| Montreal, 3/08/2007 – On 25 July 2007, St. Clair Channelkeeper, Environmental Law Society of Wayne State University Law School, Brendan Frey, Noah Hall, Doug Martz, Andrea Montbriand and Oday Salim (the “Submitters”) presented a citizen submission to the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The Submitters allege that Canada is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law by not preventing chemical and sewage spills to the St. Clair River in Sarnia, Ontario, and failing to notify downstream areas in the St. Clair-Detroit River corridor about spill incidents.
In SEM-07-004 (St. Clair River), the Submitters assert that Canada is failing to effectively enforce Section 3 of the federal International Boundary Waters Treaty Act (“IBWTA”) and Article IV of the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty (“BWT”) by failing to contain water pollution from Sarnia, Ontario, which, they allege, is causing negative environmental, social and economic impacts in the United States. The Submitters allege that despite a 2006 International Joint Commission report that found data on spills to be inadequate, Canada has offered little response to local officials in the United States asking that Canada match their efforts to acquire state-of-the-art, real-time water quality monitoring equipment, ideally as part of a linked Canada-US system.
On 1 August 2007, the Secretariat issued a determination dismissing the submission. The Secretariat was unable to conclude that Article IV of the BWT, taken together with Section 3 of the IBWTA, meets the definition of “environmental law” in Article 45(2)(a) of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). Drawing a distinction between international and domestic legal obligations, the Secretariat found that it is not sufficiently clear that Article IV has the same force of law as a statute or regulation in Canada or that Section 3 of the IBWTA incorporates Article IV into the domestic law of Canada.
The Submitters have 30 days to provide the Secretariat with a submission that conforms to the criteria of Article 14(1) of the NAAEC and Guideline 6.2 of the Guidelines for Submissions on Enforcement Matters.
For more information, please visit the CEC's Citizen Submissions on Enforcement Matters page. |
