How do we address environmental harms such as water pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change? How should we? In this introductory course, we will look at what makes environmental law so difficult, how we currently use the common law and government regulation to deal with environmental issues and how we may be able to design better laws and institutions.

We will study the main federal statutes such as the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Species at Risk Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, along with some examples of provincial legislation and approaches. We will also discuss important recent policy and legal developments such as the judicial reviews of the pipelines projects, the various federal and provincial efforts to address climate change and attempts to develop environmental rights in Canada.

Thematically, we will examine how the courts, the legislature, and the executive work, or don't work, together in addressing these issues, how citizens fit in and, underlying it all, the political economy of environmental protection including the part played by special interest groups (both industry groups and environmental organizations).