Environmental Law Faculty
Faculty
Jamie Benidickson
Jamie Benidickson, LLM Harvard, teaches Environmental Law and Water Law. He is a former Chair of Natural Resources at the University of Calgary and was a research consultant for the Walkerton Inquiry on municipal water supply and sewerage systems. His publications include The Temagami Experience: Recreation, Resources and Aboriginal Rights in the Northern Ontario Wilderness (University of Toronto Press, 1989) and Environmental Law (Irwin Law, 2002).
Ben Boer
In July 2006 Ben Boer was appointed as a Visiting Professor by the Common Law and Civil Law sections of the Faculty, in order to carry out his role as Co-Director of the IUCN (also known as the World Conservation Union) Academy of Environmental Law. He will be based at the University of Ottawa for two years. He will continue to teach from time to time in the intensive courses in the Master of Environmental Law program at the University of Sydney.
Nathalie Chalifour
Nathalie Chalifour, JSD Stanford, specializes in the intersection between the environment and the economy. Her research areas include ecological fiscal reform, market-based instruments, trade and environment, biodiversity and forest conservation, wildlife trade, and international environmental law and policy. Prior to her appointment at the Faculty of Law, she served as Senior Advisor to the President of the National Round Table on Environment and Economy, Senior Policy Advisor with the World Wildlife Fund, she established the TRAFFIC Canada office and has taught at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.
Lynda M. Collins
Lynda M. Collins graduated as Gold Medalist from Osgoode Hall Law School in 2000. Professor Collins practiced with the Sierra Legal Defence Fund until 2003, litigating major environmental cases in tribunals ranging from the Ontario Municipal Board to the Supreme Court of Canada. From 2003 to 2005, Professor Collins practiced toxic tort with a leading San Francisco law firm representing state and local governments in complex multi-district litigation against the oil industry to recover damages for drinking water contamination.
Professor Collins received her LLM from the University of British Columbia in 2006. Since returning to Canada, she has appeared before the Standing Environment Committees at both the House of Commons and the Senate, and has consulted with a range of governmental and non-governmental organizations.
Professor Collins has published on a variety of subjects including freedom of information in environmental advocacy, Aboriginal environmental rights, causation in toxic tort, and the integration of the Precautionary Principle into toxic tort doctrine. Her current areas of interest include the intersection between public and private law in the area of toxic tort, the human right to environment, and the principle of intergenerational equity in international and European Union law.
Stewart Elgie
Stewart Elgie (LLM Harvard) was the founder of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund (now EcoJustice) where he was extensively involved in precedent-setting environmental litigation and endangered species law reform. He was subsequently founding executive director of the Canadian Boreal Initiative, a member of the federal legislative task force on endangered species, and chair of the national advisory committee to the NAFTA environment commission (CEC). He teaches and in the areas of environmental law and natural resources law and policy. His recent research has been on endangered species law and policy, and the constitution and the environment.
Elgie’s main focus now is on economic approaches to environmental protection. He is the founder and chair of Sustainable Prosperity, a national research-policy network that brings together scholars with leaders from business, environment and government across Canada to work on market based approaches for a greener, stronger economy. This network includes substantial funding opportunities for LLB and graduate student research. His specific research focuses on market-based approaches (taxes, markets, etc.) to issues such as forest conservation, climate change, and clean energy.
Yves Le Bouthillier
Yves Le Bouthillier, LL. B. (Ottawa), DEA (Paris II) teaches International Environmental Law in the French Language Program at the faculty. Vice Dean Le Bouthillier recently returned to the faculty from Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade where he was scholar in residence and actively involved in various negotiations, in particular on the Stockholm POPS Convention.
Heather McLeod-Kilmurray
Heather McLeod-Kilmurray was Legal Counsel at Environment Canada before completing her LLM at Cambridge and is now completing the SJD program at the University of Toronto. Her thesis deals with the operation of the rules of civil litigation in the environmental context, in particular class actions, pretrial injunctions, rules of standing and intervention, and seeks to bring to bear the insights of environmental ethics on the judicial process.
Don McRae
Don McRae, a former Dean of the Faculty, is an international lawyer with extensive experience in fisheries management and law of the sea. He has published and spoken widely on trade and environment issues and is currently Special Legal Advisor to the CEC with respect to the citizens’ submission process.
Bradford W. Morse
Professor, University of Ottawa, (Common Law) since 1976. Executive Director of Native Legal Task Force of British Columbia 1974-75. Research Director, Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba 1988-91. Chief of Staff to the Hon. Ronald A. Irwin, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development 1993-1996. Member of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 1979. Visiting Scholar to a number of law schools. Teaching subjects: wide variety of courses concerning Canadian and comparative Aboriginal law issues, labour and employment law, Trusts, Property Law, Intergovernmental Relations, Civil Liberties and Legal Systems. Publications: over 50 books, articles, chapters in books and commission reports, including: Prepared for the Law Reform Commission of Canada, "The Interaction Between Environmental Law Enforcement and Aboriginal and Treaty Rights", with David Nahwegahbow, 321 pages (November 1985); “Aboriginal Legal Issues in the Conservation of Natural Heritage”, National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, (January 2002); “Aboriginal Issues in Canada's Boreal Forest” co-authored with Jamie Benidickson, Stewart Elgie, Ryan Flewelling, Melanie Mallet and Kenny Loon, 112 pp (Ottawa: National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, 2005). Legal advisor to many First Nations and consultant to various royal commissions, government departments and indigenous peoples’ organisations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.