Reading Time: 7 minutes While international mechanisms are increasingly recognizing the human rights to water and sanitation, states must take action too. Concerns about the human rights to water and sanitation (HRWS) under international law have gained increasing attention in recent years. In Canada, ongoing water advisories within Indigenous communities prompted a 2014 Human Rights Watch report. The report […]
Unleashing the Environmental Power of Municipalities: Recommendations to Strengthen Alberta’s Municipal Government Act
Reading Time: 5 minutes Municipalities play a key role in the management and protection of Alberta’s environment. This occurs through regulation of private land uses and through local land use planning. Municipalities can also direct local changes that reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and create resilient communities that can adapt to the changes caused by climate […]
Teacher’s Talk LawNow: Host an Earth Summit
Reading Time: 2 minutes The environment and Canada’s resource driven economy has been a recurring top story in the national news. There is currently an abundance of teachable moments to discuss the environment. The latest issue of LawNow magazine explores environmental causes and the law and is the perfect backgrounder for informed discussions about current events and environmental issues. […]
Viewpoint 37-4: The Economy and The Environment
Reading Time: 3 minutes The economies that will dominate in the future will be those that embrace environmental challenges and see them as opportunities and not cost. For the longest time, the message has been that dealing with environmental issues incurs a cost to the economy that will harm our competitiveness. More and more, however, there is a growing […]
Nickel Shower: An Environmental Class Action
Reading Time: 7 minutes Introduction The recent Smith v. Inco Limited case is the first Canadian environmental class action lawsuit to proceed through a trial and appeal. It shows how the courts mediate between the interests of industry and of private landowners. Inco refined nickel near the small southern Ontario city of Port Colborne on the north shore of Lake […]
The Difference a Year Makes: Changes to Canadian Federal Environmental Assessment Law in 2012
Reading Time: 7 minutes In 2012, the landscape of Canadian federal environmental assessment law was completely altered. Following on the heels of a truncated statutory review process in late 2011, federal environmental assessment law was re-written with the passage of Bill C-38 (the federal omnibus budget bill). This article will provide an overview of the statutory review process and […]
Civil Disobedience, Environmental Protest and the Rule of Law
Reading Time: 6 minutes What is civil disobedience? Civil disobedience involves intentional violation of the law to achieve a result the law-breakers believe is in the public interest. Civil disobedience is a form of protest intended to draw attention to a wrong or injustice which the protesters believe is sufficiently serious to morally justify violation of the law. In […]
The Oil Sands: Westward – How?
Reading Time: 9 minutes Last summer, I mentioned to our editor that I couldn’t understand why Enbridge chose to route Alberta oil via its Northern Gateway line to Kitimat, with its long and narrow channels to open water, when the Port of Prince Rupert had no such obstacles and was closer to Asia. She told me to find out. […]
The Constitutional Right to a Healthy Environment
Reading Time: 6 minutes Fifty years ago, the concept of a human right to a healthy environment was viewed as a novel, even radical, idea. Today it is widely recognized in international law and endorsed by an overwhelming proportion of countries. Even more importantly, despite their recent vintage, environmental rights enjoy constitutional protection in over 100 countries. These provisions […]
The land gives us more than food, but can the law give back?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Set foot on Ruzicka Sunrise Farm and something feels different. Whether it is the diversity of birds, the native prairie, or dugouts that test cleaner than some municipal water sources, Don and Marie Ruzicka are clearly deserving of the recognition they have received for environmental conservation. The Ruzickas raise poultry, hogs and beef using a […]
