Episode 7: Canadian Environmental Law and Policy

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: environmental law covers a lot of areas of law so both in common law and civil law environmental law arises in areas such as tort law property law food laws we've talked about but also things you might not immediately think about so corporate law trade law have huge impact on how the environment is protected or degraded intellectual property law so there's in fact very few areas of law that are not affecting or affected by the environment and then of course there's the international level of law where canada has obligations under for example the [00:00:36] Peter Andre: paris climate agreement and sustainable development goals welcome to the eco politics podcast this podcast series tackles some of the big questions in the field of environmental politics for university students in canada i'm peter andre from carlton university and my co-host for the series is ryan cats rosine from the university of ottawa though he's not going to join us for today's conversation in this episode i'll be talking with dr heather mcleod kilmurray professor in the faculty of law at the university of ottawa and dr angela lee assistant professor of law at ryerson university in toronto today we're talking about environmental law and policy in canada both heather and angela teach courses on the intersection between canadian law and the environment they are also two of the three co-editors with professor natalie chalifour of the university of ottawa of a groundbreaking book released in 2019 called food law and policy in canada environmental law and policy as we'll discuss encompasses a lot this is also a rapidly changing field as the climate crisis and biodiversity crises deepen as new issues like plastics in the environment come into the political spotlight and as new technologies like lab-grown meat or genetically modified fish come into supply chains and need to be regulated for their possible environmental and human health implications i'm so glad that we have two experts with us today heather and angela to help us unpack environmental law and policy in the canadian context we have a lot of territory to cover so i think we should just get right into it so thank you both for joining me in this conversation and i'm going to start with a question for heather to set the stage heather how would you characterize the field of environmental law in general terms and what does this field look like in canada specifically so first and foremost [00:02:34] Speaker 1: there are and always have been indigenous nations in canada with extensive environmental laws principles and practices while some settler law and practice is starting to acknowledge and respect traditional knowledge science and expertise it's still woefully inadequate in this regard indigenous environmental law on these lands and waters of course deserves an entire podcast of their own and indeed many and varied ones within canadian settler law and we can begin with canada's constitution which does not interestingly include the environment as one of the areas of jurisdiction given either exclusively to the federal government or the provincial government so we have a shared jurisdiction over the environment that's often debated and a classic example of this is the current litigation over the federal greenhouse gas pollution pricing act so over the carbon pricing efforts of the federal government so section the 91 and 92 of the constitution divide federal and provincial powers over various undertakings so the province has power over things like property and civil rights matters of a local and private nature and natural resources while the federal government has power over things like fisheries taxation interprovincial trade but the federal government also has a basket category called peace order and good government and that pog power contains a national concern doctrine and that was the argument that the federal government was able to win on in both the litigation in ontario and saskatchewan but the alberta court of appeal disagreed and so now it's going to the supreme court of canada so what most experts argue is that we have of course overlapping jurisdiction over the environment and we would apply normally what canada tends to do which is a cooperative federalism model also of course municipal governments have a lot of environmental power and influence through things like planning laws zoning infrastructure transportation policy etc you've done a great job heather of kind of sketching the breadth of [00:04:43] Peter Andre: environmental law and policy recognizing the place of indigenous uh environmental law and policy which is still under acknowledged by the state and then talking about this area of overlapping jurisdiction and hopefully cooperative federalism in in most cases can you tell me a little bit about the normative assumptions that underpin uh this legal approach yes so while there is some movement lately toward more [00:05:08] Speaker 1: ecocentric and ecosystem type approaches in some areas of canadian environmental law a lot of emphasis is still on the environmental benefits to humans so it's still quite anthropocentric there is growing awareness that there can't really be an economy without an environment however the original views of settler societies that natural resources are to be exploited for gain remains strong for example the new federal pan-canadian framework on climate change is still called the framework on clean growth and climate change so still this idea that constant growth is a fundamental seemingly unassailable primary goal is a real challenge for achieving sustainability so anthropocentrism extractivism capitalism we a lot of emphasis on sort of the ability of western science and technology to solve a lot of problems so in canada environmental law has often been criticized as just a system of permits and controlling that's uh that was really the model we used in the 60s and 70s rather than trying to prevent all environmental degradation and so some have even called for us to stop talking about environmental law and stop doing environmental law and move to more sort of paradigm shifting concepts such as ecological law or green law earth law things of that nature [00:06:39] Peter Andre: that's really fascinating uh heather just um as you point out some of those normative assumptions that i think many lawyers and many of us just take for granted and that within this field of environmental law deservedly are going to be criticized and and it's exciting to think about where this whole field can go in the future and i think i'll ask you some questions about that at the very end um but right now i would like to turn to to angela angela heather has provided a really good broad introduction to what environmental law looks like in canada can you give us some examples of some of canada's key pieces of federal environmental legislation and how they are meant to manage or protect the environment what are their key instruments enforcement mechanisms that are found in this legislation and to what extent does this [00:07:29] Speaker 3: legislation actually achieve its goals right so there are definitely a lot of different pieces of legislation that we could look at as heather has already identified all of our lives and our health and our societies and our economies and so on are ultimately contingent on having a healthy and functioning environment and so in many ways we can look at all law as sort of being environmental law in a sense but there are some specific areas on some specific federal pieces of environmental legislation of course that we can identify and we can identify some sort of some broad categories that these fall under so for example pollution prevention was a major sort of area of environmental law growth in its earliest days in sort of the 60s and the 70s and there are acts that are concerned specifically with things like air quality and water quality so for example in the fisheries act there are provisions that deal with issues that relate to water pollution within the end of this legislation and then we also have acts that are concerned with the regulation of toxic and dangerous substances there are acts that deal with biodiversity and conservation so probably the most significant act in that area is the species at risk act there are also other acts like those that are specific to the arctic there's the federal greenhouse gas pollution pricing act that heather has already made reference to there's an impact assessment act that focuses on major projects that take place within federal jurisdiction and then the environmental effects of of those kinds of major projects but probably the most significant piece of environmental legislation in canada is the canadian environmental protection act 1999 and so this is kind of the cornerstone of canada's federal environmental legislation and broadly speaking cepa 1999 as it's called is aimed at preventing pollution and protecting the environment and human health from the adverse effects of toxic substances so essentially it creates a regulatory system to identify sources of pollution and waste and then to control the quantity and quality of these substances that are discharged into the environment so it provides some processes for assessing these kinds of substances with respect to the risks that they might pose to environmental and human health and interestingly cepa also makes an explicit reference to sustainable development as an aspiration so it alludes to sustainable development in its preamble and sustainable development as some listeners may be familiar with to varying degrees is the most influential discursive norm in moderate environmental law today and the definition that most people think of when they think of sustainable development is that which was proposed in the bruntland report um that was uh published in 1987 and so this talks about development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and so that's also been sort of an under painting idea of a lot of pieces of canadian environmental legislation including cepa and a number of other acts as well so moving on to kind of the second part of your question about enforcement there is a standalone environmental enforcement act this was part of an omnibus legislation that came into force in 2010 uh created some new enforcement tools that amended some fine regimes and introduced sentencing provisions to nine existing acts and the underlying goal here was to promote more effective enforcement of the laws that protect canada's national parks air land water and wildlife there's also an environmental violations administrative monetary penalties act and this establishes a framework for issuing administrative monetary penalties for violations of the legislation so these are these are fines that companies and individuals can be charged with but one of the major problems in terms of canadian environmental law and policy is that a lot of these acts are not often framed in mandatory terms and so officials are authorized to develop regulations and often there are regulations that are in place but they don't necessarily have strong positive obligations to act and they're also afforded a significant degree of discretion so ultimately this often creates a situation where legislators are addressing the symptoms of environmental degradation in a more reactive fashion as opposed to targeting some of the root causes more proactively and so while this means that environmental law has had its share of successes there's still a lot of progress that can and must be made if we're going to ensure a viable future so as heather has already suggested there are some really deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed in terms of this constant preoccupation with growth with growth of the economy growing consumption from individual consumers and so on so while there's been increasing talk about the importance of addressing these issues and while i think there's been more appetite to take these kinds of things on on the political level many would argue that we haven't necessarily seen enough action and peter as you already mentioned we are seeing in terms of metrics like climate change and with biodiversity loss we are increasingly sort of on the precipice of the global ecological crisis so this is certainly something that i think we're going to need to feel a lot stronger law and policy on in the future [00:13:05] Peter Andre: thanks angela that was a pretty comprehensive overview of a lot of