It’s generally bad news for the environment & democracy when the government rewrites laws at the request of an industry. But when it comes to provincial parks, the BC government has gone one step further, and actually has an official policy setting out how industry should go about proposing legislative amendments. It’s called the
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.
A little more than a week ago (on February 13th), the Association of BC Forest Professionals (ABCFP) awarded its first ever “Climate Change Innovators” Award to Alex Woods, a Forest Pathologist working for the BC Government. The launch of this award, a clear statement on the importance of addressing climate change in professional forestry,
A guest Environmental Law Alert from Friends of Pioneer Forest
In June 2012 word went around our community that Pioneer Forest which was currently owned by School District #68 and leased for a park by the City of Nanaimo was going to be sold.
Pioneer Forest
It feels a bit like déjà vu.
Once again we’re faced with a federal government study that was highly relevant to the environmental assessment of the Enbridge pipelines and tankers project, but which was not considered in the assessment because it was released too late.
The BC Parks Service says that the provincial parks and conservancies are a “public trust” for the “protection of natural environments for the inspiration, use and enjoyment of the public.” These noble sentiments are difficult to square with
Tuesday night (February 4th) the City of Chilliwack passed a bylaw intended to allow the development of a
Our 2011 report, Professionals and Climate Change, made the case that climate change fundamentally impacts the work and ethical obligations of many different types of professions, and that the professional associations that gover
What to make of the conclusion, courtesy of the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel (JRP) considering Enbridge’s proposed pipelines and tankers project, that a catastrophic spill of diluted bitumen (untreated oil sands oil, diluted so that it can be transported by pipe) on BC’s North Coast would only have a short-term impact on the enviro
Canadians may soon know more about the chemicals being used to extract bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands, thanks to West Coast Environmental Law and our colleagues at Environmental Defence and the Association Québécoise de Lutte Contre la