Chris Tollefson

Professor

Chris Tollefson

Tel: 250-888-6074		 Faculty of Law
University of Victoria
PO Box 1700, STN CSC
Victoria, BC  V8W 2Y2
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Professor Chris Tollefson is a leading teacher, scholar and litigator.  He has inspired generations of UVic students to pursue careers in criminal and environmental law, areas in which he has taught for over thirty years. Co-author of a national environmental law textbook (now in its 4th edition), his scholarship is regularly cited in the courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada.  Chris enjoys building and fixing things. He played a key role in founding and launching several of Canada’s leading environment law organizations including Ecojustice Canada, the UVic Environmental Law Centre and most recently the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation (“CELL”) where he currently serves as executive director. The first Canadian legal scholar to publish about Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), Chris led a broad-based advocacy campaign for a legislative response that culminated in the enactment of BC’s (and Canada’s) first anti-SLAPP law in 2001. Later, he was lead counsel on the first successful dismissal application brought in the environmental law context under British Columbia’s anti-SLAPP law: Todsen v. Morse, 2022 BCSC 1341.

Through Tollefson Law Corporation, he has represented concerned citizens, conservation organizations and Indigenous clients in high-profile and complex cases including litigation (and regulatory hearings) in relation to the Northern Gateway and TMX projects, the Pacific Northwest LNG project, and the Kitimat Smelter Modernization. He currently represents Indigenous clients in joint governance initiatives on the Central and North Coast, and in Tahltan territory. Since 2019, he has been counsel of record on a national youth-led climate case scheduled for an eight-week trial in 2026 in Federal Court (La Rose v. His Majesty the King), and has recently concluded a sixty-four day-long trial representing the Haida Gwaii Management Council in BC Supreme Court (Teal Cedar Products Ltd. v. British Columbia, 2025 BCSC 595).

• “Climate-Proofing Judicial Review after Paris: Judicial Competency, Capacity, and Courage” (2019) 31 Journal of Environmental Law and Practice 245 with Jason MacLean
• “Polyjural and Polycentric Sustainability Assessment: A Once-in-a-Generation Law Reform Opportunity” (2016) 30 Journal of Environmental Law and Practice 35 (with Meinhard Doelle and Jason MacLean)
• "Symposium Overview: Conceptualizing New Governance Arrangements" (2012) 90 Public Administration 3, lead author and symposium editor with T. Zito and F. Gale
• "Costs in Public Interest Litigation Revisited" (2012) 39 The Advocate's Quarterly 197
• "Tears from an Onion: Layering, Exhaustion and Transformation in B.C. Land Use Planning Policy" (2009) 28 Policy and Society 111 with Tim Thielmann
• "From Government to Governance in Forest Planning? Lessons from the Case of the British Columbia Great Bear Rainforest Initiative" (2009) 11 Forest Policy and Economics 383 with Howlett and Rayner
• "Charting a Course: Shellfish Aquaculture and Indigenous Rights in New Zealand and British Columbia" (2006) 150 B.C. Studies 3 with R.M. Scott
• "Towards a Public Interest Costs Jurisprudence" (2004) 83 Canadian Bar Review, lead author with D. Gilliland and J. DeMarco
• "Games without Frontiers: Investor Claims and Citizen Submissions under the NAFTA Regime" (2002) 27 Yale Journal of International Law 141
• "Metalclad Corporation v. The United Mexican States Revisited: Judicial Oversight of the Investor-State Claim Process under NAFTA" (2002) 11 Minnesota Journal of Global Trade 182
• "Aboriginal Rights and Cumulative Environmental Effects" (1998) 18 Environmental Impact Review 371 with Karen Wipond
• "Contaminated Sites Liability in British Columbia" in Environmental Liability (1997) with Diana Belevsky

  • “Environmental Regulation and Regulatory Takings” in D. Williamson, G. Lynch-Wood and A. Prochorskaite, eds., Research Handbook on Environmental Regulation(London, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2025) with Anthony Ho
  • Environmental Law: Cases and Materials, 4th ed. (Toronto: Thomson Reuters, 2023) with Meinhard Doelle
  • “Biodiversity Litigation in Canada” in G. Futhazar et.al., eds., Biodiversity Litigation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) with F. Perron-Welch and J. Ginsberg
  • “Foreign Wrongs, Corporate Rights & the Arc of Transnational Law” in Corporate Citizen: New Perspectives on the Globalized Rule of Law by O. Fitzgerald (Toronto: Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2020) with Jason MacLean
  • “The Trials and Tribulations of the Precautionary Principle” in Environment in the Courtroom by A. Ingelson (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2020)
  • “From Old to New Governance in Canadian Forest Policy: Dynamics without Change?” in D.L. Van Nijnatten & R. Boardman, eds. , Canadian Environmental Policy, 3rd ed.  (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2009) with Jeremy Rayner and Michael Howlett
  • “Investor Rights and Sustainable Development” in Handbook on Trade and Environment by K. Gallagher (London, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2009) with W.A.W. Neilson
  • Setting the Standard: Certification, Governance and the Forest Stewardship Council (Vancouver: UBC Press, Fall 2008), lead author with Fred Gale and David Haley (404pp)
  • “NAFTA’s Chapter Eleven: The Case for Reform” in J. Kirton and P. Hajnal, eds., Sustainability, Civil Society and Local Governance: Local, North American and Global Perspectives (Ashgate Publishing, 2006)
  • “Indigenous Rights and Forest Certification” in J. Kirton and V. MacLaren, eds., Hard Choices and Soft Law: Trade, Environment and Social Cohesion in Global Global Governance (Ashgate Publishing, 2004)
  • “Stormy Weather: a Reflection on the Recent History of the Citizen Submission Process under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation” in Kirton and V. MacLaren, eds., Linking Trade, Environment and Social Cohesion: North American Experiences, Global Challenges (Ashgate Publishing, 2001)
  • The Wealth of Forests: Markets, Regulation, and Sustainable Forestry (Vancouver: UBC Press,1998), editor and contributing author
  • BA Hon. with Distinction (Political Science and History) Queen's
  • LLB, University of Victoria;
  • LLM Osgoode Hall
Professor Tollefson is interested in supervising LLM and PhD students in the areas of: environmental and climate litigation; new governance arrangements; public participation; resource co-management; joint and shared decision-making.