[10] Based on the joint panel's "positive environmental assessment", the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) also authorized a "key water permit" for the KOS site.
[11] In the spring of 2007, Ecojustice (then Sierra Legal) launched legal action on behalf of a "coalition of environmental groups"—"Sierra Club of Canada, Pembina Institute, Prairie Acid Rain Coalition and Toxics Watch Society"[11]—in Canada's Federal Court to overturn the regulatory approval,[10] saying that "the project would destroy huge tracts of boreal forest and muskeg in the province's northern regions.
"[11] The Pembina Institute's Simon Dyer said that the "joint panel has rubber-stamped another oil sands mega-project in the absence of clear answers about how to restore wetlands, rehabilitate toxic tailings ponds, protect migratory bird populations, or address escalating greenhouse gas pollution.
"[10] In early March, when a federal judge ruled that the "federal-provincial assessment panel approved the Kearl development without adequately explaining its rationale,"[10] the DFO revoked the KOS water permit.
He said that, the "federal government missed a real opportunity to show they're serious about dealing with climate change" by not including provisions for adequate "greenhouse-gas mitigation", without which this project would be "contributing to a growing problem over the next 50 years".
[11] In December 2015 Ecojustice filed an official complaint against the Calgary-based non-profit advocacy organization group—the Friends of Science (FoS), the International Climate Science Coalition, and the Heartland Institute—under the Competition Act with the Competition Bureau of Canada on behalf of Stephen Lewis, Tzeporah Berman Thomas Duck, David Schindler, Danny Harvey and two others, in which they called for a criminal investigation.
By December, in spite of the ruling, FoS has placed billboards in major Canadian cities with messages such as "The sun is the main driver of climate change.
[13] In 2017 Ecojustice, acting on behalf of their clients Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Living Oceans Society, won the court case that overturned the federal government's approval of the Canadian division of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners' $7.4-billion Trans Mountain Pipeline project, which resulted in the National Energy Board (NEB) being forced to "re-evaluate the projects marine shipping impacts".
"[21] In September 2018, Ecojustice lawyers, in "partnership with the uOttawa-Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic", filed a lawsuit against the Ontario provincial government on behalf of Greenpeace alleging that the "Ford government unlawfully failed to provide for public consultation on a regulation that ended Ontario's cap and trade program and on Bill 4, the Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, 2018, currently before the legislature.
"[22][23] In a May 14, 2019 CBC News article, Environmental Defence's Julia Levin and Ecojustice lawyer, Joshua Ginsberg, expressed concern that proposed amendments to Bill C-69 would favour industry over the environment.
[24] Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's one-year $2.5 million Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns, which he announced on July 4, 2019,[25][26] is led by a forensic accountant, Steve Allan, with a "mandate to investigate foreign-funded efforts".
[27] Kenney cited "the intrepid reporting of journalist Vivian Krause", who has spent ten years examining foreign funding of Canadian environmental non-profit organizations (ENGOs) when he made his announcement.
[31] The Ecojustice "lawsuit also alleges that inquiry commissioner Steve Allan was a donor to the UCP leadership campaign of Doug Schweitzer, now Alberta’s justice minister, who appointed him to the job.