the key instruments and it's interesting that you mentioned the the sepa in particular as one of our key pieces of environmental legislation i understand that's currently being reviewed by the government as part of a regular review cycle to see whether it's doing what it should be doing and how it needs to be updated and uh and then your your final points around the ecological crisis we're in clearly um it's not only in canada but globally there there's uh there are many environmental problems for which our legal frameworks and policy frameworks are still not doing enough and given this context i just wonder i'll turn it to you heather if our environmental laws are not always effective as they need to be as effective as they need to be as effective as they need to be what are the processes in place to ensure that these laws and regulations [00:14:00] Speaker 1: become more effective in the future so you mentioned the revisions to the environmental protection act that's that's exactly right we are in that process so to be technical section 343 of the canadian environmental protection act 1999 itself makes it a legal requirement to um report and review uh to parliament uh the administration of the act every five years so the most recent review began in 2016 and the standing committee on environment and sustainable development undertook a study and it heard written and in-person submissions from a very wide range of people and groups and stakeholders including many academics and it submitted a report in 2017 and then the government responded to that with its own report later in about six months later and then a follow-up report in 2018. so that happens every five years and recommendations are made to make improvements to the act or to regulations pursuant to the act or to various policies uh for implementing it in this particular series of this particular five-year cycle revision there was a lot of emphasis on environmental rights and whether that was sort of a paradigm through which sepa in 1999 should be understood should be implemented uh etc um so those reports are all available online in terms of how we're progressing there another sort of institution is that we have at the federal level a commissioner of the environment and sustainable development under the office of the auditor general and that commissioner of the environment and sustainable development issues regular reports which are kind of what they themselves call performance audits on the environment and sustainable development um achievements of the federal government and so this commissioner is supposed to provide objective independent analysis and recommendations about how the federal government is doing in terms of environmental protection um and so they monitor sustainable development strategies they they do targeted reports on particular issues for example another thing that that commissioner is responsible for is the environmental petitions process so under that process any individual or group can bring a petition to the commissioner and the commissioner will assess the petition uh forward petitions that they think are viable to whichever department um is responsible for the issue being complained about and then the minister responsible will issue a response and so those responses and petitions can be made public online and then the commissioner also reports to parliament every year about that whole petitions process so that's another tool that's there in terms of uh monitoring and reporting and hopefully leading to improvement there's similar structures at the provincial levels as well and then of course you have the role of civil society uh so the civil society can provide input on these legislative reviews um there are things like under the ontario environmental bill of rights there's also opportunities for participation in various and various tools of enforcement we have organizations like ecojustice that litigate environmental issues in the public interest that sometimes can try to require the government to take further steps or to improve on its performance and in terms of access to information for civil society we have environmental registries at both the federal and provincial levels and so of course we also have litigation in administrative law or tort law or in other areas to try to challenge um if if people are of the view that laws or standards or permits are inadequate or are leading to unacceptable pollution hopefully we like to think that academia also has some role to play in terms of uh critically appraising uh are the various regulatory regimes and behaviors of governments in canada uh and so [00:18:20] Peter Andre: those are just a few of the tools that are available thanks heather that's really interesting um you mentioned the this idea of environmental rights in the sepa of 1999 as at least as it's coming up in the review process as something that maybe should be considered as part of the sepa can you say a little bit more about that what do environmental [00:18:41] Speaker 1: rights mean in this context no that's a really good question and so basically the fundamental idea is that the charter of rights and freedoms protects all kinds of rights of canadians but we don't actually have a right to a clean environment in canada now i should say that the quebec charter of rights and freedoms does provide um environmental rights but at the federal level the federal charter does not whereas hundreds of other countries do in fact um include environmental rights even in their constitutions in some cases so professor david boyd has done an extensive analysis of that constitutional environmental rights in other countries and their level of effectiveness and actually improving environmental protection so there have been various um attempts for example the david suzuki foundation had the blue dot program in an effort to try to get um environmental rights included one tool can be an environmental bill of rights at the federal level similar to the one in ontario of course the some argued that we should actually revise the charter to include and express right to the environment and then um then there's some debate about how that even if we were willing to do that how would that right be framed should it be that human beings have a right to live in a clean