What Accounts for the Exceptionally Broad Scope of Canadian Environmental Law?

2. What accounts for the exceptionally broad scope of Canadian environmental law?

I think there are many reasons for the broad scope or rather the difficulty of defining the scope of the Canadian environmental law, we can say the reasons are:

1- The law itself is still new, we can say that it hasn’t matured yet and took its final form. Maybe more time and more “mistakes” will have to pass to have a better and more comprehensive one.

2- The nature of the law itself as that it draws from a wide range of traditional legal concepts and subjects. For example, environmental regulatory law uses instruments (such as authorizations, prohibitions, and regulatory offences) and institutions (such as decision-making tribunals) that have counterparts in other regulatory areas such as health and safety and telecommunications. It is then relevant to consider at least some decisions in these other areas in analyzing environmental regulatory decisions.

3- The environment underlies and supports everything. That is why environmental law overlaps other legal fields and why areas such as health law, planning law, and even tax law are, in a sense, part of environmental law. Laws in all of these areas can be used or adapted for the protection and enhancement of the environment.

3. How can the apparent weakening in the late 2000s of environmental legislation by the federal government and some provinces be explained? Was this already happening as a result of market approaches to environmental regulation and voluntary initiatives?

I won’t say that it is an apparent weakening on the contrary there was a systematic approach and strategy to neglect and abandon the environmental policies that were adopted and implemented by the Canadian governments throughout the years. To make this clear we can state what was mentioned in an accredited report of the Washington based Center for Global Development in 2013 which states “Canada was known as an environmental law "exporter," setting precedents for other countries and taking a leadership role in international environmental diplomacy. Reinforcing this reputation was Canada's image as a largely unspoiled wilderness. But Canada's reputation has waned in recent decades. It is now a laggard in both policy innovation and environmental performance, known for inaction and obstruction on such issues as climate change. Scholarship on Canadian environmental law in international journals has become much more critical. Environmental law courses in non-Canadian universities now typically study Canada, if at all, only as an historical example” this gives us a grim picture on how the federal government was undoubtedly and plainly retreating from the previous polices, and they were not shy

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