Marking Twenty Years of Legal Victories

Ecojustice will continue to defend the environment, one case at a time

By TAMARA LORINCZ and DEVON PAGE
The Chronicle Herald, Halifax: Published: 2010-10-27

Last week, the largest fine in Canadian history was issued against a corporation for an environmental offence.

Oilsands giant Syncrude Ltd. was fined $3.2 million by the Provincial Court of Alberta for failing to prevent the death of 1,600 migratory waterfowl that landed on the company’s toxic tailings pond in Fort McMurray in 2008.

It was Ecojustice Canada that initially launched the private prosecution against Syncrude, which pushed the provincial and federal governments to finally act and led to this environmental victory.

Ecojustice (formerly Sierra Legal Defence Fund) is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month as the country’s leading non-profit that uses the law to defend Canadians’ right to a clean and healthy natural environment ( www.ecojustice.ca).

In 1990, Harvard-educated lawyer Stewart Elgie co-founded Sierra Legal with a board of passionate young lawyers.

From an office in Vancouver, they offered free legal services to the environmental community.

Within a month of opening, the environmental lawyers were taking logging companies to court to protect old-growth forests and safeguard endangered species in British Columbia.

Today, Ecojustice has offices in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, with an expert staff of lawyers and scientists.

It also has an environmental legal clinic at the University of Ottawa and a partnership with the Halifax-based East Coast Environmental Law Association ( www.ecelaw.ca).

For two decades, Ecojustice has represented the public interest and won precedent-setting cases at all levels of court. It has also shaped public policy and initiated law reform across Canada.

For example, in 2001, Elgie argued before the Supreme Court of Canada that the precautionary principle should be used to allow the Town of Hudson to pass a municipal pesticide ban. The court agreed and enshrined this principle in Canadian law in its pioneering decision, Spraytech v. Hudson.

Now, there are 156 municipalities around the country that have relied on the Hudson decision and have passed bylaws banning the use of cosmetic and ornamental pesticides.

This year, Nova Scotia joined Quebec and Ontario and proclaimed a provincewide Non-essential Pesticide Control Act.

Over the past decade, Ecojustice has produced national report cards on drinking water and sewage that have exposed the country’s lax regulations.

In its most recent report, Seeking Water Justice, Ecojustice found that there are currently 1,776 drinking water advisories and is calling for binding federal water standards.

In major mining legal battles this past year, Ecojustice lawyers won cases that forced mining companies in Canada to report their toxic output on the National Pollutant Release Inventory, to adequately consult stakeholders, and to broadly scope projects in environmental assessments.

Ecojustice has achieved significant success for species at risk.

In two recent, ground-breaking court challenges, Ecojustice forced the federal government to identify critical habitat in the recovery programs for the greater sage-grouse, an endangered prairie bird, and Nooksack dace, a threatened pacific minnow.

These legal wins have implications for all of Canada’s 579 imperilled species, as the federal government will have to identify and protect adequate habitat for their survival.

For Nova Scotia’s threatened species and forests, Ecojustice supports the recommendations for law reform, for improved compliance and for new legislation outlined in the report A Natural Balance: Towards a New Natural Resource Strategy for Nova Scotia.

Ecojustice further calls on the government of Nova Scotia to follow the lead of Ontario and develop an Environmental Bill of Rights for citizens.

In her report A Natural Balance, Constance Glube, chair of the steering committee and former Chief Justice of Nova Scotia, stated that "the status quo is not an option" for our natural resources.

Ecojustice agrees and will continue to fight in the courts to protect the environment one case at a time.

Tamara Lorincz is a board member and Devon Page is executive director of Ecojustice Canada.