and healthy environment for example or should it be that that the government has a right to live in a clean environment for humans and then going even further in some constitutions in other countries it's nature itself that has a right so mother earth has a right to exist and to and to to remain sustainable for example and it's humans that owe legal duties to the planet so these are some of the very interesting issues in the realm of environmental rights that are being discussed right now [00:20:41] Peter Andre: so as i understand it we're going from a fairly narrow conception of environmental rights around which a lot of this legislation is currently based that assumes you you are a specific type of being that is impacted by whatever negative activity is going on and thereby have a right to intervene and often that's a very fairly narrow group of people or corporations right now and and then of the options you mentioned some are still anthropocentric but allowing a much wider group of the public to be able to claim and assert their environmental rights and but some of these options are really about moving in a more eco-centric direction by allowing rivers or forests or nature as a whole to [00:21:29] Speaker 1: have be seen as a right holder so that's really interesting that's right so i mean some such as my colleague linda collins and many others have argued that the charter of rights for example the right to life and security in section 7 should be read to include a right to the environment because with the increasing crisis of climate change that can affect our security and ultimately even our life some have argued section 15 in some litigation there has been an attempt to argue section 15 which is equality rights which talks about environmental justice that some some people are subject to environmental harms to a much greater degree than others so that's an equality problem and then of course there are indigenous rights in section 35 that can also be used in some cases to protect the environment and then as you said some jurisdictions have given rights to rivers [00:22:20] Peter Andre: or two particular pieces of the ecosystem so there's lots of variety the overview you provided of the various mechanisms whereby legislation uh gets reviewed is was really interesting to me and um and then you of course mentioned uh the the legal mechanisms through uh uh litigation and that there are civil society groups like equal justice that you mentioned that actively uh try and advance environmental law in canada by very selective and uh litigation to to strengthen environmental law uh what you didn't mention but i think it's worth mentioning given we're speaking to mostly political science and political studies students is of course um the role that uh the role that uh new legislation can play and the the role that uh parliamentarians and the whole parliament mentary system can play in in uh introducing new tools uh moving forward into the future [00:23:21] Speaker 1: yes absolutely so there was a very interesting case the kyoto protocol implementation act and that's a very interesting story that students may have time to explore where um a backbencher had proposed this legislation the kyoto protocol implementation act that made it an enforceable duty on the government to meet its kyoto targets during the harper government years um and amazingly it was passed through both houses um and then when of course the government did not comply there was immediate litigation in relation to that and then the legislation was ultimately repealed by the harper majority government so that's a very interesting story of the interlinkages between politics and law great and speaking about [00:24:11] Peter Andre: politics and law i would like to pose a question to you angela environmental law has clearly evolved over time with legislation being introduced or updated over time and the kyoto implementation act is a really good example of that i wonder if you can give us a general sense of how conservative versus liberal governments in canada have approached the implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation over time are governments of one political stripe greener than the other or does this depend more on the context of the times they are governing or maybe it's some other factors [00:24:45] Speaker 3: right so this concept of sustainable development as we've already discussed and balancing these kind of three pillars of environment economy and society can and have been interpreted in some very different ways and so unfortunately economic growth and environmental degradation under the current political and economic system that we live within are quite closely connected and so with some governments that have been much more bullish about economic growth environmental degradation has kind of has kind of been a necessary side effect but ultimately people in power oftentimes have a vested interest in upholding the status quo which means that both liberal and conservative governments have an interest in continued growth and profit making and that is reflected in their environmental records and so cuts to environmental programs have been made under both liberal and conservative governments so there certainly isn't one one of the major political parties in canada in any case that has been visibly superior to the other and uh as as you've already sort of mentioned this this does kind of differ depending on the context of the times that they are governing within and so as we're seeing now much more of a public concern about the environment it seems far less likely that any government regardless of their partisan affiliation or whatnot would be able to get away with running on a platform that doesn't consider issues like climate change issues like biodiversity to some extent but unfortunately canada is also operating in a particular context because extractive industries things like agriculture mining oil and gas and so on have historically been a significant part of canada's economy and even though they might not necessarily be as important to canada's gdp anymore they they do continue to exert a significant degree of political influence and i think that this is something that we have historically seen as well and this is something that emerges a