2022-23 OVERVIEW

ELC Clinic student 2022-23 ELC 2022-23 Annual Report Page 4 of 13 UPHOLDING INDIGENOUS AUTHORITY We continue to see demand for the creation of new tools and approaches for recognition of the rights of Indigenous communities to manage and safeguard their relationships with the environment in their territories and to respond to impacts from industrial pollution. [...] I found it empowering to move through the client relationship, all the way from the intake interview, to working collaboratively with the client throughout the development of the project, to the closing letter. [...] ELC Clinic student 2022-23 ELC 2022-23 Annual Report Page 6 of 13 PROTECTING WATER AND LAND We continue to see a demand for work to better protect, manage and restore the health of land and water, and for the support of public participation and government accountability in decision making for land and water. [...] Over the past few years, our work to develop and coordinate strategic law reform for the production, use, recycling and disposal of plastics helped lead to action by both the federal and provincial governments, including the approval of local bans on single-use plastics, establishing a legal framework to provide for province-wide bans of single-use plastic items, and a federal commitment to ban ha. [...] Lunchtime guest speaker Bev Sellars, former councillor and chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation in Williams Lake, BC, drove home the point about the dire need to protect rivers, and not just pieces here and there – whole rivers and systems – in order to save our “natural economy.” Bev spoke about the changes and deterioration she’s seen over time: to the river, to salmon, and to animals.