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

[Updated May 1, 2013 - Two separate people have suggested removing common terms from the word clouds so that words like "BC" and "government" don't overshadow the other words used.  We agree.

[Updated 7 August 2013]

A snow storm that blew through central Canada made this year’s March 19 Ottawa’s snowiest on record.  But there was more than weather to distinguish this as a historic date.

As the Yinka Dene Alliance and their allies were gathering in Ottawa to renew their opposition to Tar Sands Pipelines on March 19th, Natural Resource Minister, Joe Oliver, was in Terrace, BC, to

In December 2012 the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria published a collection of environmental law reform proposals, with contributions from a variety of leading environmental lawyers, which inc

In its Throne Speech (on Monday, February 12th, 2013), the BC government unveiled its promise for a Prosperity Fund – a fund that pr

Kinder Morgan’s proposal to expand its oil pipeline from Alberta’s Tarsands to Burnaby will dramatically increase the number of oil tankers passing through the Salish Sea, and increase the likelihood of a spill.  But if and when there is a spill, the insurance funds available - $1.34 Billion – will be far short of the estimated $10.8 Billio

The Canadian government likes to excuse its slow action on climate change by suggesting that Canada needs to wait for other countries to act.  However, when elected representatives from around the world gathered in London last week to discuss how laws can help fight climate change, they

Well, tomorrow (January 4th) the Enbridge Joint Review Panel arrives in Victoria.  It’s in Vancouver on January 14th, and in Kelowna on the 28th.  So this is a big month in the southern part of our province for those concerned about the Enbridge Pipeline and Tanker Project. 

In December 2010, representatives of sixty-one Indigenous nations came together in an historic alliance to protect the Fraser watershed and our coastal waters from the threat of oil spills.The result was the Save the Fraser Declaration, which bans tar sands projects, like the Enbridge pipeline and tankers p