After the beluga, the chorus frog and the woodland caribou, TJL lawyers are standing up to protect the copper redhorse, an endangered species of fish.
On January 7, 2021, Me Frédéric Paquin and TJL lawyers filed an application for judicial review in Federal Court on behalf of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) and the Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement (CQDE) to have the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans enforce subsection 58(5) of the Species at Risk Act.
This subsection provides that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans must implement a mechanism for the protection of the critical habitat of a designated species at risk within 180 days following the inclusion of the species’ recovery strategy in the public registry.
However, the Minister is more than eight years late in implementing this protection. Indeed, the Minister included the recovery strategy for the copper redhorse in the public registry on June 20, 2012. Under the legislation, the federal Minister responsible for Fisheries and Oceans should therefore have issued a ministerial order to protect the critical habitat of this unique species by December 17, 2012. To date, no action has been taken by the Minister.
With this application, CPAWS and the CQDE are seeking an order directing the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to implement a mechanism to protect the critical habitat of the copper redhorse. In addition, they are seeking a declaratory judgment recognizing that the Minister has been acting illegally by failing to do so within the legislated timeframe.
For more information and to consult the notice of application, read the page dedicated to this lawsuit.
