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

It has been a busy few months in the ongoing Trans Mountain saga.

As the world economy sputtered due to disruptions caused by COVID-19, major changes started to emerge that make it clear that the post-pandemic world will not look like the pre-pandemic world.

With just over a week to go until election day, are you reading the election platforms of BC’s main parties?

British Columbia is in the middle of an election and the three main parties have recently released their election platforms (NDP,

Reflections from West Coast’s new Climate Scientist, Dr. Silvie Harder

West Coast is proud to share the news that our Executive Director and Senior Counsel, Jessica Clogg, has been selected as one of Canada’s Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers in Canadian Lawyer

As Canada’s Parliament returns to session this fall, we must make sure that a green and just recovery is the government’s top priority. We don’t have a moment to lose – big polluters have been busy lobbying for bailouts and exemptions from environmental rules. 

As a record low number of sockeye salmon are returning to the Fraser River and First Nations leaders are calling for an emergency closure of the fishery, concern about the health of the Fraser River watershed has likely never been higher. So, it was good to see the BC Supreme Court recently uphold Fisheries Act convictions and fines against the University of British Columbia (UBC) stemming from a 2014 incident in which ammonia from Thunderbird Arena was discharged into the Fraser River watershed, killing at least 70 fish.

Summer 2020 has been intense, to say the least – but luckily this summer we've had a group of dedicated law students to energize and inspire our work at West Coast.

Why is Canada’s final Strategic Assessment of Climate Change (SACC) like a self-help book? They both contain helpful information, but at the end of the day, there’s no guarantee that they’ll influence real-life decisions.