{"id":63054,"date":"2017-01-13T05:50:43","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T05:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/supreme-court-to-rule-friday-on-freedom-of-expression-case-against-energy-regulator.html"},"modified":"2017-01-13T05:50:43","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T05:50:43","slug":"supreme-court-to-rule-friday-on-freedom-of-expression-case-against-energy-regulator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/supreme-court-to-rule-friday-on-freedom-of-expression-case-against-energy-regulator.html","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court to rule Friday on freedom of expression case against energy regulator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p \/>\n<p>The country&#8217;s highest court is set to rule on whether Canadians have the right to sue energy regulators.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p>The case stems from Alberta landowner Jessica Ernst, who says hydraulic fracking\u00a0severely contaminated her well and water supply with toxic chemicals.<\/p>\n<p>She claims the Alberta Energy Regulator violated\u00a0her charter rights to freedom of expression by\u00a0refusing to\u00a0accept her complaints and pressuring\u00a0her to stop making criticisms publicly and through the media.<\/p>\n<p>Ernst said efforts to engage with the regulator were ignored; her letters returned unopened.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think they were trying to scare me into silence,&#8221; she told CBC News.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">Fracking case at top court<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">Does fracking cause earthquakes?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ernst began legal action in 2007 in a multimillion-dollar suit against the regulator, Alberta Environment and Calgary-based energy company Encana for negligent actions.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p>The Alberta Energy Resources\u00a0Conservation Act\u00a0contains a &#8220;protection from action&#8221; clause, which an early court ruling found provides immunity from lawsuits. Ernst\u00a0said hundreds of other regulators across Canada have similar immunity clauses.<\/p>\n<p>The B.C. Civil Liberties Association intervened in the case, arguing\u00a0that governments can&#8217;t block individuals from seeking compensation when their fundamental rights and freedoms have been violated.<\/p>\n<h2>Immune from scrutiny?<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t think these arms of government should be immune from scrutiny if they violate people&#8217;s constitutional rights,&#8221; BCCLA executive director Josh Paterson\u00a0told CBC News.<\/p>\n<p>Conceding this is an unusual\u00a0case, Paterson said a ruling in Ernst&#8217;s\u00a0favour could send a signal to other regulators that they can&#8217;t shut down people\u00a0speaking out on matters of public concern.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court ruling could have broader implications on the powers of other regulators across the country.<\/p>\n<p>For Ernst, a victory will mean a gruelling legal battle ahead with the lawsuit, which she expects will be &#8220;most unpleasant and stressful.&#8221; But she said she wants to win to hold &#8220;abusive regulators to account on behalf of all Canadians.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s going to be a big bonus for me if I lose, because the nastiest part of the lawsuit would be gone,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But if I lose, that would be terrible for all Canadians\u00a0because the regulators across the country \u2026\u00a0can do to Canadians what they did to me. And it was nasty what they did to me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kassie Naas, spokeswoman for the Alberta Energy Regulator, said it would not comment on the case before the ruling. The regulator would take time to &#8220;carefully review&#8221; the decision before responding, she said.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p>Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/supreme-court-fracking-charter-1.3933137?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The country&#8217;s highest court is set to rule on whether Canadians have the right to sue energy regulators. The case stems from Alberta landowner Jessica Ernst, who says hydraulic fracking\u00a0severely contaminated her well and water supply with toxic chemicals. She claims the Alberta Energy Regulator violated\u00a0her charter rights to freedom of expression by\u00a0refusing to\u00a0accept her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-63054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}