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

BC’s Skeena watershed is a spectacular salmon breeding ground: the river and estuary are wild, undammed, and full not only of salmon but of herring, eulachon and waterfowl.

Now’s the time to raise your voice to help stem the rising tide of plastic waste, before it turns into a tsunami.

We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make sure that our waters and coast are protected from oil spills – not just from Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and tankers, but from any source for the future – through the modernization of our oil spill regulations in BC.

Last week (on March 26th) Mr. Peter Tabuns, the Ontario NDP’s Environment and Climate Change Critic, introduced Bill 21, the Liability for Climate-related Harms Act, 2018 into the Ontario Legislature.

Has the north coast oil tanker ban stalled in Parliament?

On March 20th, 2017, the New Zealand government enacted legislation recognizing the Whanganui River as a legal person, holding rights and responsibilities equivalent to a person.

As neighbouring US jurisdictions like Washington State move to ban fish farming on the Pacific coast and ‘Namgis First Nation

A colony of nesting Adélie penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula. (Photo: Maryann Watson)

The neighbour of a composting facility is sued by its owner when she complains about odours and pests. An elderly couple arguing that a trail across private property is public receive a threatening letter from a lawyer telling them that they will be sued if they don’t stop talking about the trail.

On February 8, the federal government unveiled Bill C-69, which would introduce a new law governing environmental assessments (EA), replace the maligned National Energy Board with a new Canadian Energy Regulator, and amend the Navigation Protection