Erin Gray
L4CJ has a new Board of Directors
Erin Gray
L4CJ Marches for the Climate
Erin Gray
The Impacts of Climate Change on Labour Law ...
Erin Gray
Five Practical Climate Considerations for ...
Erin Gray
Three reasons why lawyers should engage with ...

L4CJ has a new Board of Directors

Lawyers for Climate Justice is now incorporated as a federal not-for-profit corporation, and its inaugural Board of Directors met for the first time in September. These nine individuals from across Canada have a breadth of knowledge, and represent diverse practice areas. Check out our Board page to learn about them! We thank everyone who applied to be a Board member; we were heartened to have received applications from so many dedicated, exceptional candidates.

Join Our Board of Directors!

Lawyers for Climate Justice (L4CJ) is seeking practicing and non-practicing lawyers with a wide range of experience and expertise – plus a passion for climate justice – to join our Board of Directors.

Background

L4CJ is a multi-disciplinary group of lawyers that is focused on advancing climate justice within the legal profession in Canada. Our main goals are to: 

  • Engage with the legal profession in Canada to build climate competency in recognition of the wide-ranging implications of climate change for the rule of law, for justice, and for justice system actors, by conducting educational and informational events and disseminating climate change information within the legal system;

  • Strive for climate competency and resiliency in the legal profession in Canada through education by and cooperation with law schools and law societies across Canada; and

  • Assist those who work within the justice system to recognize and adapt to climate change and its justice implications, including the links between adaptation, decarbonization, decolonization, and equality, by providing information and resources. 

L4CJ is governed by a Board of Directors. We are currently looking to fill up to three open volunteer positions. The Board provides governance, leadership, and administrative oversight and plays a pivotal role in the functioning of the organization.

Qualifications

In particular, we are seeking the following qualifications, skills, and experience:

  • Member relations;

  • Website Development; 

  • Accounting;

  • Search Engine Optimization and communications;

  • Organizational management; and

  • Board governance experience.

Even if your skills and experience do not fall within these categories, we welcome and encourage you to submit an expression of interest. Enthusiasm, a willingness to learn, and the energy to take on new initiatives are also very valuable.

Expectations 

L4CJ expects its Directors to commit to the following:

  1. Attend and participate in regular Board meetings (held approximately every two months) over a two-year term;

  2. Take on additional Board roles, such as secretary or treasurer, and undertake those duties in a timely manner;

  3. Assist in work between meetings, including preparing meeting agendas and background documents/research and responding to emails in a timely way;

  4. Use your personal and professional skills, relationships, and experience to advance the interests of L4CJ; and

  5. Represent L4CJ within the legal community and your spheres of influence. 

Diversity of Experience

The Board of Directors is committed to recruiting and supporting skilled candidates for the Board that reflect the diversity of the legal profession in Canada. We encourage applications from women, persons of colour, persons with disabilities, and members of Indigenous, 2SLGBTQI+, cultural, religious, and linguistic communities. At this time, we are only accepting applications from lawyers who are called to the bar in a Canadian province or territory. 

To Apply

  1. Please send an expression of interest (maximum 300 words) by June 30, 2023 to christie.a.mcleod@gmail.com. This is a space for you to tell us a little bit about who you are, why you are interested in joining the L4CJ Board, and about your background and experiences.  

    Please do not include a resume or CV.

  2. Depending on the level of interest, L4CJ may schedule an interview with potential candidates and its current Board members.

Please note that based on the information you submit, as well as the interview, the current Directors will develop a slate of its endorsed candidates to provide to the members, who will vote in new Board members by majority vote of those members who participate.

If you have any questions about the application process or the Board itself, please contact christie.a.mcleod@gmail.com. 

The Impacts of Climate Change on Labour Law & The Role of Labour Lawyers In Responding to the Climate Crisis, by Sydney Lang

In light of growing concerns around the climate crisis evidenced in the latest IPCC report, it is crucial that labour lawyers develop a climate-competent practice. Climate change will have an impact on workplace health and safety, job security, and pensions, among other things. Labour lawyers can play an important role in advising and supporting their clients on climate-related changes to their members’ workplaces.

What are the impacts of climate change on workers and the future of work?

Climate change presents a threat to the enjoyment of basic human rights for everyone, and it affects already vulnerable people “first and worst.” The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has observed that “the climate crisis is a human rights crisis.”

