Click here to view original web page at breachmedia.ca
A coalition of British Columbians are organizing their municipalities to take oil and gas companies to court over the costs of the climate crisis
It was a sunny afternoon on the aptly-named Sunshine Coast in B.C., when residents Dawn Allen and Alaya Boisvert approached the Gibsons town council in their chamber.
It was late winter and, for nearly a year prior, Allen and Boisvert had spent long hours in Zoom meetings. They had collected petition signatures at fairs, farmers markets, and outside grocery stores. They had trudged door to door, through stifling heat waves, asking their neighbours to back them.
Standing in front of her local government, Allen had ten minutes to convince them to become the first municipality in Canada to agree to take oil and gas companies to court over the costs of the climate crisis.
For decades, these companies have fuelled global warming, while ordinary people have footed the bill for millions in damages from climate change-fuelled extreme weather disasters.
Now, Canadians like Allen and Boisvert want those companies to pay.
Their organizing is part of a province-wide campaign called “Sue Big Oil,” driven by a fledgling coalition of activists and organizations who are signing on towns to commit to mobilize for a class action lawsuit.
In 2022, Vancouver, for a period, became the first. This March, Gibsons became the second, increasing the momentum.
A successful class action lawsuit could mean a transformation in how cities access funds to rebuild after extreme weather events like forest fires, road washouts, heat domes and drought. The campaign’s organizers are also aiming to shift where Canada puts the blame for climate breakdown—squarely onto the shoulders of big oil.
The multi-billion dollar consequences of climate breakdown
The campaign officially launched last summer, at a well-attended Zoom meeting hosted by lawyer Andrew Gage and campaigner Fiona Koza, both with the advocacy group West Coast Environmental Law.
They were joined by Chief of Neskonlith Indian Band Kukpi7 Judy Wilson and University of British Columbia (UBC) law professor Stepan Wood. UBC climate justice professor and former federal NDP MP candidate Avi Lewis hosted the launch.
As they explained to the nearly 150 people attending the launch, private international law provides an opening for governments to take action against fossil fuel companies.
“There’s case law saying if someone’s contribution to pollution is detectable, if it’s significant enough, they can be sued for it,” Gage, who was the co-author of a report on the subject in 2015, told The Breach.
“Now apply that to climate change. If your emissions are global, you’re clearly large enough that you could be sued for a share of the costs.”
The next step, Gage said, is to have British Columbians convince their cities and towns to commit $1 per resident to fund the legal costs for a class action lawsuit against the world’s biggest oil companies.
Local governments would choose their own lawyers, and which corporations to take to court.
And the amount they’d be suing them for? The costs of fossil fuel-caused climate breakdown.
Damage from extreme weather events already costs Canada, on average, more than two billion dollars every year, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
Hurricane Fiona cost Canada about $800 million in insured damage. The derecho that ripped through Ontario and Quebec last spring tallied about $1 billion. The wildfire that scorched Nova Scotia this summer added another $165 million.
And then there’s cost in human and non-human life. In the summer of 2021, a week-long heat dome in B.C. left 619 people dead.
On the last day of the heat dome, Allen said she was on the ferry from B.C.’s lower mainland to the Sunshine Coast.
“The stench from the die-off of marine life was spectacular,” Allen said. “Plants were burned. Leaves were crispy. It’s like they’d been toasted.”
Allen said she was lucky to be able to afford an air conditioner for her home on the outskirts of Gibsons. But some of her neighbours were not so lucky.
So when Allen heard there might be a way to get the corporations responsible for more extreme weather to help pay for the costs of surviving the climate crisis, she was all in.
“It’s not all our fault—the bulk of the problem lands on the shoulders of the companies who continue to promote the use of fossil fuels, when they’ve known for so long that it causes damage,” Allen said. “They could have turned the ship around a long time ago.”
‘Something that has teeth’
The Sue Big Oil campaign wasn’t Gage’s first shot at a class action against the oil industry.
In 2019, he had campaigned to have B.C. local governments send letters asking oil companies to pay a share of the costs of climate change.
“That initial campaign was really important,” said Avi Lewis, who helped convene and connect the coalition behind the next iteration of the campaign. “It clearly connected the dots between the most accessible level of government, municipal government, and the actual localized costs of the climate crisis.”
By that March, 20 local governments had voted to participate including Courtenay, Alert Bay and New Denver. That’s when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“COVID-19 sort of stalled the campaign for a while,” Gage said. “And so the Sue Big Oil campaign is a relaunch that’s much more focused on ‘let’s do something that actually has teeth.’”
Since its launch, organizers have hosted public events and even a Sue Big Oil House Party—where guests played “Cards Against Climate Change” and other spin offs of classic games.
