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

Some years ago I was discussing the lack of Canadian action on climate change with a young man who confided that he was suffering from Lyme disease, which he had contracted in a region that not long ago had been free from the disease. For me, that young man remains the face of the health impacts of climate change.

High up in the Peruvian Andes, a small farming community called Huarez finds itself in danger of being flooded by a nearby glacier.

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?

Things are heating up in the battle to stop Kinder Morgan. At time of writing, dozens of water protectors have been arrested for violating a court injunction issued last week. Here is a recap of how we got here.

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)

West Coast Environmental Law staff say "Pinot and pugs, not pipelines!"

Global problems – like our plastic-choked seas – need global solutions.

“Regardless of your views on this particular pipeline (we are opposed, in case that wasn’t clear), anyone who thinks their locally-elected government or local First Nations shouldn’t get railroaded by a US corporation just because they have a federal approval should be very concerned about these recent developments.”