Environmental Rights and Beyond: Rights-based Approaches to Environmental Protection

Rights based legal approaches to protection of the environment, human health, and animals have been receiving increasing recognition and adoption in Canada. This webinar will explore current rights-based approaches, such as recognition of the right to a healthy environment and expansion of Indigenous rights, and their use as a legal tool to better protect the environment and empower Canadians to participate in environmental legal processes. Guest speakers Aimée Craft, Kaitlyn Mitchell, and Ian Miron share their insights.

Guest Speakers

Aimée Craft is an award-winning teacher, lawyer, author, and researcher, recognized internationally as a leader in the area of Indigenous laws, treaties, and nibi (water). She is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Common Law, University of Ottawa and an Indigenous (Anishinaabe-Métis) lawyer from Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba.

Kaitlyn Mitchell is Director of Legal Advocacy at Animal Justice, a national animal law advocacy organization. She has an extensive history of going to court to fight for environmental justice, as well as working to strengthen Canadian environmental laws, and uses this expertise to enforce and strengthen Canada’s animal laws.

Ian Miron has been legal counsel at Ecojustice, Canada’s largest environmental law charity, since 2014. His practice focuses on environmental issues linked to air pollution and offshore oil and gas, as well as protecting the marine environment and advancing the recognition of environmental rights in Canada.

This latest series will continue into the winter with two more webinars. In December, join us to discuss the federal environmental impact assessment process. The January webinar will examine what increased interest in critical minerals and mining developments in Manitoba means for environmental law.