The AER’s Proposed Amendments to Closure Liability Management Directives: Much Ado about Not Much

Matter Commented On: Bulletin 2024-25, Invitation for Feedback on Revised Liability Directives

PDF Version: The AER’s Proposed Amendments to Closure Liability Management Directives: Much Ado about Not Much

On 8 October 2024, the AER issued Bulletin 2024-25, Invitation for Feedback on Revised Liability Directives, announcing the AER is taking public comments on a proposal to restructure AER directives relating to the closure liability management framework. The AER’s description of the changes, and a video presentation describing the changes, are here. At a high level:

Four directives are being amended: Directive 001: Requirements for Site-Specific Liability Assessments; Directive 011: Estimated Liability (previously Licensee Liability Rating (LLR) Program: Updated Industry Parameters and Liability Costs); Directive 068: Security Deposits; Directive 088: Licensee Life-Cycle Management.
Three directives are being rescinded as their contents are either being reorganized into the four amended directives or are no longer necessary: Directive 006: Licensee Liability Rating (LLR) Program; Directive 024: Large Facility Liability Management Program; Directive 075: Oilfield Waste Liability (OWL) Program.

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UCP Grievance Politics Takes Aim at the Law Society of Alberta

By: Shaun Fluker

Matter commented on: Review of Professional Regulators, October 23, 2024

PDF Version: UCP Grievance Politics Takes Aim at the Law Society of Alberta

On October 23, 2024, the UCP government announced it was spending public money to find a solution to a problem that does not exist: aka the Review of Professional Regulators. This exercise of grievance politics includes within its scope the Law Society of Alberta, and as a member of the law society, I received an email invitation to take the government’s survey. This post discloses my answers to the survey.

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A Landmark Decision in Canadian Charter-based Climate Litigation: Mathur v Ontario, 2024 ONCA 762

By: Martin Olszynski, Jennifer Koshan, Nigel Bankes, and Jonnette Watson Hamilton

Case commented on: Mathur v Ontario, 2024 ONCA 762 (CanLII)

PDF Version: A Landmark Decision in Canadian Charter-based Climate Litigation: Mathur v Ontario, 2024 ONCA 762

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently released its decision in Mathur v Ontario, 2024 ONCA 762 (CanLII). ABlawg readers will know that this is one of three Charter-based climate lawsuits currently making their way through Canadian courts. The other two are La Rose v Canada, 2023 FCA 241 (CanLII), which involves a challenge to the federal government’s climate policies, and Dykstra et al v Saskatchewan Power Corporation, which involves a challenge to the Saskatchewan government’s and SaskPower’s decisions to expand gas-fired electricity generation (see our previous post on La Rose here). In this post, we contrast the trial and appellate reasons in Mathur (and where relevant, in La Rose FCA) and offer our commentary on several key issues in this litigation.

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Edmonton’s Encampment Litigation: A View from the Inside

By: Anna Lund

Matter Commented On: Edmonton’s Encampment Litigation

PDF Version: Edmonton’s Encampment Litigation: A View from the Inside

In the autumn of 2023, the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights sued the City of Edmonton to limit when and how it forcibly evicts unhoused people from encampments. The Coalition argued that the City’s approach to displacing encampments violated the human rights of encampment residents, as protected by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A court dismissed the Coalition’s claim on a preliminary ground, deciding that the lawsuit should be brought by someone else, and thus the Court did not decide whether the City’s displacement policies infringed the Charter. The case illustrates the difficulties of vindicating the rights of marginalized persons through the courts, raising the troubling prospect that our unhoused neighbours may in theory have the same fundamental rights as the rest of Canadians, but in practice are unable to exercise them.

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The Alberta Emergency Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 Surges Executive Powers under the Water Act

By: Brenda Heelan Powell, Arlene Kwasniak, Braum Barber, and Ruiping Luo

Statute Commented On: The Alberta Emergency Statutes Amendment Act, 2024, SA 2024, c 9

PDF Version: The Alberta Emergency Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 Surges Executive Powers under the Water Act

Emergency Legislation and the Rule of Law

Since the 1215 Magna Carta, democratic society has been based on the tenet that the Executive in power is not above the rule of law. The United Nations has described the core values underlying the rule of law as follows:

… the rule of law is a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of the law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness, and procedural and legal transparency. (United Nations and the Rule of Law).

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