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

Is this glass half full, and what should it cost?

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 about 15 year

To what extent does our society afford us a right to freedom of expression?

West Coast is excited to unveil our new and improved Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund (EDRF).  For the last 25 years West Coast Environmental Law has offered environmental legal aid to British Columbians through the EDRF (our 20th Anniversary pu

[Update - January 2016 - The federal government has signaled that it intends to take over Marilyn's private prosecution - which could mean that they intend to pursue it or that they intend to stay it.

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.  Although K

December 17 update: Bill C-43 received Royal Assent on December 16, 2014.