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

We are St’át’imc. We speak St’át’imcets (also referred to as Ucwalmícwts or the language of the people). Created by the Transformers, our home is situated at an intersection of deep gorges in the lee of the Northwest Coast Mountains, now referred to as British Columbia.

Last month, we wrote about actions you could take to cut plastic pollution in BC.

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.

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)

When it comes to implementing the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, lawyers have unique responsibilities; Calls to Action 27, 28, 29 and 50 are particularly instructive. Today, my colleague Maxine Hayman Matilpi and I reflect on what this means for us as legally trained individuals, our public interest law organization and legal pluralism in Canada.