Your parents may have told you: “If you make a mess, you have to clean it up.” In a nutshell, that is the basis of the “polluter pays” principle. There is a lot wrapped up inside the simple principle of polluter pays. The roots of the principle come from economics rather than from environmentalism. The […]
About Jeff Surtees
Jeff Surtees B.Comm., JD, LLM is the Executive Director of the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta.
Important Concepts in Environmental Law – The “Precautionary Principle”.
December 12, 2018 By Jeff Surtees
Last issue we talked about sustainable development. This time the topic is the precautionary principle. Most human activity has risk. When we are deciding whether we should do something, we balance the risks against the possible rewards. Risk has two parts. First, there is the probability that something bad will happen. Second, there is the […]
Important Concepts in Environmental Law – the Idea of “Sustainable Development”
November 13, 2018 By Jeff Surtees
In the next few columns I am going to talk about some concepts that are important to understanding environmental law. The first is the idea of sustainable development. A quick search of the CANLII website shows the phrase appears in Canadian federal and provincial legislation 359 times and in published court decisions 237 times. In […]
Bicycle Law in Alberta
As a cyclist, do you follow the rules of the road? According to a University of Colorado Survey, about eighty-five percent of cyclists do obey the law when riding. Almost three quarters of the scofflaws who break the rules claim to do so for their personal safety – saying they are simply getting out of […]
Are Environmentalists Good or Bad?
March 6, 2018 By Jeff Surtees
Tree-huggers. Greenies. Enviro-nazis. Eco-terrorists. Eco-extremists. City-dwellers. Radicals. Eco-vangelists. Eco-crazies. Sheeple. Foreign-funded __________________ (add any of the preceding epithets). What ARE environmentalists anyway? Are they good, wise, caring, rational, science-loving people put here to save us? Or are they deluded, uninformed, unreasonable, deranged lunatics out to destroy our jobs and our way of life, probably for […]
