Hupacasath Chief,

This morning Chief Roland Willson and the entire Council of the West Moberly First Nations, from Northeast BC, walked into a courtroom in Victoria to ask a judge of the BC Supreme Court to