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

I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to have your drinking water, and your entire community, contaminated with jet fuel; particularly when, like the folks impacted by the Lemon Creek jet fuel spill in the Slocan Valley, you live in an otherwise pristine area.  The only thing that would make it worse would be feeling shut out of the clea

This week, the latest chapter in Canada’s David and Goliath struggle between citizens and Big Oil unfolded as a BC non-profit organization, Forest Ethics Advocacy,

UPDATE August 22, 2013: We’re pleased to report a small victory in the case of the missing Skeena! The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency has agreed to extend public comment and participant funding deadlines after West Coast Environmental Law and the T.

[Update 24 October 2013: The Joint Public Advisory Committee has decided to leave the Call for Comments up-and-running. So keep sending in your comments to the JPAC!]

[Update: 13 February 2014 - We have received word that Staniford's application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada has been denied.  In addition to meaning that Don is on the hook for $75,000 plus legal costs, it also means that we will not get the benefit of further direction from the Supreme Court on what is mea

Getting there

I recently had the privilege of attending the fourth annual Healing Walk for the tar sands, which was held at Fort McMurray from July 4 to 6. 

A great many Canadians, from many different backgrounds, have been standing up for fish – saying no to changes to the law that would gut legal protection for fish habitat.  And, thanks to public opposition, the

“We have spent our entire existence adapting. We'll adapt.  [Climate Change is] an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution.” – Rex Tillerson, CEO, Exxon Mobil

[Update - 4 Jul 2013 - Unfortunately the bee deaths in 2012 were apparently not a one time event, with reports that tens of millions of honey bees have died this summer in one town in Ontario, apparently due to exposure to neonicotinoid pesti

This week is a good time to think about climate science, and especially how governments listen to, and act on, the recommendations of climate experts.  It’s a good time to think about climate experts here in Canada, because one year ago the Canadian government got rid of the main expert agency responsible for advising it on environmental issues,