Environmental Law

photo (cc) Dru Oja Jay, Dominion

Can Canada Atone for its Climate Sins?

Canada is a world-class climate dinosaur. We aren’t the leading per capita GHG emitter (that is Qatar), but we may get there yet. We signed and ratified Kyoto, but ignored it for years, radically exceeded our promised emissions target and then just abandoned the agreement. We are the only nation […]

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Environmental Protection Under Siege: This Time They Want It All

The Commission on Conservation, a Canadian government agency, was established in 1909. It was perhaps the earliest forum for business-conservation cooperation. It was a prescient and often thoughtful organization, producing hundreds of reports. Its objectives were mild-mannered enough, fitting for an era when polite society was inclined to civility and […]

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A COP18 Wrap-up: The Doha Gateway to a Warmer World

The UNFCCC COP18 climate change conference has been hailed, by some, as a success. The ‘Doha Gateway’ was celebrated in particular for its success at ensuring a second term of the Kyoto Protocol. After the negotiations went more than twenty-four hours overtime, the president of the conference quickly gaveled through […]

solarpanels740 © AnglianArt - Fotolia

The Right FIT

November was an up-and-down month for Ontario’s renewable energy industry. The Minister of Energy released a directive on November 23 to resume accepting applications for the province’s Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program. It’s good news for a program that has been on hold for review for several months, leaving solar manufacturers […]

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Canada’s Roadmap to Becoming a Resource Superpower

Canada largely owes its economic development to natural resources, the vast and (theoretically) sustainable resources like lumber, fish, minerals, agriculture and energy in the form of oil and natural gas. Borrowing liberally from Harold Innis’s iconic The Fur Trade in Canada, hewers of wood and drawers of water we were, […]

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Ontario Government Silent on the Great Lakes Protection Act

In June, Ontario’s Minister of the Environment stood at the shoreline of Lake Ontario in downtown Toronto to announce the introduction of Bill 100, the Great Lakes Protection Act, 2012. This broad new legislation would allow ministries to better cooperate on conservation initiatives – water quality, wastewater treatment, algae blooms, […]