Why We Filed a CEPA Complaint—and Why Ordinary Canadians Need to Know This Process Exists
For more than thirty years, Veins of Life Watershed Society has worked in Victoria Harbour, the Gorge Waterway, Portage Inlet and the surrounding watersheds.
We have organized cleanups, restored habitat, worked with First Nations, municipalities, federal and provincial agencies, businesses, schools and thousands of volunteers. We helped bring attention to Rock Bay when it was one of the most contaminated industrial sites on the coast. We have planted eelgrass, removed marine debris, investigated storm drains and watched places once written off begin to recover.
We have always preferred cooperation over confrontation.
Unfortunately, cooperation without enforcement eventually becomes little more than an invitation to another meeting.
That is why we filed an application for an investigation under section 17 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, commonly called CEPA.
We did not file it because we dislike municipalities. We filed it because governments that operate storm sewers, sanitary sewers, pump stations, roads and outfalls must be held to environmental standards just as industries, shipyards, property owners and private corporations are.
A municipal logo painted on a pipe does not make the discharge coming from it harmless.
My History With CEPA
This was not my first encounter with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
From approximately 2001 to 2008, I served on the federal roster of CEPA Review Officers after being appointed by then federal Environment Minister David Anderson.
A CEPA Review Officer is not an enforcement officer and does not investigate pollution complaints. Review Officers are independent decision-makers who may hear applications involving environmental protection compliance orders issued under CEPA. The federal government describes them as impartial adjudicators who review those orders and conduct hearings when required.
That appointment gave me direct experience with the basic principles behind CEPA:
allegations must be supported by evidence;
regulated parties must be treated fairly;
decisions must be based on the law;
reasons must be given;
and environmental laws mean very little if nobody is prepared to enforce them.
I understood that a CEPA complaint was not a petition, a political protest or a general request that somebody “look into pollution.”
It was a statutory process created by Parliament.
Parliament Gave Citizens This Right
Section 17 of CEPA allows any Canadian resident who is at least 18 years old to apply to the federal Minister of the Environment for an investigation of an alleged offence under the Act.
The applicant must provide a solemn affirmation or declaration containing:
the applicant’s name and address;
confirmation that the applicant is at least 18 and resides in Canada;
the nature of the alleged offence;
the name of each person alleged to have contravened the Act or its regulations; and
a concise statement of the evidence supporting the allegations.
Those words matter.
The Act asks for a concise statement of evidence. It does not require an ordinary citizen to conduct the complete investigation, prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, hire a laboratory, retain a team of lawyers and present something resembling a finished criminal prosecution.
It is an application for an investigation, not the trial itself.
The citizen must present a credible, specific and evidence-based allegation. The federal government then has the investigative powers, trained officers, scientific staff, laboratories and authority to determine the facts.
After receiving a proper application, the Minister must acknowledge it within 20 days. The Minister must then investigate the matters considered necessary to determine the facts and report to the applicant every 90 days on the investigation’s progress, proposed action and estimated completion time.
Environment and Climate Change Canada’s own enforcement policy says that compliance with CEPA is mandatory, enforcement should emphasize prevention of environmental harm, and officers should examine every suspected violation of which they have knowledge.
That is what Parliament promised Canadians.
Why We Filed
Our complaint did not begin with one sample, one pipe or one bad afternoon.
It grew out of decades of observations, correspondence, government reports, sampling programs, council records, environmental assessments, freedom-of-information requests and fieldwork throughout the connected Victoria Harbour and Gorge watershed.
The evidence we submitted and identified included concerns involving:
municipal stormwater outfalls;
sanitary-sewer overflows and cross-connections;
leaking or deteriorated sewer infrastructure;
industrial and commercial runoff entering municipal drainage systems;
contaminated nearshore sediments;
polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs;
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs;
metals;
dioxins and furans;
fecal contamination;
petroleum products;
pesticides and other endocrine-disrupting substances;
repeated transport of contaminants from land into fish habitat;
and the cumulative effects of many discharges entering one connected marine ecosystem.
Not every contaminant automatically constitutes an offence under CEPA. Some are regulated through specific CEPA regulations; others may engage the federal Fisheries Act, provincial environmental legislation, municipal bylaws or several laws at once.
A good complaint must make those distinctions.
Our central allegation was not simply that “the harbour is polluted.” Everyone already knows that parts of the harbour contain historic contamination.
