I had the great pleasure once again this weekend to join with my environmental law colleagues in judging the biannual Willms & Shier environmental law moot.

The pleasure was heightened by the moot being held in person for the first time since the pandemic, this time at the Federal Court Building in Toronto.

A number of law schools fielded teams to argue a real case, from both appellant and respondent perspectives, in the fictional “Supreme Environmental Moot Court of Canada”.

The case under appeal was the British Columbia Court of Appeal decision in Victory Motors (Abbotsford) Ltd. v Action Super-Save Gas Gas Stations Ltd., 2021 BCCA 129. which involved a challenging piece of statutory interpretation.

Although it seems impossible that the already high standard of advocacy in these moots should improve each time, such was the case here. The contestants were all uniformly well prepared and talented advocates in closely fought contests, with the moot referee being forced to adopt the competition’s tie breakers on a number of occasions to determine which teams would go through to the next round.

I was particularly pleased to have the opportunity to reconnect and join with colleagues Paula Boutis (our esteemed Chief Justice for the day) and Rich Butler to judge two of the first round moots. We are pictured in the excellent photo above taken by our bailiff, Rohan Jain.

My warmest congratulations to Marc McAree, Joanna Vince and their colleagues at Willms & Shier for organizing another keynote environmental law moot.

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Manning Environmental Law is a Canadian law firm based in Toronto, Ontario. Our practice is focussed on environmental law, energy law and aboriginal law. 

Paul Manning is a certified specialist in environmental law. He has been named as one of the World’s Leading Environmental Lawyers by Who’s Who Legal. Paul is also ranked by Lexpert as one of Canada’s Leading Practitioners in Environmental Law.

As always, these posts  are provided only as a general guide and are not legal advice. If you do have any issue that requires legal advice please get in touch. Our contact details can be found here