Climate change will continue to have a disproportionate impact on racialized and Indigenous communities. Dr. Ingrid Waldron has noted that in Canada, “Indigenous and African Nova Scotian communities have been the most impacted by environmental racism.” Environmental racism impacts workers: the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change (ACW) project have been leading the “Green Is Not White” research initiative which calls for non-toxic workplaces and “green collar jobs” for immigrant workers.

Climate change has occupational health & safety consequences. Rapidly rising temperatures increase the risk of heat stroke, severe dehydration, exhaustion, and can even be life-threatening, which has a disproportionate impact on those who work outdoors. Chemicals evaporate faster at high temperatures, increasing the risk of poisoning due to inhalation of chemicals in the workplace. High temperatures can also worsen air quality which exacerbates respiratory illness and cardiovascular diseases. These risks may be compounded for migrant farm workers. Climate change causes more extreme weather events including violent storms, floods, and landslides, as well as forest fires due to drought. These events have a significant impact on the occupational health and safety of first responders such as firefighters responding to increasing occurrences of wildfires and nurses and paramedics responding to the victims of extreme weather events amidst potential infrastructure failures.

Many industries are facing increased instability and impacts on job security as a result of climate change and the transition away from fossil fuels, including the mining, oil and gas, automobile, and manufacturing industries. “Climate change bankruptcy”, bankruptcy caused, in part, by climate-related incidents, may be a new reality that employers will need to mitigate. For example, PG&E was facing $30 billion in potential liabilities in 2019 following a series of wildfires, made more likely by climate change, connected to its equipment. Climate-related dangers, such as wildfires, extreme heat, flooding, drought, and storms, will continue to have an impact on business operations and liabilities. Oil-reliant industries, and those known for their “booms and busts,” may become increasingly unstable.

What can labour lawyers do about it?

  1. Address the impacts of climate change in the workplace through green collective bargaining. “Greening” clauses can address commuting, extreme weather, green procurement, training, & workplace committees. The ACW has compiled a collection of such clauses from Canadian collective agreements in a database to support unions who want to fight climate change by bringing environmental issues into their collective bargaining priorities. Labour lawyers can advise their clients about these opportunities to  address the climate crisis through their contracts.

  2. Support unions in educating their members and trustee representatives on how their pension fund “invests their retirement capital” and demand more transparent climate-related disclosures. In its legal backgrounder on duties to manage climate change, Ecojustice highlights that while “most large public sector pension administrators and investment managers have acknowledged and started to assess climate-related risks, few have set targets or established credible plans to align with the emissions reductions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change.”

  3. Support and contribute to union research on the impact of climate change on work & how their members’ work itself can contribute to fighting climate change. Several unions have released research on the impact of climate change on work, for example, the “Climate Change and Just Transition” report published by the ACW and the United Steelworkers in 2018. Others provided submissions for the 2021 Federal Just Transition Consultations, including Unifor who recommended the federal government generate decent unionized jobs in the green economy. The Hospital Employees’ Union has advocated for climate action at the provincial level.

  4. Join groups like Lawyers for Climate Justice that have called on bar associations to adopt a definition of climate justice and urge lawyers to take an active role in addressing climate change. Lawyers can also support student and worker-led initiatives, such as Law Students for Climate Accountability, that have published reports and called on law firms to recognize their role in exacerbating climate change.

  5. Consider the impacts of climate change on all areas of your practice and seek out continuing professional education opportunities. The Honourable Justice Brian J Preston SC in New South Wales, Australia published an article on Climate Conscious Lawyering where he discusses the ethical dimensions of legal practice: “ethical thinking about climate change and its consequences should pervade all aspects of legal practice.” Labour lawyers can develop policies that minimize the climate impacts of their practice and support their clients in identifying and responding to climate related risks. 

  6. As the economy transitions, jobs in the more heavily-unionized fossil fuels sector may transition into non-unionized jobs in emerging industries, such as wind and solar, or to other lower-carbon sectors. Labour advocates have pointed out that “green jobs” must also be unionized jobs to ensure that workers have fair and safe working conditions. This will require a large effort by the labour movement and organizers, and support from labour lawyers, to ensure that workplaces in emerging sectors are unionized.

  7. Labour lawyers, unions and their members have an important role to play in speaking out about the impact of climate change on workers and advocating for community and political action to both mitigate these risks and prevent further warming.