Our concern was that municipal infrastructure continues to collect, concentrate and convey pollutants from roads, industrial lands, commercial properties, contaminated sites and improper sewer connections into the Gorge Waterway, Victoria Harbour, Portage Inlet and connected fish habitat—often without effective source control.
Historic contamination does not excuse present-day contamination.
A contaminated sediment bed is not a bottomless disposal facility.
The Food Web Does Not Recognize Municipal Boundaries
Victoria, Esquimalt, Saanich, View Royal and Oak Bay may each maintain their own roads, pipes, plans, budgets and legal departments.
The water does not care.
Pollution released from one jurisdiction moves through the same connected harbour system. It settles in intertidal mud, binds to organic material, is disturbed again by storms, propellers, dredging and construction, and may enter the food web.
Sand lance and other forage fish use shallow nearshore habitat. Chinook salmon eat forage fish. Southern Resident killer whales depend heavily on Chinook.
That is why stormwater and contaminated sediments cannot be dismissed as separate housekeeping problems belonging to separate municipalities.
They are connected ecological pathways:
Street and industrial property → catch basin → storm sewer → outfall → sediment → invertebrates and forage fish → Chinook → Resident killer whales.
The current CEPA expressly emphasizes pollution prevention, ecosystem-based decision-making, the precautionary principle, cumulative effects, the polluter-pays principle and the right of individuals in Canada to a healthy environment as provided under the Act.
Those principles are difficult to reconcile with an investigation that reduces a watershed-wide contamination complaint to a single isolated point.
Municipalities Are Corporations
There is often a strange assumption that environmental enforcement is something governments do to industries—not something that can be applied to governments themselves.
British Columbia’s Community Charter is quite direct:
“A municipality is a corporation of the residents of its area.”
The governing body of that corporation is its council.
A municipality is also an order of government, so it is not identical to a private corporation in every legal respect. It has statutory powers, public duties, taxation authority and democratic responsibilities.
But it is still a legal corporation.
It can own property, enter contracts, operate infrastructure, employ people, cause environmental harm and be subject to applicable federal and provincial laws.
If a private industrial corporation operated a pipe that repeatedly conveyed regulated contamination into fish habitat, governments would not normally accept:
the pipe is old;
repairs are expensive;
several departments are involved;
the contamination came from many sources;
more studies are required;
or the company has a long-term asset-management plan.
Those facts might affect the remedy or timetable. They do not make the law disappear.
Municipalities should receive fair treatment under environmental law. They should not receive immunity through complexity.
What Happened After We Filed
We filed our section 17 application in 2025 as an individual citizen, supported by the work and records of Veins of Life Watershed Society.
The complaint addressed a cumulative pattern of discharges and contamination associated with municipal systems across the connected watershed.
Environment and Climate Change Canada acknowledged the complaint and began its statutory process.
During the investigation, we repeatedly explained that the allegation was not limited to one property, one contaminant or one outfall. We asked the department to examine the combined evidence, the municipal collection systems, the movement of pollutants through the watershed and the cumulative effects of repeated releases.
The federal investigation was ultimately narrowed primarily to a PCB-related issue associated with 2110 Store Street and outfall 626A near Rock Bay.
The final response discontinued the investigation.
In our view, the department answered a much smaller question than the one we had submitted.
It looked at whether a narrowly defined PCB regulatory offence could be substantiated at one location. It did not adequately grapple with the broader allegations involving the municipal systems, repeated releases, multiple jurisdictions, connected outfalls, cumulative contamination and the full body of evidence placed before it.
That distinction is the heart of our Federal Court proceeding.
We are not asking a court to declare, without a hearing or evidence, that every municipality committed every alleged offence.
We are asking whether the federal decision-maker lawfully and reasonably dealt with the complaint that was actually filed.
Why Narrowing the Complaint Matters
Breaking a watershed complaint into tiny pieces can make each piece appear insignificant.
One outfall may be blamed on an upstream property.
One contaminated site may be called historic.
One sewer overflow may be called exceptional.
One cross-connection may be called accidental.
One sediment exceedance may be said to require more study.
One municipality may say the contamination came from another municipality.
One agency may say the substance belongs under another agency’s legislation.
By the time every department has finished dividing responsibility, the pollution remains in the water and nobody is responsible for the whole.
That is precisely why cumulative effects and ecosystem-based investigation matter.
The harbour receives the combined load, not the bureaucratically separated load.
A proper investigation does not have to assume that every allegation is correct. It does, however, have to understand the allegation, examine the relevant evidence and provide reasons that meaningfully address the central issues.
Why We Went to Federal Court
After receiving the final report, we commenced an application for judicial review in the Federal Court.
