“The right to speak is more precious than gold”. Members of the Wilderness Committee displayed these words proudly on the steps of the Supreme Court of BC as they prepared for a two-week hearing on a defamation claim by Taseko Mines Ltd.
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.
The term “social licence to operate” (SLO) is used frequently by project proponents and in the media. What does it mean and why is it important? The phrase was originally coined by the mining industry abo
To what extent does our society afford us a right to freedom of expression?
It’s been a busy year – with West Coast sounding the alarm on some major changes to BC’s laws and analyzing and commenting on other legal issues related to the future of our communities and planet. Thanks to the magic of Google Analytics we’re able to give you our 10 most-read posts of 2014.
On December 11, West Coast Environmental Law, along with the Northwest Institute for Bioregional Research (NWI), co-hosted the first of a series of community dialogue sessions on LNG and
It’s a bit over twenty years since I was arrested, along with 300 other people who stood on the Kennedy Lake Road on August 9th, 1993, in Clayoquot Sound. So the recent protests on Burnaby Mountain, with over 120 people arrested for protesting Kinder Morgan’s pipeline exploration activities in a regional park, brought back memories.
December 17 update: Bill C-43 received Royal Assent on December 16, 2014.
It has become a platitude to call transparency and accountability cornerstones of democracy, but the extent to which these “cornerstones” are respected under Canada’s and B.C.’s environmental assessment laws will be put to the test in four legal challenges to last month’s approvals of BC Hydro’s proposed Site C dam.