New Brunswick Liberals, Conservatives defeat Green environmental rights bill [video]

Legislation aiming to create a right to a healthy environment in New Brunswick was defeated on Thursday, with the Conservatives joining Premier Susan Holt’s Liberal government in voting against the Green Party initiative.

A debate took place in the Legislative Assembly before Bill 23 went to second reading. Watch uncut footage of the proceedings here:

The legislation would have allowed New Brunswickers to take people to court for harming the environment. It would have also established a commissioner empowered to investigate allegations of environmental offences, and it would have created a environmental rights registry providing information and data to members of the public.

On Thursday, Environment Minister Gilles LePage said the government would instead proceed with reforms to existing environmental laws. He said the addition of another law threatened to “muddy the waters” while “overloading the justice system.”

“We adhere to the spirit of Bill 23,” LePage said. “However we do not support the approach that has been proposed.”

Last spring, the Holt government sent an earlier version of the environmental rights bill to a legislative committee, where it encountered criticism from business interests and government officials.

The Greens revised the law and reintroduced it in December, saying the new version incorporated recommendations from the committee.

However, LePage said those changes didn’t go far enough.

For example, he took issue with a clause allowing any two residents, including children, to request an investigation if they believe someone has violated an environmental law. He said that kind of provision could “result in overly broad or uncertain interpretation, an increased cost and administrative burden.”

The bill also contained a provision stating that, if it came into conflict with another law, the environmental legislation would prevail.

Sherry Wilson, the Tory MLA for Albert Riverview and environment critic, called this clause overly sweeping, saying it “risks paralyzing decisions that are complex and multifaceted.” She also said the government doesn’t need another commissioner at a time when “the public sector is already under strain.”

The only votes in favour of the bill came from the two Green MLAs, namely David Coon and Megan Mitton.

“Where a right to a healthy environment has been recognized in law in other provinces, territories, and countries, it has contributed to cleaner air, safer drinking water, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mitton, the MLA for Tantramar.

She pushed back against comments from the environment minister, who defended the current environmental impact assessment process.

“It is very inadequate,” Mitton said. “I’ve seen it play out in my community as NB Power and ProEnergy are trying to build a gas and diesel burning plant, and there was not open and transparent consultations with the public.”

For example, she noted that independent journalist Bruce Wark was thrown out of a local community centre during an information session hosted by the U.S.-based company for taking a photo last summer. “It was a sham of a consultation process,” Mitton said.

She said that provisions that would have allowed for citizens to request an environmental investigation or review are similar to Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights, which has been on the books since the mid-1990s.

Progressive Conservative Party Leader Glen Savoie, whose Saint John East riding includes the Irving Oil Refinery, suggested the bill would hurt business interests and the economy.

“I believe that this bill will make it difficult for businesses to continue to grow, for our economy to continue to grow, so that we can continue to offer the services that we are obligated to provide as a government,” he said.

Coon, the Green Party Leader, recalled stories about children exposed to pollution, including from a wood-preserving plant that released a “witch’s brew of highly toxic chemicals” into the Miramichi River.

The mother of one child told Coon that “her son would come home from playing in the brook with his boots eroded by those chemicals,” he recalled. “She told me he died young…. Our environmental laws have failed New Brunswickers and continue to fail New Brunswickers.”

He also referenced research linking the industrial pollutant sulfur dioxide to the neurological disease ALS in New Brunswick.

An analysis of ALS cases revealed a cluster in Bathurst, which is located near the top emitters of sulfur dioxide in the province: the now-shuttered Glencore smelter and the coal-burning Belledune generating station, as previously reported by the NB Media Co-op.

Earlier, Coon had called for Premier Holt to allow her MLAs to vote with their conscience. The premier’s office didn’t respond to a query about whether the vote on Thursday afternoon would be a free vote. However, she told the CBC that Liberals MLA voted on their own free will.

The Liberal Party showed a united front — as did the Conservative Party MLAs — in defeating the bill in a 46–2 vote.

The result was unsurprising for political observers but nonetheless elicited disappointment from the Green Party and its supporters.

“I was incredibly disappointed that all Liberal and PC MLAs voted against giving New Brunswickers the legal right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment today,” Coon said in a statement. “This bill was widely supported by the public and we will continue our efforts to find another way to create the right to a healthy environment in law.”

The environmental rights caucus of the NB Environmental Network also issued a statement calling the right to a healthy environment “crucial to our very survival.”

“We are obviously very disappointed and frankly somewhat astonished that the Legislators of New Brunswick have chosen to refuse to enshrine the Right to A Healthy Environment into Law,” the group said. “This refusal to work to adopt this legislation in a form that would guarantee that all current and future generations can count on them to act in a way that maintains a livable and safe environment, calls their priorities into question.”

The statement added that a small group of citizens has worked to get the legislation passed into law for more than 20 years, and suggested that the work would continue.

“Young people now understand what is at stake, for them and their children,” the group stated. “They will carry on, and eventually a law like this one will pass.”

One activist estimated that at least 100 people were in the gallery to support the Greens, including members of Stop the Tantramar Gas Plant, Seniors for Climate, Action Cap-Acadie, the NB Anti-Shale Gas Alliance, and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Earlier in the day, climate activists from STU Sustainability held a rally on campus opposing the appointment of Sandra Irving as chancellor of St. Thomas University before marching to the Legislative Assembly to show support for Bill 23.

Updated with more details on March 30, 2026 at 11:20 a.m.

David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op based in Moncton. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, via the Local Journalism Initiative.