The Right to a Healthy Environment

"Canada has abundant natural wealth -- beautiful landscapes, vast forests, and thousands of rivers and lakes. The land defines Canadians as a people, yet the country has one of the worst environmental records in the industrialized world. "Building on his previous book, The Environmental Rights Revolution (2012), David R. Boyd, one of Canada's leading environmental lawyers, describes how recognizing the constitutional right to a healthy environment could have a transformative impact, empowering citizens, holding governments and industry accountable, and improving Canada's green record. The overwhelming majority of the world's nations now recognize the right to a healthy environment through laws, constitutions, treaties, or court decisions. Boyd explores Canada's history of failed efforts to do the same within this international context and evaluates three pathways to constitutional recognition of the right to a healthy environment. The Right to a Healthy Environment makes the case that constitutional recognition of environmental rights and responsibilities would both reflect and reinforce Canadian values, much as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms confirmed and enhanced our commitment to equality."-- Publisher description.