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

H̓aíkḷa: To make things right – An opportunity for change

The federal cabinet’s re-approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and Tanker Expansion Project (“TMX” or “the Project”) on June 18, 2019 was hardly shocking news.

As summer draws to a close, West Coast is saying goodbye to another cohort of dedicated summer law students who have contributed to our legal programs over the past few months. Each year we host a new group of lawyers-to-be, who assist greatly with legal research, developing educational resources, legal aid support and more.

The latest cabinet approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline came less than a day after the federal government declared a climate emergency.

Efforts to protect BC’s northern coast go back half a century and are not to be taken lightly as the Senate considers killing Bill C-48.

At Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald famously referred to Canada’s Senate as a chamber of sober second thought. One, he said, that “will never set itself in opposition against the deliberate and understood wishes of the people.”

Sir John A. should be turning in his grave.

Forty-nine years ago Earth Day was born. Millions of people are working on solutions to the Earth’s deep and intractable human-caused maladies.

Help is on the way for some endangered southern mountain caribou. There are two plans under development to save this threatened species, and the BC government is consulting with the public about these plans.

When you walk along an ocean shoreline, it’s a feast for the senses – waves crashing, birds swooping and calling, the taste of salt in the air, vividly coloured sea plants and creatures washing up in the swell of the waves. It’s easy to see that the coast is a place rich in life and biodiversity.

For over 14,000 years, the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation has thrived on the abundance of the lands and waters in what is now known as the central coast of British Columbia.