A Victoria lawyer leads an international case that could eventually force the Canadian government to protect habitat – and stop expansion of the tar sands.

Excerpt:
“If indeed Canada simply honoured its constitutional obligation of protecting native rights to hunt and fish, we would also protect our biodiversity, our forests, our grasslands, our carbon sinks, our cultural and natural heritage.” So says Jack Woodward of Woodward and Company, who has received funding from the Coooperative Bank in the UK to support the case.

Why Woodward? Why the Beaver Lake band? As Jack explains, “The Co-op members identified climate change as the single biggest issue of our time. They looked around the world for the single biggest new contributor to climate change and found the Alberta tar sands. Then they looked around for themost effective thing they could do to stop the tar sands and they found the legal struggle of the Beaver Lake Cree.”

Read Briony Penn’s full article from this month’s edition of Focus Magazine.