About the Canadian Environmental Law Archive

The Archive is a project of the Canadian Environmental Law Foundation.

The Canadian Environmental Law Foundation is the charitable arm of Canadian Environmental Law Association .

As one of the earliest members of the environmental law sector in Canada, Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) has a deep understanding of how the rights and privileges we enjoy today came into being. CELA knows how hard-won those victories were. CELA also knows how fragile gains are and how easily they can be lost.

One of the driving forces behind the creation of the Canadian Environmental Law Foundation in 1993 (originally the Resource Library for the Environment and the Law) was a desire to protect and document the history of environmental law and environmental decision-making. 

Today, the Foundation maintains digital and physical collections that document the history of environmental protection across the country.

Some come from CELA’s historical records. Others are from the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy (CIELAP). 

CELA and CIELAP were originally the Canadian Environmental Law Research Foundation, founded in 1970, but later separately incorporated. CIELAP was a research and education organization whose mission was to inform legislative, policy and regulatory outcomes for sustainability at the national and provincial/territorial levels of government in Canada. While CIELAP has been wound down, it transferred all of its assets and publications to CELA and to the Foundation respectively.  The Foundation continues to provide access to CIELAP’s work through the Archive and the Environmental Beginnings project on the Foundation website.

Other collections were rescued when their original online homes were shuttered. The archive reflects work by government agencies, watchdog authorities, nonprofit organizations, lawyers, and many of the country’s most influential environmental advocates.

In hosting this Archive, we aim to preserve the history of environmental law for the environmental and legal community for years to come.

Your Guide to the Archive

A fonds is a collection of documents that share the same origin. The Canadian Environmental Law Archive organizes its items by fonds that reflect CELA’s traditional areas of focus and include CELA’s publication series, as well as the entire publication catalogue of the former CIELAP, as well as key documents on certain topics published by the former Great Lakes United. It also includes certain topical collections such as the Great Lakes Charter, or Nuclear Waste history in Canada.

Items in the Archive are assigned to Collections, which connect items by the type of document or the overarching theme. If you are looking for a specific type of document, such as submissions on toxics, or CELA publications on water, then Collections can help guide you.

All Collections

Items in the Archive are tagged with Subjects, which helps identify the focus in the documents. Subjects include topics such as air quality, erosion, and festivals, etc.

All Subjects