Advocates welcome passage of bill to tackle environmental racism in Canada

Advocates say Canada’s first environmental justice law will help chart scale of problem, address negative health impact.

Environmental and social justice advocates in Canada have welcomed a new bill that pledges to develop a national strategy to prevent and address the effects of environmental racism.

In a statement on Friday, the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice (CCECJ) said passage of Bill C-226 this week would help communities better understand the scale of the problem and lay out strategies for how to tackle it.

The bill passed a third reading in the Senate on Thursday and is now expected to achieve “royal assent”, the last step in the legislative process.

“We know the stories about where and how environmental racism exists in Canada. The formal data on these realities is incomplete, and therefore, there is a lack of understanding about how real this problem is,” said Ingrid Waldron, CCECJ’s co-founder and co-director.

“Data collection and analysis will be a critical starting point in the strategy required by the Environmental Justice Strategy Act. The consequences of inaction on environmental racism would be ongoing negative impacts on people’s health and wellbeing.”