lot in sort of the food and agriculture space the power of the agribusiness lobbies and this is something that i think is going to increasingly be a political issue that is on the agenda developments at the international level can also provide an impetus for domestic action so things like the world commission on the environment and development and various other kinds of united nations efforts have stimulated developments in canadian domestic law and we have seen some progress in this respect both domestically and internationally so one of the major sort of wins for environmental law that people often go back to is the 1987 montreal protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer so there was a point in time when we were quite concerned about this ozone hole that we were seeing and this protocol did go a long way towards addressing that issue and reversing the harm that we had caused so that that is kind of a win that that we have seen in terms of environmental law but long story short federal interest in environmental issues does sort of fluctuate and change in character depending on the context and depending on the particular people that are in power and what else is going on at the time so environmental laws and policies and and action on such policies as well usually tracks with broader public concerns with respect to the environment as well as the government's overall economic agenda so these are two pieces that are quite significant in terms of shaping the direction of environmental law and policy and action on environmental issues um and so we can see this in the context of some contemporary issues that are very timely and i think that right now we're at something of a pivotal moment so we've seen these pipeline protests in canada in the early part of 2020 um with respect to the construction of the coastal gasoline pipeline through the unceded territory of the witsuiton first nation in bc and that that was quite significant in terms of the impact that that had those protests had climate change is obviously a hot topic issue that is going to continue to be a political issue and the associated litigation that is coming out of that both in canada and in other countries around the world and the covid context has also been illuminating both at the federal level and then at the provincial level there have been a number of significant developments as well so doug ford's government in ontario suspended a number of environmental protections in april citing the argument that these kinds of environmental protections could slow down the pandemic response and many people were very concerned about those rollbacks the government did revoke some of those changes in june alongside the economic reopening of the province but it was kind of an ominous time and similar things are happening across the border with the trump government and environmental relax there and more broadly the ford government has been identified as one of the most damaging provincial governments in terms of the environment and things like that so ultimately the politics do matter but there are a lot of other forces at play as well so far [00:30:14] Peter Andre: we've been talking about environmental legislation mainly as set by the federal government in canada now what are we typically referring to when we speak about environmental policy and how is this the same or different from environmental law heather i wonder if you can speak to this so i mean in a very very [00:30:31] Speaker 1: technical sense sometimes people divide law and policy that in the sense that law can be limited to legislation and regulations pursuant to it or case law as well as international treaties for example that would be very very technical approach to what's law versus policy can generally be broader but of course policies lead to legislation as well laws can be the embodiment of policy goals as well so there is a very close link um but when we talk about policy we can broaden it out to um what's sometimes referred to as the broader policy toolbox so it can include things like the budget the federal budget it can is obviously obviously a policy tool and greatly influences how much of a piece of legislation gets enforced whether regulations come into effect whether enforcement takes place and is effective etc um policies like the climate change policy as as reflected in as we've mentioned several times today already the pan-canadian framework on clean growth and climate change so this is a policy uh framework that the trudeau government put into place to try to enhance uh collaboration on tackling climate change across the country through all of the jurisdictions other things that can fall in under the policy umbrella are things like guidelines and standards some of these are not legally enforceable but they're very frequently used to try to achieve certain environmental goals or behaviors other things are administrative arrangements so even under the legislation the canadian environmental protection act 1999 does allow for administrative arrangements so that federal provincial actors can agree ahead of time how to administer something or work sharing arrangements in order to make inspections and environmental federal assessments more uh streamlined more effective more um sort of less cumbersome for example then you can also talk about other market-based mechanisms so i mentioned the budget but there's also things like taxes uh emission trading schemes investment policies that favor green or production green and technologies etc um so those are some of the types of policy uh tools that go beyond strict legislation or or case law more technically legal enforceable things and a lot of environmental behavior in canada is guided by these policy tools [00:33:21] Peter Andre: cool angela i'd also like to ask you a question about how environmental law and policy changes over time in your research you've considered how canada responds to emerging technologies to ensure that they are safe for canadians and protect the canadian environment can you provide an example of such technologies coming through innovation pipelines and how canada's laws and policies respond to new technologies do we have a system that's adequately prepared to deal with constantly evolving technology [00:33:52] Speaker 