Browse Cases

Proposed in the mid-2000s, the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines was a project to build a 731.4-mile-long twin pipeline from Bruderheim, Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia. While its eastbound line would have carried 193,000 barrels of natural gas condensate per day, its westbound line would have moved 525,000 barrels of crude oil per day to a marine terminal, where it would be picked up by oil tankers destined for Asia. The initial budget for the project was $5.5 billion.

In fall 1958, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker agreed to house 56 American Bomarc missiles in North Bay, Ontario and La Macaza, Quebec, in keeping with the terms of the NORAD agreement. The American manufacturers designed the Bomarc missiles to be fitted with nuclear warheads, but when the missiles arrived in Canada, the nuclear warhead parts had not yet arrived.

The Mi’kmaq first nations people are indigenous to what is now New Brunswick, Canada. The provincial government of New Brunswick holds all mineral rights throughout the province, making mining allowable wherever it chooses, including on indigenous land.

In 2013, Fuel extraction companies South Western Energy Resources Canada and Irving Oil proposed natural gas exploration of traditional Mi'kma'ki territory in New Brunswick called Signigtog. Gas extracted from the area would mostly be sent to the United States, but the environmental effects would remain.

The Grassy Narrows or Asubpeeschoseewagon First Nation is an indigenous community in Canada. The reservation was established by treaty with the Canadian government and British Crown in 1871 and is located 80 kilometers north of Kenora in northern Ontario. 

The traditional territory of the Asubpeeschoseewagon people includes the land, waters, and natural resources used, occupied, and owned by the First Nation. Corporate development has long compromised the health and sovereignty of the people.

Mennonites are a division of Christianity that has experienced significant persecution and segregation over the years due to their strongly held values of adult baptism and nonviolence. Menno Simons drastically diverged from the Catholic faith in the 1500s, and quickly rose to become highly influential.

During
the 18th Century the Iroquois aided the British government to defend
what is now known as Canadian territory from the Americans. As an expression of
gratitude to the Iroquois, the British gifted to them six miles along both
sides of Grand River as a place to never be disturbed; as spiritual land for
the people to forever enjoy.

The Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) is an environmental freshwater research facility designed to monitor an isolated and contained ecosystem that encompasses an area containing 58 small lakes in Northwestern Ontario. The facility’s purpose is to study and correct problems concerning the food chain and ecosystem on which life on the planet relies.

Researchers from around the world have accessed this facility and 745 peer-reviewed scientific articles from independent scientists and universities have been produced from the research conducted on site.

Mary Ann Good planted the tree that came
to be known as the Wolseley Elm, along with many others, on her family farm in
1860, before Wolseley Avenue existed. Mary’s elms began to be removed as the city
of Winnipeg expanded, until the Wolseley Elm was the only elm remaining that did
not stand on the side of the road. The city of Winnipeg made its first attempt
to remove the tree to make way for Wolseley Avenue sometime between 1907 and
1909. The City paved Wolseley Avenue with asphalt in 1925 and the Elm came

The North and Central Coast, or Great Bear Rainforest as it would later be known, is an area of 6.4 million hectares that extends from the BC-Yukon border all the way down the BC coastline and ending before Bute Inlet. It is the largest temperate rainforest on the planet and the rich ecosystem is home to wolves, salmon, different species of bears, including the rare white kermode bear as well as many types of unique flora and fauna.

The Mi’Kmaq people of New Brunswick have always fished in the Miramichi Bay and River. On 17 September 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the native fishing rights of Donald Marshall, who had been charged with fishing out of season, fishing without a license, and fishing with an illegal net. The "Marshall Decision" agreed on by the Supreme Court stated that its decision would uphold the honour and integrity of the Crown in its dealings with the Mi’Kmaq people to secure their peace and friendship. This decision caused chaos in New Brunswick.

The Frontenac Ventures Development Corporation received from the Ontario government in Canada a permit to begin exploratory drilling for uranium on 30,000 acres of Canadian Crown land in its eastern region of Sharbot Lake. In June 2007, the company began surveying.  The company planned to dig trenches, log the forest, and remove core mineral samples. 

