Law reform is our specialty at West Coast Environmental Law. We work at all levels of government to transform the legal landscape and strengthen the laws that affect land, air and water.
This month, we’ve seen our efforts pay off with the passage of four federal bills that we were deeply involved in and that significantly strengthen Canada’s environmental safety net.
Efforts to protect BC’s northern coast go back half a century and are not to be taken lightly as the Senate considers killing Bill C-48.
Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, would protect a remote and unique region in northern British Columbia from the risk of catastrophic spills by prohibiting tankers carrying more than 12,500 tonnes of crude oil or certain other types of oil from docking, loading or unloading in Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon Entrance.
At Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald famously referred to Canada’s Senate as a chamber of sober second thought. One, he said, that “will never set itself in opposition against the deliberate and understood wishes of the people.”
Sir John A. should be turning in his grave.
Prevention of environmental damage is always better than response and clean-up. This became very obvious to residents in Metro Vancouver in 2015, when a cargo ship, the MV Marathassa, spilled 2,700 litres of fuel into the waters of English Bay.
For over 14,000 years, the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation has thrived on the abundance of the lands and waters in what is now known as the central coast of British Columbia. More than half of Haíɫzaqv territory is ocean – they are an ocean people, and for generations they have lived in a reciprocal relationship with the ocean, air, land and other beings in their territory.
In 1998, an internal Royal Dutch Shell memo predicted that as the impacts of climate change got worse, fossil-fuel companies might be sued in a class-action lawsuit “on the grounds of neglecting what scientists (including their own) have been saying for years …”
Big Oil’s problem isn’t international philanthropy – it’s a changing market in the face of climate change
Our Climate Law in our Hands campaign recently attracted national attention when Alberta’s oil and gas industry took offence at a letter by Whistler sent to Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL). Since then we’ve received a barrage of tweets, posts, comments and emails on the campaign, ranging from the supportive to the hostile.
Our Legal Aid team is excited to announce that the Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund (EDRF) has a new application form and has raised the rate we can pay for legal and expert services. We hope that these initiatives make the EDRF a more accessible resource for individuals, First Nations and community groups that need legal help to protect their health and environment.
To be a responsible fiscal manager, you need a budget. And to be a responsible climate leader, you also need a budget – a carbon budget.