3: yes so this has been a major topic of my research in the past few years particularly in the context of novel foods so new technologies and new innovations that are being developed in the context of food and agriculture and there are some specific applications that i've looked at quite closely one of which is genetically engineered animals so the with particular reference to the aqua advantage salmon which is a genetically engineered salmon that has been approved for consumption by regulators in both canada and in the united states so that happened a couple of years ago and then i've also looked closely at in vitro meat lab grown meat clean meat it's referred to by a number of different names in the literature but this example is more hypothetical in the sense that although there are a number of companies that are working quite intensely on research and development and hoping to bring their products to markets quite soon many of them have timelines projected as early as this year and next year they still are not yet a commercial reality and so i've looked at the existing regulatory framework around novel foods and how this might apply to products of cellular agriculture but that's still a little bit of an unknown so in terms of my response to this question and in terms of a more concrete response i'll talk a little bit more about the aqua advantage salmon so this is something that people are often surprised to learn about which i think points to a major problem which is that there were a number of significant stakeholder groups that were left out of the conversation or just totally not consulted in terms of the approval process of this development and this certainly isn't something that was kind of rushed through so this is a development that has been in the pipeline for quite some time and from the company's perspective i think they would say that they've had to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops to get this product to market and yet i think there are a number of really significant gaps so first is that sort of public input and public participation component so from sort of a democratic governance perspective alone i think there's issues there but then also from the perspective of environmental and human health considerations there isn't yet a robust regulatory framework to ensure that these products are safe for the environment very broadly speaking and also safe for human health also broadly construed and over a long time period so right now the regulatory framework that governs genetically engineered animals genetically modified animals is very kind of ad hoc and although it makes sure that these things are not toxic that they don't pose allergy concerns so according to the regulatory review health canada says functionally the genetically engineered salmon is equivalent to just a regular salmon that you would buy in the in the supermarket but again this is along very specific and narrow metrics like toxicology allergenicity and so on and there are many people that have pointed to the fact that there are a lot of other considerations that we should be looking at so things like the economic impact economic impact to canada's fishermen and so on and then also in terms of impacts to indigenous people many for whom salmon is an important part of their cultural heritage and indigenous groups were not consulted on the approval process when it comes to the aqua advantage salmon and then of course the environmental impact as well so the aqua advantage salmon is actually grown out in land-based aquaculture facilities so they aren't grown out in open water which the company argues mitigates concerns related to release into open waters and interbreeding with wild fish populations and so on which would be a major cause for a concern but that just because the risks are mitigated to a significant extent does not mean that the risks are not there and so this essentially comes down to what kind of appetite of risk we have for these kinds of products and these kinds of developments and then who gets to have a say in that process so in my research these are some of the concerns that i pointed to when it comes to the regulatory framework that exists right now for these kinds of food innovations and then just more broadly speaking i would argue that technologies are not a silver bullet and right now a lot of the rhetoric that we're seeing around technology and innovation seems to suggest that new technologies and these new innovations can kind of leapfrog over a lot of the really deeply rooted social and economic and political problems that are kind of at the core of the situation that we find ourselves in and certainly there are a lot of examples that we can point to historically of technologies that have made really grandiose promises and then have not lived up to the expectations and indeed many of them have caused problems that were not anticipated from the outset so i think we need to be really careful about relying on technologies to solve some of these really systemic problems that we're facing and not only not only because of the problems that they can cause but also because these this reliance on technology can stymie the imagination and development of alternatives so alternative pathways that might be less lucrative from a financial standpoint but that might be more realistic that might be more feasible that might have less risks that might have less impacts to groups that are marginalized and so on and so forth that's a [00:39:32] Peter Andre: really interesting answer angela and i think it opens up a lot of different questions and avenues of exploration for our listeners who want to get into these issues i think the points you're raising about how the the place that technology figures in in our culture where we assume that the solutions say to the the climate crisis or biodiversity crisis are going to lie in technology and technological innovation is is in itself something that i think deserves some careful careful rethinking as we think about environmental politics as a whole and i i also wanted to just connect something that you said with with a point heather made right off the top when she talked about the the anthropocentric normative bias within our policy and legal systems and we see it again in the