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

Canada is not a super-power.  We’re geographically large, but small in terms of population.  And when it comes to climate change we’re used to hearing politicians say that we’re “only” responsible for about 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas em

Meaningful public participation is a backbone of environmental assessment. Without it, project reviews can become a closed-door rubber stamp, vulnerable to manipulation by proponents, governments, or any stakeholder with an agenda and a seat at the table.

(May 26, 2015 Correction: The reference to PRV as a "disease" in the section marked "The precautionary principle" has been corrected to "disease agent." Thank you to reader John Segal for pointing out the error.)

The phrase “do as I say, not as I do” comes to mind.

Amid all the ocean stories dominating the headlines last week, like the Lax Kw'alaams First Nation’s decision to turn down a billion  dollar offer from an LNG proponent whose liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant is  located in a hotspot of salmon biodiversity where they traditionally f

In the past two weeks, I embarked on something of a radical carbon offset program as one part of the growing mass movement to stop the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion.

Three years ago the Province released a report estimating it would cost $9.5 billion to prepare the Lower Mainland for rising sea levels by 2100. The report focused on “hard” solutions: dikes, sea gates, flood walls.

April 24 Update: We are informed that as a result of allocations for consultations and the Major Projects Management Office in the 2015 federal budget, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency's budget will total approximately $32 million, which is comparable to recent previous years.

BC will soon lose the dubious distinction of being the “Wild West for groundwater”.