Robert Valentine Wright

The City of Kingston operated a municipal dump site from which toxic leachate migrated into the Cataraqui River.

The Crown and a private citizen laid charges under s. 36(3) of the Fisheries Act.

The trial judge convicted the City and its Director of Environmental Services, but the summary conviction appeal judge ordered a new trial, applying the test from R. v. Inco Ltd. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and restored the convictions, holding that the Inco test applies to the Ontario Water Resources Act, not the Fisheries Act.

Under the Fisheries Act, the Crown need only prove that the substance added to the water is deleterious, not that the receiving water itself was rendered deleterious.

The applicant, Earthroots Coalition, sought judicial review of the Minister of Natural Resources' decision to permit the improvement and use of a logging road crossing the Bob Lake Conservation Reserve.

The applicant argued the road use violated the Conservation Reserve Regulation, which prohibits commercial forest harvest and industrial uses in the reserve.

Applying a reasonableness standard of review, the Divisional Court dismissed the application.

The court held that the regulation must be interpreted purposively within the broader legislative framework of the Public Lands Act and the Crown Forest Sustainability Act, making the Minister's decision to balance conservation with forest management objectives reasonable.

Wildlands League brought a motion for leave to intervene as a friend of the court on a motion for leave to appeal brought by the Minister of Natural Resources, and on the appeal if leave is granted.

The underlying dispute involves a company's right to use a road through Lake Superior Provincial Park for forestry operations.

The court granted the intervention, finding that Wildlands League could provide a useful perspective on the environmental assessment issues without causing injustice to the parties, subject to conditions including not adding to the evidentiary record.

The appellant insurer appealed a declaration that it had a duty to defend the respondent insured, a contractor, in actions arising from an oil spill.

The insured was retained to remediate the spill but was sued for allegedly failing to clean it up in a timely and proper manner.

The insurer argued that the claims did not fall within the insuring agreement and were excluded by a pollution exclusion clause.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that the claims fell within the insuring agreement and that the pollution exclusion clause did not apply because the insured's alleged negligence constituted an independent cause of the loss occurring after the original discharge.

Appeal from an order staying the public hearings of a provincial inquiry into a fatal mine explosion while criminal proceedings against certain mine managers were pending.

The Court held that the inquiry served a legitimate and pressing public purpose, and that the accused managers were compellable witnesses subject to constitutional protections against use of their testimony and derivative evidence.

The Court rejected a broad stay as the appropriate remedy for anticipated prejudice, emphasizing that fair trial concerns from publicity ordinarily should be addressed through narrower measures such as publication restrictions and by the commissioner in the first instance.

The appeal was allowed and the stay of the public hearings was set aside.