Charter Rights at Issue in Fracking Supreme Court Case
Jessica Ernst’s long battle over rights, well contamination reaches highest court Tuesday.
Jessica Ernst stands in front of Encana compressors in Rosebud, Alberta. Photo by Tor Lundberg Tuorda.
An Alberta woman’s landmark eight-year battle over fracking regulation, water contamination and Charter rights will take centre stage in the Supreme Court of Canada Tuesday.
Jessica Ernst claims fracking contaminated the water supply at her homestead near Rosebud, about 110 kilometres east of Calgary. She is seeking $33 million in damages.
Ernst is also taking on the agency that regulates the energy industry in Alberta, claiming it has denied her the right to raise her concerns effectively and is shielded by unconstitutional legislation that bar citizens from suing it for wrongdoing.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Law at the University of Toronto have intervened in support of Ernst’s position and the lawsuit could change the way the controversial technology of hydraulic fracturing is regulated in Canada.
Ernst’s lawyers hope the Supreme Court will eventually rule that the Alberta Energy Regulator violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by limiting her ability to communicate with the agency.
Such a decision would punt Ernst’s case back into Alberta’s courts where it can continue its slow course. Ernst considers the regulator the most at fault in her famous and multi-pronged lawsuit.
In a “factum” prepared for the Supreme Court, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association argues that immunity clauses for regulators are an affront to government accountability and a licence to abuse power.
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