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

One of my favourite parts of diving is in the first moments of descent, just after my head slips beneath the sea surface and I am in transition between sinking and floating; passing from the air to the underwater world. Spending time in the ocean allows a glimpse into the strange and wonderful marine environment.

From providing legal aid for communities to defend their environment, to revitalizing Indigenous laws, and holding fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in climate change – this year the West Coast team will continue working toward a better future for people and the environment in Canada.

Living at the edge of the biodiversity-rich and vulnerable Salish Sea, we welcomed the news of one and a half billion dollars to protect Canada’s oceans and coasts, an investment of a scale we’ve not seen for decades.

Along with many other environmentalists, I found myself torn about how to react to last week’s First Ministers’ Meeting and the release of the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.

How my view of the world changed over the course of a fight against a megaproject

This is your friend Eugene, blogging from 9,753 metres in the sky.

The thing that frustrated me most when watching the Prime Minister’s press conference earlier this week approving the Kinder Morgan and Line 3 pipelines is that he – or at least his government – knows that these pipelines undermine Canada’s climate goals and move us away from a sustainable future. 

Parliamentary debates from 1977 contain important lessons about the importance of safeguarding fish habitat in Canada. Photo: Jon Nelson.

Canadian law and policy restricts the involvement of charities in public debate and public policy development – activities labeled by the Canada Revenue Agency as “political activities”.