The proceeding is Federal Court File T-1724-26.
Judicial review is not a new pollution prosecution. It is a review of federal administrative decision-making.
Under section 18.1 of the Federal Courts Act, a person directly affected by a federal decision may apply for judicial review. These applications normally have a very short filing deadline—generally 30 days from communication of the decision unless the Court grants additional time.
Our case asks whether the federal response to the CEPA application was reasonable and lawful, including whether the decision:
understood the complaint that was submitted;
considered the central evidence;
improperly reduced a cumulative watershed allegation to one narrow issue;
provided adequate and intelligible reasons;
and fulfilled the statutory purpose of the citizen-investigation provisions.
This is not yet a trial over whether the municipalities committed offences.
No court has made findings against any municipality.
The immediate issue is whether the federal government properly administered the CEPA process.
Where the Court Case Stands
As of July 26, 2026, the Federal Court application remains active.
The Attorney General of Canada has appeared in the proceeding. According to the correspondence in our court file, Canada does not presently intend to file respondent affidavits, and no cross-examinations are planned.
Our supporting affidavit and documentary exhibits have been served. We are now working toward completion of the Applicant’s Record.
Under Rule 309 of the Federal Courts Rules, the Applicant’s Record normally includes:
a table of contents;
the Notice of Application;
the decision and reasons under review;
supporting affidavits and exhibits;
relevant material from the federal decision-maker’s certified record;
any applicable transcripts;
and the applicant’s memorandum of fact and law.
We have requested additional time, until September 30, 2026, because of complications following cataract surgeries, the size of the evidence record and outstanding freedom-of-information and access-to-information records.
There has not yet been a hearing on the merits.
We are therefore still in the record-building and written-argument stage.
CEPA Also Provides Another Possible Court Route
Section 22 of CEPA contains a separate procedure called an environmental protection action.
A person who filed a section 17 investigation request may, in certain circumstances, bring an action against the alleged offender if:
the Minister failed to conduct the investigation and report within a reasonable time; or
the Minister’s response was unreasonable.
Such an action requires proof that an offence alleged in the original application caused significant environmental harm. Possible remedies include declarations, orders preventing continued offences, orders requiring corrective action and orders requiring the parties to negotiate a plan to correct or mitigate the harm.
That is different from judicial review.
A judicial review examines the legality and reasonableness of the federal government’s decision-making process.
A section 22 environmental protection action proceeds directly against a person alleged to have committed the offence.
The Act also contains limitation periods. Section 23 generally provides a two-year period for an environmental protection action, although the time during the ministerial investigation is excluded from that calculation.
Anyone considering either route should obtain legal advice quickly. Environmental law may move at the speed of a glacier, but court deadlines move like a startled rabbit.
How an Ordinary Citizen Can File a CEPA Investigation Application
The process is available to ordinary Canadians, but it should be used carefully.
Step 1: Identify an Actual CEPA Provision
CEPA is not a general law against everything harmful to the environment.
Find the particular section or regulation that may have been contravened.
Ask:
What substance or activity is regulated?
What conduct is prohibited or required?
Who had possession, control or responsibility?
When and where did the alleged contravention occur?
Is CEPA the correct statute, or does the issue primarily belong under the Fisheries Act, a provincial statute or another law?
A complaint is much stronger when it identifies a legal offence rather than simply describing an environmental problem.
Step 2: Identify the Alleged Person
The application must name each person alleged to have contravened CEPA.
Under Canadian law, a “person” can include an individual or corporation. Where a municipality is involved, identify the municipal corporation—not every employee, councillor or contractor whose name appears in a document.
Personal allegations should never be made casually.
Focus on the legal operator, owner, decision-maker or regulated entity.
Step 3: Build a Clear Chronology
Create a dated record showing:
when the problem was first observed;
when samples were taken;
when reports were issued;
when government agencies were notified;
what responses were received;
whether the release continued;
and what corrective action, if any, occurred.
A simple, accurate chronology is often more useful than several hundred pages dumped into an attachment folder without explanation.
Step 4: Preserve Evidence
Useful evidence may include:
photographs and videos with dates and locations;
maps and outfall identifiers;
laboratory results;
sampling methods and chain-of-custody records;
government inspection reports;
consultant reports;
permits and approvals;
municipal plans and council records;
correspondence with regulators;
witness statements;
records of spills, overflows or recurring discharges;
and scientific literature explaining the environmental pathway.