If it was successful, money won in the suit would go towards cooling centres, extra water reservoirs, rebuilding infrastructure damaged in extreme weather and other costs associated with climate change.
“Local governments can’t get compensation for the victims of climate change—like in the heat dome,” Gage said. “But they can get compensation for the additional money that is spent keeping cooling centres open or creating impromptu misting stations.”
By the time West Coast Environmental Law’s call to sue oil corporations reached her inbox in June 2022, Vancouver city councillor Adrianne Carr said she was already staring down a deadline to get motions before council. She quickly drafted up a motion to get Vancouver to back the campaign.
“I leapt on it,” Carr said. “I thought this was a great idea and Vancouver should be in the lead.”
Later that summer—just a month after the Sue Big Oil campaign launched—Vancouver city council was voting whether to budget about $660,000 for the class action.
Gil Aguilar, a community organizer for environmental nonprofit the Georgia Strait Alliance, called into the meeting.
“Poverty, destruction, hunger and death caused by extreme weather linked to climate change are crushing those who have contributed the least to it and who often can barely afford to survive,” Aguilar told council.
Council voted to back the lawsuit.
Another B.C. town commits to the lawsuit
Allen said Sunshine Coast’s campaign was born in a summer backyard meeting.
She had been involved in Lewis’ run to represent the federal West Vancouver–Sunshine Coast–Sea to Sky Country riding.
After Lewis’ campaign ended in a loss, Allen said a group of volunteers in 2022 were looking for other ways to support a shift away from fossil fuels, and suing oil companies “felt like a really nice, concrete, actionable thing.”
During the fall and winter, they knocked on doors and canvassed with a group of local residents. Nearly three out of every four people who heard their pitch agreed to sign the petition, she said.
Fast forward to March of this year, Allen and Boisvert faced Gibson’s town council. She was nervous. Later that evening, council would vote on whether to commit to the lawsuit.
“Because of all the backroom work we did before we went to the vote, it did feel like it was going to be a yes,” Allen said. “I just wasn’t sure whether it was going to be unanimous.”
It was a surprise when Cael Read, student representative on town council, smiled down from his side of the bench and said he approved of the lawsuit.
“We need to hold these oil companies accountable for what they have done,” he told council. “Time and time again they’ll show that they will willingly ignore science and sacrifice futures just to get profit.”
Read’s speech was met with a round of applause. That evening, Allen was on a bus to Vancouver when she found out Gibsons council unanimously voted to back the class action lawsuit.
“I was elated,” Allen said. “I was kind of gobsmacked, honestly.”
At the time, Gibsons was only the second local government committed to back the class action lawsuit. But they weren’t alone for long.
One win at a time
In June, the town of View Royal also signed. In July, residents of Powell River presented the idea to their town council.
Robert Hackett, a Simon Fraser University professor emeritus of communication and member of Powell River environmental group qathet Climate Alliance, said even if a lawsuit doesn’t go to the court its certification as a class action would be a win.
“I think what (oil companies) are especially afraid of is not so much the money at stake, but about changing the narrative of what the oil industry is—that they’re somehow responsible corporate citizens, when in fact their business model is to fry the planet,” Hackett said.
Across British Columbia, Gage said, groups are organizing to have their towns back a lawsuit. He said there are groups backing the Sue Big Oil campaign across the province, including in the Capital Region, Squamish and the West Kootenays.
Regions south of the border are taking a stand of their own. More than two dozen U.S. states and cities are suing oil companies over their role in climate change. In June, Multnomah county in Oregon launched a lawsuit against 17 oil companies over the deaths of 69 people in the fatal 2021 heatwave.
The county seeks $50 million in damages for the consequences of the heat dome and $1.5 billion in damages for future climate change damages. It also demands oil companies offer $50 billion for the county to build infrastructure to manage future climate impacts.
Back in Vancouver, the campaign suffered a setback. Newly elected mayor Ken Sim and his “A Better City” party dropped their support for the lawsuit.
Councillor Carr said her push to have the city back the campaign isn’t over. She said she has to wait a full year after a vote before she can bring motions back to council—meaning Vancouver can consider backing the lawsuit again as early as next spring.
“I don’t believe that corporations should get off from taking the responsibility, the blame and the costs for inflicting harm,” Carr said.
The fight isn’t over for Allen, either. Now, Allen said, she wants to have the entire Sunshine Coast Regional District—the regional government that includes Gibsons, Halfmoon Bay and Sechelt—commit to the class action.
“It’s not that I think that I’m going to individually make the change that saves the world,” Allen said. “It’s just that I feel I have to be doing something.”