case of this gm salmon where yes there are some really important uh environmental and potential health implications for for people cultural implications as you mentioned indigenous people and i would argue maybe most of bc sees that salmon is such an important cultural uh artifact for all its people um and then there's the question of what what does this mean for the salmon themselves and i think this this is getting into that sort of more ecocentric direction that heather was talking about i'll just mention a book that i've been reading this summer called being salmon being human by martin lee muller which really tries to explore what the salmon in aquaculture industry as a whole never mind gm salmon uh might look like and mean from the point of view of the salmon themselves and uh you know there's a there are fascinating species that are connected to the you know the are the core of our planet electromagnetically in ways that humans don't have a sense of literally a sense of and uh and it's really interesting in some of this current work to see how what it means to think in a different way about the the more than human rather than this kind of narrow environment as a place of resources and tools for people um i'd like to close by giving you each a chance to mention any final challenges or issues or opportunities that you think students interested in environmental law and policy in canada should be tuned into where do you see this field going into the future and what would you encourage your students to be paying attention to as they think about the remainder of their education or the next steps in their careers i'll pass it over to you [00:42:05] Speaker 1: first heather great um so i think that uh some of the challenges that we see are issues of enforcement issues of cumulative effects being taken into account um this idea of the non-regression principles so that you know once we have environmental laws that we can increase and improve them but we can't go backwards and repeal them this is a big principle that's being discussed in international environmental law and that's actually quite relevant um in canada for example some of the repeals of legislation in ontario that have recently occurred and the litigation going on in relation to that so those are some areas that people are aware need um a lot of work um critics of the system so david boyd wrote a book called unnatural law several years ago where he sort of diagnosed canadian environmental law and then provided prescriptions for it and as as angela mentioned he said that there of course it's really important to be an optimistic environmentalist which is another one of david boyd's books and he says that we have environmental law has helped with ozone depletion protected areas some kinds of air and water pollution but that it still hasn't done what people like michael mcgonigal from university of victoria have called for in his green legal theory which is to really tackle uh liberal democracy to tackle or at least unpack you know globalized capitalism and see the patterns of production and consumption um that are at the heart of all of this and and this idea too that the traditional environmental law has really relied on the government to legislate to solve everything as opposed to a more um multi-participant multi-layered approach to trying to resolve all these sort of underpinning issues um so in terms of of going forward for students i think it's just important to to realize that hopefully whatever uh undertaking you engage in whatever roles or positions you have in the future it's very likely that it will somehow affect or be affected by the environment so trying to understand all the multi-factorial aspects of sustainable development and all that's required that um that so taking a broad education so not just staying within narrow environmental law but understanding issues of the economy understanding corporations understanding global injustice and distributional unfairness all of these things are going to be important in trying to make the systemic changes that we need so i think these broad and interlinked ways of learning are really important [00:45:00] Peter Andre: for people who are trying to be agents of change those are great points uh heather i the idea that the law it doesn't act on itself right and and uh or in itself and and as part of a broader uh social mores and um political uh changes and so there's many ways to uh work to affect change and you need to understand the economy and what how change can happen within the economy in order to think about law and vice versa um i should also add that uh that those uh books you mentioned david boyd's books and michael mcgonigal will make sure that uh we have them sort of in a little bibliography attached to [00:45:44] Speaker 1: this this podcast great there's another really fun one that michael mcgonigal wrote called planet you which is about the role of university specifically in achieving sustainable development which is a really [00:45:57] Peter Andre: fun read yes i read that book years ago and was very inspired to think about how changes within our institutions can uh you know represent larger changes in society that we'd like to see and and it's maybe a sphere that we're we those of us in these institutions can act uh act in more quickly angela i'd like to turn to you do you have any uh final thoughts on challenges issues opportunities students who are interested in this area might be uh be thinking about or that you encourage them to think [00:46:27] Speaker 3: about yes so i would like to build on the discussion that we were just having about the role of institutions and the role of education and so on and i would also like to try to end on an optimistic and positive note despite being something of a cynic myself so for me i became really interested in environmentalism when i was an undergraduate student myself and this is something that i've obviously carried through into a career at this point and so it's really encouraging for me to see other young people becoming engaged in these issues so early on we're seeing so much momentum for change and just so much more enthusiasm for a different kind of future that's really being led by young people which i think is so great and so encouraging and so