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

This June – 18 months after Prime Minister Trudeau issued mandates to six Cabinet Ministers to fix four of Canada’s environmental laws, and after two Parliamentary Committee and two expert panel reviews – the federal government released its

In the global economy, each region looks for its competitive advantage. Why should businesses locate in BC, instead of (for example) Argentina? What industries will do well in BC, giving us jobs?

It's a beautiful morning and I'm walking in my small Gulf Island community with my wee grandson. Birds chirping, flowers blooming, wee grandson cooing. It's all open-hearted love and happiness as I push the baby stroller through the island's downtown area, sometimes pausing to play with the wee one's impossibly soft feet.

West Coast is proud to ally with the Stk’emlúpsemc te Secwépemc Nation (SSN) in their use of their own laws to determine the future of Pípsell (also known as Jacko Lake and environs), a sacred area threatened by the proposed open pit Ajax mine.

In 2013, after Christy Clark’s unexpected election win, we wrote a post about what environmental wins we might expect from her new government.

Kinder Morgan’s risky Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion just got a whole lot riskier, just as the company was taking steps to offload some of that risk onto Canadian 

 

 Yawn.  Late last night, I watched the election results come in during a nail-biter of an election, and tried (eventually successfully) to get my 11-year old daughter – an ardent Green Party supporter – to go to sleep. 

“Dear Chevron – you may have noticed that I’ve been melting a little faster of late, because of fossil fuel pollution from your products (among others).  That’s a problem, because I’m the main source of water for hundreds of millions of people – not to mention all the other species that depend on me, too. What do you plan to do about it?

 

Today, April 22, we celebrate Earth Day, the day of action that started in 1970 and helped launch the environmental movement. 

Environment & Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna with EA Review Expert Panel Chair Johanne Gélinas (Photo: Anna Johnston).