Ecojustice Canada
Sierra Legal Defence Fund has been renamed as Ecojustice. It is just the funding arm of Sierra Club BC.
In Canada Ecojustice Canada and the Sierra Club BC are joined at the hip, they are the legal wing of the Sierra Club. It started with the American Sierra Club Legal Defence Fund (SCLDF)
“SCLDF was founded by a group of visionary American lawyers who believed that the law can be harnessed to preserve the environment. No one was sure if the American model developed by SCLDF would work in Canada, but it didn’t take long to identify a group of champions for the idea. The Sierra Legal Defence Fund, now called Ecojustice, set up shop in Vancouver and was incorporated as a charity in 1990 with lawyer Greg McDade in the role of executive director. Stewart Elgie, Don Lidstone, Dr. Michael M’Gonigle, John Rich, Don Rosenbloom, Rick Sutherland, Dr. Andrew Thompson, and Joan Vance were the founding board members of Ecojustice.”
Sierra Club Canada (SCC) is a Canadian environmental organization. It is part of the environmental movement. The roots of Sierra Club Canada go back to 1963, when environmentalists in British Columbia affiliated themselves with the Sierra Club of the United States (many of these individuals were prominent in the founding of Greenpeace). Sierra Club Canada became a pan-Canadian organization in 1989, and was legally incorporated as a Canadian organization in 1992. As of 2010 it has approximately 10,000 members and supporters. Its main office is in Ottawa.
Ecojustice Canada is not a local organization, however it is a link in the chain between local groups and the Tides Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation The have a massive budget that runs between 2 and almost 7 MILLION Dollars annually. They also have a staff that earns between $80,000 – $119,999 annually. Looking at that and I think I picked the wrong career to get rich.
More interesting points to consider.
Ecojustice: $85,000 & US$16,000 for “2015 Fossil Fuel Legal Strategy Work”
Ecojustice received $510,000 ($350,000, $100,000 & $60,000). Whether any of that went into the anti-pipeline campaign is, again, unclear.
Some Facts Behind the Ecojustice Injunction to Halt Alberta’s Public Inquiry into Foreign Funding.
Quoted below.
The Facts:
Ecojustice, an organization that receives foreign funding wants to halt the inquiry into foreign funding.
- According to their CRA filings, in 2018 alone they received $1,046,974 from a source outside of Canada.
- In the past, Ecojustice was also a recipient of funding related to Tides USA’s ‘Tar Sands Campaign’.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/vivian-krause-oil- sands-money-trail - Ecojustice has been a long-time anti-oil and gas advocate. They boast about their ‘environmental wins’ on their website. This includes the canceling of Energy East in 2017
https://ecojustice.ca/case/challenging-transcanadas- energy-east-pipeline/ - Recently, Ecojustice was the main proponent in the Supreme Court challenge to the Trans Mountain pipeline. The Supreme Court rightly quashed their challenge in early 2020 after 3 years of legal battles.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/supreme-court-will- not-hear-trans-mountain- pipeline-expansion-appeal- cases-1.4840089 - Worth reading “earmarked for tar sands work“
- From the horse mouth “The facts on Ecojustice funding“
Board of Directors
Leonard Schein – President
Lori Williams – Vice President
Will Roush – Secretary
Ian Burgess – Treasurer
Kate Bayne – Director
Deborah Carver – Director
Abagail Dillen – Director
Won KIm – Director
Madeleine Redfern – Director
Anna Reid – Director
David Rosenberg – Director
Richard Secord – Director
Hugo Seguin – Director
Kate Ziedler – Director
Below is statements from Revenue Canada
