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

Rob Edward is a sməlqmíx community member & Lower Similkameen Indian Band (LSIB) tech specialist. He works with language and language translation for the sməlqmíx, the syilx people of the Similkameen Valley.

As interest in offshore oil and gas exploration is thankfully floundering in Canada, marine renewable energy is on the rise.

Spring is usually a beautiful, vibrant time in the Fraser River Estuary, but this year it also brought the dark cloud of federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s approval of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (T2) expansion project.

Hot off the presses! Our new Together Against Trans Mountain sticker features five species standing up to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project (TMX): orcas, salmon, Anna's hummingbirds, red-breasted sapsuckers, and the Oregon forestsnail. 

The past few weeks have seen a couple of important developments in the U.S. court cases brought against fossil fuel companies for the costs of climate change.

From the point of view of Justice Church of the BC Supreme Court, it was probably pretty clear that the protesters blocking construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline across Northern BC were breaking the law.

West Coast Environmental Law’s Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund (EDRF) provides legal and funding support for individuals and groups using the law to protect the places, people and species they care about – like Cara Cornell, a Fraser Valley resident working to prevent harm to local wetlands and wildlife caused by Trans Mountain construction.

Last month, I published an op-ed marking the one-year anniversary of Trans Mountain’s last cost update (Feb. 18, 2022), when the price tag of the expansion ballooned to $21.4 billion.

On March 7, 2023 the Town of Gibsons Council heard from a delegation of its residents who are concerned about the costs of climate change. Dawn Allen and Alaya Boisvert, supported by friends and neighbours, spoke passionately about the ways that climate change is already harming Gibsons. 

This post is the latest in a series looking at corporations that break the law in BC – specifically environmental laws – often with a long history of non-compliance. Our focus today is West Fraser Mills Ltd.