In February of 2010, Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand called for what he deemed a "cultural revolution" to change the way the Quebecois populace used public services, including a tuition fee hike for post-secondary education.  

In the summer of 1990, Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Canadians gathered at a “Peace Camp” in Oka, Quebec, Canada and a “Peace Village” in Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada. Their goal was four-fold:

1. To support the Mohawks of Kanehsatake and Kahnawake Quebec who were in a stand-off with the Canadian government and military

2. To bring attention to issues of injustice towards Aboriginal people in Canada

Cathedral Grove is one of the last remaining remnants of an ancient Douglas fir ecosystem in MacMillan Park on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Many of the trees are over 800 years old, reaching up to 250 feet in height. 

The right to Aboriginal reserve land has been a contested issue throughout Canadian history, but perhaps one of the most disturbing violations of Aboriginal land rights is illustrated through the Lubicon Cree, a First Nations band in northern Alberta.

The First Nations people respect water and consider it a live giving force.

Canadian inner-city neighbourhoods are often a passing thought to political figures and city residents, especially when their demolition means new development and million dollar deals. One such case was that of the decision to build an overpass in Winnipeg’s inner-city. Winnipeg’s Executive Policy Committee (EPC), along with Mayor Robert Steen, made the decision to build the overpass in the summer of 1978 without any community consultation and took the proposal straight to a City Council meeting (in which it was approved within five days). 

The Doukhobors are a group of Russian peasants who left the Orthodox Church following a schism and were named “douko-borets," meaning “spirit wrestlers.” Their Christian beliefs led them to adopt principles of pacifism, communal living and the sharing of the possessions, the rejection of church and state authorities, and vegetarianism.

The context for this campaign starts in the early 1980s with the repatriation of the legislation that founded Canada: the British North America Act of 1867. The idea of repatriation had been around since the 1920s and was finally brought to realization in 1982 by the then Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

On December 9, 2010, twenty-two employees represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada Local 832 walked off the job and began to strike against their employer Malteurop.  Malteurop is the exclusive producer of malt for the Moosehead Brewery along with micro-breweries such as Half-Pints in Winnipeg. Workers went on strike for the purpose of demonstrating to the company that they were serious about their demands for obtaining a fair contract and wanted the company to remove the unnecessary concessions they were demanding of the employees.

In Canada, there are many First Nations groups with unique languages and cultures.  One of those is the Cree nation, who speak Cree and are accustomed to Cree social norms within Canada. Manitoba, a central Canadian province, has a large indigenous popular with high unemployment.

Kimberley-Clark Corporation is the largest tissue-product manufacturer in the world, producer of well-known brands including Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle. It is no surprise that Kimberly-Clark is also arguably the leading consumer of wood-fiber.  However, before 2009, Kimberley-Clark continued to take 90% this wood-fiber from unsustainably managed forests, most notably the ancient Boreal Forest in Canada.

On April 20-22, 2001, officials from 34 countries met in Québec, Canada for the third Summit of the Americas, intended to further negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).  While the proposed FTAA had received near-universal praise in the mainstream North American media, activists feared that the agreement would expand what they viewed as the worst aspects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—degradation of environmental regulations, weakened labor laws, and the subjugation of national laws to secretive, pro-corporate tribunals.  These fears were u

The Nuxalk people live mid-way up the British Columbian coast, in the region around the town Bella Coola. The Nuxalk have long refused to enter into any treaties with Canada or cede any of their ancestral territory to the national or provincial government. As such, they still claim sovereign rights to much land that the government claims belongs to it. One of those areas is King Island. On King Island is a valley called Itsa, which, according to the Nuxalk, is the sacred place of origin of their people.

In September of 1995, international negotiations began on a draft agreement called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The document was being negotiated by members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The stated goals of the agreement were to establish a set of multilateral rules for foreign investment that would govern the process in a more structured, systematic way. Up until the draft, foreign investment agreements were established on a country-by-country bilateral basis.