Kearl Oil Sands Project On February 27, 2007, a joint provincial-federal regulatory panel, which consisted of the
Alberta Energy and Utilities Board and the
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA), gave their approval for
Imperial Oil's "massive" $8 billion
Kearl Oil Sands (KOS) Project, which would create four
open-pit mines north of
Fort McMurray, Alberta. Based on the joint panel's "positive environmental assessment", the
Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) also authorized a "key water permit" for the KOS site. In the spring of 2007, Ecojustice (then Sierra Legal) launched legal action on behalf of a "coalition of environmental groups"—"Sierra Club of Canada, Pembina Institute, Prairie Acid Rain Coalition and Toxics Watch Society" The
Advertising Standards Canada (now Ad Standards) had ruled the Friends of Science ads—which appeared prior to the
2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) talks, held in Paris from November 30 to December 12—with messages of "overzealous" climate policies paid for by Canadian "taxpayers' money". By December, in spite of the ruling, FoS has placed billboards in major Canadian cities with messages such as "The sun is the main driver of climate change. Not you."
Trans Mountain Pipeline In 2017 Ecojustice, acting on behalf of their clients Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Living Oceans Society, won the court case that overturned the federal government's approval of the Canadian division of
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners' $7.4-billion
Trans Mountain Pipeline project, which resulted in the
National Energy Board (NEB) being forced to "re-evaluate the projects marine shipping impacts". The successful lawsuit "halted construction on the expansion". On November 6, 2017, McDade sent a letter to Kinder Morgan seeking an apology to the "City of Burnaby and its professional staff" following accusations that Burnaby had stalled construction of the Canadian division of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners' Trans Mountain Pipeline project. McDade stated in his letter that Burnaby's "regulatory process has been applied in good faith, as the evidence will readily show in the motion before the NEB." Following a June 2019 re-approval of the Trans Mountain project by the federal Cabinet government, in July 2019, lawyers from Ecojustice filed a motion with the Federal Court of Appeal to challenge the Cabinet's decision.
Environment Canada—now known as Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)—had undertaken an investigation in September 2015 to verify that Volkswagen had installed "defeat devices" designed to bypass emission control tests in Canada. An agreement was reached on December 15, 2016. According to a September 16, 2018 article in the
Vancouver Sun, since 2015, while United States, German and other national governments had fined Volkswagen "billions of dollars and sent some of its top executives to jail for breaking environmental laws", by the fall of 2018, the Canadian federal government had done nothing. The
Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) are also a client of Ecojustice on this case. On July 23, 2019 Ecojustice lawyers on behalf of Environmental Defence "applied for a judicial review to challenge the failure of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to properly report progress on an investigation requested by EDC staff in July 2017 as required by Public Participation provisions in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA)."
Ontario cancelled cap-and-trade In September 2018, Ecojustice lawyers, in "partnership with the uOttawa-Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic", filed a lawsuit against the Ontario provincial government on behalf of Greenpeace alleging that the "Ford government unlawfully failed to provide for public consultation on a regulation that ended Ontario's
cap and trade program and on Bill 4, the Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, 2018, currently before the legislature."
Bill C-69 In a May 14, 2019
CBC News article, Environmental Defence's Julia Levin and Ecojustice lawyer, Joshua Ginsberg, expressed concern that proposed amendments to Bill C-69 would favour industry over the environment.
Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns Alberta Premier
Jason Kenney's one-year $2.5 million
Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns, which he announced on July 4, 2019, is led by a forensic accountant, Steve Allan, with a "mandate to investigate foreign-funded efforts". Kenney cited "the intrepid reporting of journalist Vivian Krause", who has spent ten years examining foreign funding of Canadian environmental non-profit organizations (ENGOs) when he made his announcement.
Ecojustice Canada Society v Alberta In September 2019, Ecojustice issued a letter of warning of a potential legal challenge to commissioner Allan, asking for a response within 30 days. Ecojustice is saying that changes must be made to the mandate of the Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns. According to
The Globe and Mail, "environmental and activist groups are mobilizing against the public inquiry". Ecojustice says the "inquiry is unlawful and possibly unconstitutional because of the language used in the mandate" given to commissioner Steve Allan. Ecojustice said the inquiry labels "environmental groups critical of oil and gas development as 'anti-Alberta. On November 21, 2019, Ecojustice lawyer Devon Page filed the lawsuit
Ecojustice Canada Society v Alberta in the
Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta in Calgary. While the "factual premise" underlying the inquiry have been "seriously challenged several times", the lawsuit is the "first challenge to its legality". Judge Horner said that since the Inquiry was in its second phase at the end of November 2020, and that in that phase the Inquiry would be "contacting organizations of interest in order to solicit their response" and that by November 26, the Inquiry had not published any "finding of misconduct" on Ecojustice's part, there was therefore "no evidence that the Inquiry contains unfounded and untested allegations against Ecojustice" harmful to its reputation. In 2018, Ecojustice had intervened in the Supreme Court hearing on who is responsible for cleaning up orphan wells after following a bankruptcy. On January 31, 2019, in the case of Redwater Energy, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5–2 overturning "two lower court decisions that said bankruptcy law has paramountcy over provincial environmental responsibilities". The Supreme Court of Canada "allowed an appeal brought by the AER and the OWA from the decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal in
Orphan Well Association v Grant Thornton Limited (Redwater). The "case has been one of the most closely watched by the
Canadian oil and gas industry in decades". Redwater lawyers said that it was not possible for the company to comply with both the federal and provincial legislation in regards to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA). The January 31 ruling means that "bankruptcy is not a licence to ignore environmental regulations, and there is no inherent conflict between federal bankruptcy laws and provincial environmental regulations." ==Partnerships==