Canada’s Environmental Legal Framework Explained

Published in Guide to the World's Leading Environment Lawyers, 2005.

Environmental law in Canada is a complex combination of federal, provincial and municipal regulation. For most matters, the provincial or territorial government will be the primary environmental regulator (with obvious exceptions, such as matters of national importance, and fisheries and oceans). For example, the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the authority of a municipality, which derives its powers from the provincial government, to impose a bylaw restricting the use of pesticides for aesthetic purposes, even though pesticide use was already expressly regulated by both the federal and provincial governments (114957 Canada Limited (Spraytech) v Town of Hudson [2001] 2 SCR 241). This case also referred to the controversial issue of the precautionary principle.