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Environmental Damages After The Federal Environmental Enforcement Act: Bringing Ecosystem Services To Canadian Environmental Law?, Martin Z. P. Olsynski

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The Canadian Environmental Enforcement Act [EEA] directs judges to consider actual environmental damage, or risk thereof, when setting fines for environmental offences. The EEA defi nes damage as including the loss of use and non-use values. While these terms are not unprecedented in Canadian environmental law, their use in environmental damage assessment is. Bearing in mind recent developments in environmental valuation in the United States and internationally, and considering the emergence of the “ecosystem services” paradigm in particular, this article explores the opportunities and challenges for ecosystem services based environmental damages assessment in the Canadian environmental sentencing context. The ecosystem …