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This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

The idea of a right to a healthy environment is getting traction at Canada’s highest political levels. Federal Opposition MP Linda Duncan recently introduced “An Act to Establish a Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights” in Parliament. If it’s passed, our federal government will have a legal duty to protect Canadians’ right to live in a healthy environment.

I’m travelling across Canada with the David Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot Tour to encourage people to work for recognition of such a right — locally, regionally and nationally. At the local level, the idea of recognizing citizens’ right to live in a healthy environment is already taking hold. Richmond and Vancouver, B.C., The Pas, Manitoba, and the Montreal borough of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie all recently passed municipal declarations recognizing this basic right.

Our ultimate goal is to have the right to a healthy environment recognized in the Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and a federal environmental bill of rights is a logical precursor. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms itself was preceded by a federal statute, the Bill of Rights, enacted under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservative government in 1960.

From now until November 30, if parents and teachers want to support Lower Mainland schools, all they need to do is fuel up at Chevron gas stations within their district.

As part of a program called Fuel Your Schools, for every 30 litres of gas purchased, Chevron donates $1 to participating school districts. The program has been in effect in North Vancouver since May when the Board of Trustees decided to opt in. Chevron has ads up in its gas stations informing drivers of the program.

North Van was the fifth district in B.C. to join the program, joining West Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey and Coquitlam. If the fundraising goal is reached — a total of $565,000 to be split between the five districts — B.C. drivers will have purchased just under 17 million litres of gas.

In spite of the incentive to buy more gas and to buy it from Chevron — the company behind the proposed Pacific Trail pipeline that would carry one billion cubic feet of natural gas from Summit Lake to Kitimat — Victoria Miles, spokesperson for the North Vancouver School District (NVSD), told DeSmog that the district believes a relationship with Chevron “in no way impedes” its sustainability mandate.

Oil companies and fossil fuel investors seeking further developments in the Alberta tar sands have been dealt another setback with the publication of a report showing producers lost $17.1 billion USD between 2010-2013 due to successful public protest campaigns.

Fossil fuel companies lost $30.9 billion overall during the same period partly due to the changing North American oil market but largely because of a fierce grassroots movement against tar sands development, said the report — Material Risks: How Public Accountability Is Slowing Tar Sands Development.

A significant segment of opposition is from First Nations in Canada who are raising sovereignty claims and other environmental challenges, added the report, which was produced by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and Oil Change International (OCI).

“Tar sands producers face a new kind of risk from growing public opposition,” Tom Sanzillo, director of finance at IEEFA, and one of the lead authors on the report, said. “This opposition has achieved a permanent presence as public sentiment evolves and as the influence of organizations opposed to tar sands production continues to grow.”