Ecojustice
When Dyna Tuytel '05 describes what she does at work, her day sounds like pretty much any other lawyer.
Her day involves researching a legal principle, drafting an argument, checking in with clients and talking to experts. However, it does not take long to realize that while she is using the same legal skills as other lawyers, what she does is anything but typical. When asked about what experts she works with, she says “Well, the other day, I was talking to a scientist who just got back from counting narwhals in the Arctic by kayak.”
Dyna is a staff lawyer at Ecojustice, Canada’s only national environmental law charity. Her day to day involves trying to use litigation to set legal precedents for environmental protection and to enforce existing environmental laws to make sure that they are actually being used to protect people and the environment.
Dyna first joined Ecojustice as a summer student at their Calgary office and articled in the Vancouver office after graduating from the University of Toronto Law School in 2012. She has been working with them most of the time since, currently working in their Calgary office.
While Dyna has always had a passion for the environment, it was not until she was finishing her undergraduate degree in political science that she decided exactly what she wanted to do. She says, “I was trying to figure out what to do next, after my political science degree. I figured out that being an environmental lawyer would be the best way to use my particular skills to do something that I cared about. So I went to law school with that as the plan.” Through a lot of hard work, determination, and utilizing skills she developed at LFA, she has been able to just that.
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Dyna is a staff lawyer at Ecojustice, Canada’s only national environmental law charity. Her day to day involves trying to use litigation to set legal precedents for environmental protection and to enforce existing environmental laws to make sure that they are actually being used to protect people and the environment.
Dyna first joined Ecojustice as a summer student at their Calgary office and articled in the Vancouver office after graduating from the University of Toronto Law School in 2012. She has been working with them most of the time since, currently working in their Calgary office.
While Dyna has always had a passion for the environment, it was not until she was finishing her undergraduate degree in political science that she decided exactly what she wanted to do. She says, “I was trying to figure out what to do next, after my political science degree. I figured out that being an environmental lawyer would be the best way to use my particular skills to do something that I cared about. So I went to law school with that as the plan.” Through a lot of hard work, determination, and utilizing skills she developed at LFA, she has been able to just that.
Dyna and the lawyers at Ecojustice are often faced with unique challenges to further their goal of environmental protection. As Dyna says, “Sometimes there is not a clear legal tool to address an environmental problem, because they are often big questions that have not been dealt with before in the legal system, or because there might be a gap in the legislation. There are big questions like ‘How do you deal with climate change using existing laws?’ and also more particular problems like how to protect a species at risk in British Columbia when there are no specific laws in British Columbia that protect species at risk.”
On the other hand, there are some perks. Dyna enjoys working with people from a wide variety of fields who are also passionate about the environment. The best part of her job, Dyna says, is “being about working towards goals I truly believe in, with a great team of people committed to the same goals, while learning all sorts of interesting things from so many smart people, like our clients, the expert scientists and the other lawyers.”
A lot of the work Ecojustice does involves collaboration with other environmental charities. One of Dyna’s big projects right now is in the area of climate change and energy litigation. She helps represent two environmental groups in the hearings at the National Energy Board about the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion. One of the groups focuses mainly on protecting marine fish, Fraser River fish, and southern resident killer whales, while the other focuses on how oil behaves when it spills, oil’s impact on the marine environment, the impact of air emissions from regular operations or accidental release, and economic costs.
Another major area she works in is environmental health. Ecojustice has taken on the important and daunting task of making sure that once environmental laws, regulations and procedures are in place, that they are actually enforced. For example, Dyna describes one case she is working on, which involves “a couple dozen pesticides that were supposed to get regulatory reviews in Canada because they are banned in other OECD countries, but the reviews never happened and they are still being used. After we brought the case. some of the reviews were started belatedly, but still not all of them [have been]. This case is about ensuring that the proper laws and regulations are followed to make sure that the pesticides are safe for both people and the environment.”
When asked what her ultimate goal is, she says “Ideally we would put ourselves out of a job. We would love to get to the point where we no longer have to take people to court to enforce environmental laws or ensure that lawful, reasonable decisions are made.” Until then, she will keep protecting the environment, one case (and one whale expert) at a time.
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