Calling all students who have taken Environmental Law, Natural Resources Law or the Environmental Justice & Sustainability Clinic:

You are invited to direct your collective brain power toward collecting data and researching legal outcomes that could help to debunk some of the arguments currently being used to prevent new federal impact assessment legislation from being passed in Parliament. Your skills are needed! The event will be hosted in Osgoode Hall's room 2004 on March 28m, 2019 from 2:30-4:30. Snacks provided!

This event takes inspiration from last year's first successful Research-a-thon for Environmental Justice at Osgoode, which took its inspiration from initiatives on immigration law research that were held across the country in response to the travel bans introduced in the U.S. At that time, law students and professionals in large numbers gave time to research-o-thons that tackled specific questions in immigration law.

Last year, we tackled the complex problem of cumulative emissions to air, and the province’s new proposal for how to deal with pollution hotspots, a regulatory problem that results in disproportionate pollution burdens in places like the Aamjiwnaang First Nation and working-class Hamilton.  This year, we are joining a pan-Canadian effort spearheaded by Professor Martin Olszynski at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law, to better understand the contested Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69, currently stalled in the Senate.

Here is how he describes it:

re: Bill C69, and specifically with respect to the proposed Impact Assessment Act.

As those of you following the public debate will know, the legislation is being heavily opposed by conservative politicians and the oil and gas sector. One of their primary claims is that Bill C69 will bring Canada’s resource sector to a halt. My intention here is not to defend Bill C69, but to inject some reality into the debate, especially as one of its key pieces — the major project list — has yet to be released. Along these lines, my goal is to ground the debate re: Bill C69’s likely scope (i.e. very limited as a “major project” regime) and its subsequent potential effects on Canada’s resource sector.

Prof Olszynski proposes an exercise in data collection for each province using the CEAA registry: we will split the analysis of Ontario’s 13 current assessments with UofT.

REGISTER HERE: https://webform.osgoode.yorku.ca/view.php?id=425547