Sydney Lang is a union-side labour lawyer at Cavalluzzo LLP and a climate and mining justice organizer in Toronto. She has worked on campaigns and research projects related to fossil fuel divestment, corporate accountability in the Canadian mining industry, and a just transition.

We are looking to establish a network of labour lawyers interesting in advocating and sharing resources around climate change. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact Sydney Lang (slang@cavalluzzo.com), Jodie Gauthier (jgauthier@blackgropper.com), or Michael Thorburn (mhft@stanford.edu).

Five Practical Climate Considerations for Commercial Agreements, by Marc Z. Goldgrub

Given the scope and scale of climate change, and the all-hands-on-deck response required of both public and private sectors, even business-oriented lawyers lacking any sustainability interest are likely to encounter climate-related issues in their work.

As a corporate and commercial lawyer specializing in work with green businesses and non-profits, I write a lot of contracts touching on climate-related matters, and I see climate-specific issues arise regularly. Accordingly, below I’ve listed five basic practical considerations for lawyers to keep in mind when working on commercial agreements with a climate element.

1.     Know Your Greenhouse Gases

When we talk about greenhouse gases (GHGs), we typically talk about carbon dioxide (CO2). Often, we simply call it “carbon” as in “carbon pricing”.

But carbon isn’t the only GHG out there. For various businesses subject to carbon pricing and other environmental regulation, carbon isn’t even the GHG of primary concern. Other consequential GHGs include methane and nitrous oxide. And Canadian carbon pricing law hasn’t forgotten about them, they’re simply accounted for in terms of their “carbon dioxide equivalent” atmospheric heat-trapping potential.

When working on agreements dealing with GHGs, lawyers should take care to ensure that they’re not referencing carbon to the exclusion of other GHGs they may want the contract to encompass. Otherwise, they risk a strict judge interpreting the contract more narrowly than preferred in the event of a dispute.

2.     Who Gets the (Carbon) Credit?

The term “carbon credit” could refer to tradable “compliance units” parties earn for emitting less than their applicable cap in one of the various cap and trade systems in effect across Canada. Or it could refer to carbon offsets qualifying for sale in a voluntary or regulated market (note: with the recent launch of the federal Greenhouse Gas Credit Offset System, Canada now has four regulated offset programs).

All such credits can be quite valuable. That’s why it’s important in the context of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or liquidation that lawyers ensure such credits are recognized and handled appropriately as intangible financial assets of the applicable corporation.

3.     Scope 3 Standards

Companies of a certain size can potentially limit emissions along their supply chains (i.e., scope 3 emissions) by requiring suppliers to source goods and/or services from providers meeting certain quality standards (e.g., powered by renewables, using recycled content, etc.). Another option is requiring preferential treatment be accorded to suppliers meeting certain high standards (e.g., B Corp certification, carbon neutral operations, etc.).

Benefits of this approach include the ability to (i) showcase strong scope 3 emission reduction efforts in climate-related financial disclosures, (ii) boost one’s potential environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, and (iii) create more resilient supply chains as governments look to impose border carbon adjustments on trade partners lacking serious climate regulation.

4.     Reputation, Reputation, Reputation

“O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”

Those lines were true when Shakespeare gave them to Cassio in Othello, but they’re even more true today for companies operating in an ESG-sensitive business environment. That’s why it’s important for lawyers drafting agreements on behalf of climate conscious parties to include a termination clause giving the client an out should the relationship with a counterparty become a liability. Like, for example, if the counterparty gets acquired by an oil giant, or it turns out they’ve been powering their operations with baby kittens.

5.     Parisian Interpretation

All contracts are subject to the law of a particular jurisdiction, and that law is typically specified in a contract’s governing law section. An innovative way to push for particularly pro-climate contractual interpretation is to include an additional clause in this section stating that the agreement will be interpreted in accordance with objectives of the Paris Agreement and preventing global temperature rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (to the extent such interpretation does not conflict with the applicable law of the jurisdiction).

This is called a Green Governing Law Clause. It’s one of many climate-conscious clauses lawyers can find in The Chancery Lane Project’s bank of climate clauses – a directory all contract lawyers may want to be familiar with as climate increasingly makes its way as a concern into agreements of all sorts.

Marc Z. Goldgrub is the founding lawyer at Green Economy Law Professional Corporation, a Toronto-based law firm specializing in work with green businesses and non-profits. You can follow him on LinkedIn for daily climate-related news, law, and policy musings, among other things.