Environmental Law & Policy

The Environmental Law Centre's (ELC) mission is to ensure that laws, policies, and legal processes protect the environment. In pursuit of this mission the ELC regularly provides comments and recommendations to government and administrative bodies in relation to law and policy development. These comments can be found on the ELC website at www.elc.ab.ca.

The ELC has recently commented on the renewal of the Alberta Water for Life strategy and the proposed Recovery Strategy for the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) under the federal Species at Risk Act. Read More

The following document has been posted to the Government of Alberta website.

News Release

July 6, 2007

Edmonton... The Alberta Ombudsman, G. B. (Gord) Button announced today that he will immediately commence an investigation on his own motion of the administrative actions of the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (AEUB) in hiring and deploying private investigators to monitor and report on the activities of interested parties attending the Rimbey hearings on the proposed 500 kV power transmission line between Edmonton and Calgary. This investigation will focus on the AEUB’s decision to hire private investigators and the mandate given, the information reported back to the AEUB, how that information was used and its impact on the administrative fairness of the process. He will issue a public report including any findings and recommendations at the conclusion of his investigation. The Alberta Ombudsman advises he is aware of the parallel investigation being conducted by the Information and Privacy Commissioner and is confident the two investigations will compliment each other to clarify what took place and how it impacted the fairness of this process. Read More

Media Release

For release: March 30, 2007

Climate Action Network/Réseau action climat Canada is calling on the Government of Canada to immediately pass and implement the Clean Air and Climate Change Act (Bill C-30) as amended by a House of Commons legislative committee this week. The amended version contains most of the changes proposed jointly by environmental organizations in January, including regulations requiring our largest polluters to face “Kyoto-level” caps on their greenhouse gas emissions. Read More