Clearly distinguish between:
what you personally observed;
what a document reports;
what laboratory testing established;
and what you infer from the combined evidence.
Do not exaggerate. A proven fact is stronger than an exciting guess.
Step 5: Explain the Pathway
Show how the alleged conduct connects to the regulated substance or offence.
For an outfall complaint, that might mean:
Source property → catch basin → municipal pipe → identified outfall → receiving water or sediment.
Maps, drainage plans, dye testing, inspection records and municipal asset information can be critical.
Step 6: Prepare the Solemn Declaration
Include everything required by section 17:
your name and address;
your age and Canadian residency;
the nature of the alleged offence;
the name of each alleged contravener;
and a concise statement of the supporting evidence.
Concise does not mean vague.
It means organized, relevant and directly connected to the alleged offence.
Step 7: Keep Proof of Submission
Retain:
the signed application;
every attachment;
the submission email or courier record;
proof of delivery;
the acknowledgment;
all 90-day reports;
and every later communication.
Never assume the government’s file contains everything you sent.
Step 8: Monitor the Statutory Process
The Minister must acknowledge the application within 20 days and generally report progress every 90 days.
Record each deadline.
When a progress report appears to narrow or misunderstand the allegation, respond immediately and in writing. Identify the missing issue, the supporting evidence and the part of the original complaint where it was raised.
Do not wait for the final report before correcting a serious misunderstanding.
Step 9: Request the Decision-Making Record
Access-to-information and freedom-of-information requests may help reveal:
what materials investigators reviewed;
which departments were consulted;
what legal provisions were considered;
whether evidence was excluded;
how the scope was defined;
and why the investigation was discontinued.
Expect delays, exemptions, fees and missing attachments.
Government transparency is often praised in the same way people praise exercise: warmly, sincerely and preferably without doing too much of it.
Step 10: Read the Final Reasons Carefully
Do not merely ask whether you agree with the result.
Ask:
Did the decision accurately describe the complaint?
Did it address the central evidence?
Did it explain why important evidence was rejected or considered irrelevant?
Did it investigate the correct alleged offence?
Did it give understandable reasons?
Did it quietly substitute a smaller question for the one submitted?
Those questions may determine whether further legal action is justified.
What We Want From This Process
We are not seeking punishment for its own sake.
We want source control.
We want municipalities to identify and stop prohibited discharges before they enter storm sewers.
We want cross-connections corrected.
We want aging sanitary and stormwater systems repaired.
We want contaminated outfalls and nearshore sediments properly assessed.
We want swimming and shoreline recreation decisions to consider chemical contamination as well as fecal bacteria.
We want restoration projects protected from continuing contamination.
We want the people operating public infrastructure to meet standards comparable to those imposed on private operators.
Most of all, we want enforcement agencies to investigate the environmental system that actually exists—not a collection of carefully isolated fragments that guarantee nobody is responsible for the whole.
The Larger Lesson
CEPA’s citizen-investigation provisions exist because Parliament understood that regulators may overlook offences, delay action or become too comfortable with regulated organizations.
Citizens are not required to remain silent until a government department decides the time is convenient.
But the process is not easy.
It requires evidence, patience, organization and a willingness to keep going after the polite replies stop being useful.
Our CEPA complaint has already exposed a larger problem: Canada has strong environmental statutes, extensive regulations, enforcement policies and highly qualified staff, yet an ordinary citizen may still spend years trying to persuade governments to investigate pollution that their own reports have documented.
The law is complicated enough to discourage the public, expensive enough to discourage small organizations and divided among enough agencies that responsibility can be passed around indefinitely.
That does not mean the process should be abandoned.
It means more citizens need to understand it, use it responsibly and insist that Parliament’s words be treated as law rather than decoration.
We filed because pollution does not become lawful merely because it has continued for decades.
We filed because municipalities are governments—but they are also operators of infrastructure and corporations responsible for their conduct.
We filed because source control is cheaper and more effective than repeatedly cleaning contaminated sediment.
We filed because intertidal habitat, forage fish, Chinook salmon and Resident killer whales cannot retain lawyers or submit statutory complaints.
And we filed because, after thirty years of meetings, reports, promises and carefully exchanged business cards, somebody eventually has to ask the uncomfortable question:
Who is going to enforce the law?
This article describes our experience and provides general public information. It is not legal advice. CEPA applications, environmental protection actions and judicial-review proceedings involve different legal tests and strict deadlines. Anyone considering court proceedings should obtain legal advice as early as possible. If you have any questions or can provide further help or resources, we always need guidance and help
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