i continue all of you to keep fighting the good fight and do all of that really significant work that i think is making a real a real difference and is is really important to ensure that we build a better kind of future for everyone and as a racialized woman myself it's also really encouraging for me to see the environmental movement diversify so there have been charges laid against environmentalism that it's tended to reflect a very particular point of view and unfortunately i think in many ways that is still the case but right now there are cracks forming as well especially as we see the sort of resurgence of these intersectional movements like the black lives matter movement this greater and growing recognition of environmental perspectives and the value of indigenous points of view and also a greater recognition of the harms that have been done by stellar colonialism and the things that we need to do as a canadian society to recognize those harms and to try to do better in the future and then also environmental justice is another topic that i hope you're going to take on in a separate episode in a little bit more depth so environmental justice and environmental racism there's been more attention paid to that so there are a number of different projects out of various institutions so we have the environmental justice in canada research project based at the university of ottawa that heather and i are working on as well as professor natalie chalefour and professor sophie terrio and then there's also the indigenous environmental justice project that's based out of york university and then a lot of important work that's come out of other institutions as well like ingrid waldron who's in who's a professor in the school of nursing at dalhousie she wrote a book that was published in 2018 called there's something in the water that looks at environmental racism and environmental justice issues in nova scotia specifically and then that was also the subject of a 2019 documentary that ellen page was involved with so that's gotten some media attention and generated some some more attention to these issues more broadly which i think is really important [00:49:26] Peter Andre: thanks so much uh angela i think those are all really great points and uh we will also put some of the links to uh the the environmental justice in canada project and some of the other uh things that you're mentioning ingrid waldron's work i'm also really impressed with uh and it's been very impactful in nova scotia and but such important work on the connections between uh race and environment um so [00:49:53] Speaker 1: i and we will bring this up into future episodes i just one last thing that i think might be fun to follow just in this extremely short term which is the covid 19 situation not only the links between the environment and covid that going uh both ways between the pandemic and the environment but also to keep an eye open to see if the extreme uh effects on the economy resulting from the pandemic if this leads to renewed calls for oh we can't afford to do environmental protection right now because of the economy going back to that old uh i think false dichotomy of the uh between the economy versus the environment and hopefully that all parts of society will seize this moment to rebuild in a way that enables um the economy to recover in a much greener way so it'll be interesting to see and watch and hopefully be a part of influencing the recovery strategies and plans and to make sure that they're achieving you know economic justice as well as environmental sustainability going forward as opposed to going back to the old model where one is seen as taking away from the other great points [00:51:14] Peter Andre: heather and i think um i'm i'm this is where i'm going to uh side with uh angela who said let's end on an optimistic note because i certainly i certainly see as you say we're recording this in the time of covid the first summer that we've dealt with covid there might be another one and uh and uh but all the talk that i'm certainly hearing and not just through my environmental channels but on mainstream media on uh how say the the biden's upcoming government potentially in the states is going to look at uh reconstruction post covid how the european union is thinking about it how uh the canadian government is talking about green infrastructure as as an important part of economic recovery i get a sense that uh that the sustainable development uh discourse has become so deep in these institutions that we're going to see a different response uh in this economic recovery than say even that what came after the 2008 financial crisis would you agree with that yes i think we are hearing a lot of that [00:52:20] Speaker 1: from many leaders and it'll be interesting also to follow uh industry leaders and and others um as well to have all of these voices connected i think you're right i i hope that i that you're all right and i do tend to be more an optimist that said this will hopefully be a moment of great change [00:52:40] Peter Andre: in that direction but i just think vigilance is always important i i fully agree and uh i want to thank you angela for ending us with uh starting us off on ending in an optimistic way and uh heather you're uh you're encouraging thoughts as well and you've both given uh the listeners to this podcast a lot to think about and and some excellent context and some big picture thinking about what environmental law and policy looks like in canada today uh some of the the gaps some of the things it doesn't do well as well as some of the achievements and uh and uh you've pointed to lots of different resources and and ideas that uh students interested in this area could continue to pursue going forward so this wraps up this episode of the eco politics podcast don't forget to check out other episodes in the series at eco politics podcast.ca and please do send us your feedback on these episodes we really appreciate hearing from our listeners we'll also be sure to include both links to uh what both of today's guests websites on the eco politics website so you can find out more about them and their important research so thank you to both of you heather and angela and to our listeners we'll see you on the next episode [00:54:14] Speaker ?: you