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

Support a motion to make fossil fuel polluters pay a share of local climate costs

We need your help!

Tell Vancouver Council to vote next week to hold Chevron, Exxon Mobil and other global fossil fuel companies responsible for a share of Vancouver’s climate costs.

Canada’s approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline project this week is a glaring reminder that the endangered orcas of the Salish Sea may still go extinct. People concerned about a southern resident killer whale population that has dipped to 76 should keep fighting this bad decision, which could push these beloved orcas over the edge.

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.

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.

My work to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for local climate costs, through our Climate Law in our Hands initiative, has provoked strong reactions.

May 3rd, 2019 was a great day for climate action.

A legislated oil tanker ban on the north Pacific coast is within reach. Senators are preparing to vote on Bill C-48 – the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act – and they need to hear from you one last time.

Forty-nine years ago Earth Day was born. Millions of people are working on solutions to the Earth’s deep and intractable human-caused maladies.

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.

School Strike for Climate

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the #fridays4future #schoostrike4climate in Vancouver. This event was one of over 2,000 events worldwide in 125 countries, involving 1.5 million people.