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

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

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

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

Last July (2011)  we told you about the Halalt First Nation’s win in the BC Supreme Court to protect water flow in the Chemainus River, when the BC Supreme Court ordered a halt to the use of water from

Late last week (Thursday, September 8th), the Canadian government, after working for almost a decade to develop a plan to manage BC’s North Coast, known as the Pacific North Coast Integrated Marine Area Plan (PNCIMA), suddenly announced that it is withdrawing from an agreemen

Industry and government are often quick to proclaim the jobs created by mines and other industrial operations, and to characterize environmental assessment and other environmental laws as

Dene Tha’ First Nation Challenges the Sale of Oil and Gas Parcels on their Traditional Territory

Last week (on July 13th), Madame Justice Wedge of the BC Supreme Court sided with the Halalt First Nation and suspended plans to pump water from the Chemainus aquifer to be used in the District of North Cowichan.  West Coast Environ

Treaty 8 First Nations have taken their struggle against the proposed Site C Hydroelectric Dam on the Peace River into the international arena by

On Wednesday (May 25th) the BC Court of Appeal suspended a permit allowing First Coal Corporation to explore for coal in the habitat of a threatened caribou herd, upholding a decision of the BC Supreme Court that the government had not adequately consulted the West Moberly