Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights

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Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR) which was passed in 1993, and came into effect in February 1994, has been a significant addition to environmental legislature. It has recognized that people within Ontario have a common goal to protect our natural environment and feel that this needs to be represented as a right to a clean environment. It thus calls upon the provincial government to have the primary responsibility in protecting, conserving, and restoring the natural environment (ECO, 2010). It also sees the need for public participation in order to hold the government accountable for its decisions. Thus the main objectives of the EBR are ensuring environmental protection, the enhancing of governmental accountability, and the facilitation of public participation in environmental decision-making. The EBR, however, still has room for improvement. This essay will be looking at the three main objectives of the EBR in order to review; what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and how it can be improved.

We would like to begin by discussing the evolution of what will become known as the EBR. The first idea of having a statute that would provide people with environmental rights can be traced back to American law. The first of such laws was the Michigan Environmental Protection Act (MEPA) of 1970 which was seen as a “lean, mean, green, right to sue” (Lindgren, 2010). It was the work of the then University of Michigan law professor Joseph Sax (Emond, 1994). He had previously thought up the idea for an environmental rights act in his book, Defending the Environment (Emond, 1994). The idea was quickly taken up by environmentalists in Canada, especially by the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) (Emond, 1994). Soon...

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...ntario's Environmental Bill of Rights and You. http://www.conservationhamilton.ca/Asset/iu_files/EBR.pdf. Toronto: Environmental Commissioner of Ontario.

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Environmental Bill of Rights 1993. (1993).

Government of Ontario. (2010). About the Registry. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from Environmental Registry: http://www.ebr.gov.on.ca

Lindgren, R. (2010, March 12). Lafarge.

McRobert, D. (2008, November 21). An Overview of Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights. Peterborough, Ontario.

Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights. (2003).

Turgano, R. (2009, November 5). Ecojustice Applauds Proposed Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from The Green Pages: http://thegreenpages.ca/portal/ca/2009/11/ecojustice_applauds_proposed_c.html

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