Engaging Youth in Policy: Right to a Healthy Environment

Asha  0:06  

Hello and welcome to another episode of Establish, a podcast by Shake Up The Establishment. It’s been a while since our last episode, but we are super excited to be back with an all-new season. My name is Asha, and I’ll be your host. Shake Up the Establishment is a youth-led national climate justice nonprofit operating across the lands currently known as Canada. 

This episode is being recorded in Oakville, Ontario, also known as Treaty 14, which is within the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the credit as a journalist currently living and reporting in this region, it’s important to me to use my voice not to speak over top of other communities, but to uplift and hold our political parties accountable. Throughout the province, there are 25 boil-water advisories in place throughout First Nations communities. As of March 2025, there are even more remaining throughout Canada, many of which have been in place for decades. So today’s episode isn’t specifically about access to fresh water, but it is about the much bigger picture, which is to say that our ability to access a clean and healthy environment varies depending on things like where we are situated, geographically, our physical ability, our gender, race, socioeconomic status and much more. 

Now if you’re in climate justice circles, then you may have heard of this term, the right to a healthy environment, thrown around in the last few years. Shake Up the Establishment, also known as SUTE, has been working on projects to help inform the federal government on how they can develop a national implementation framework. Okay, so that is a mouthful of words, but what does it actually mean? Throughout this episode, we are going to hear from some of my coworkers about this framework, but first, we have to go back a few years. 

Back in 2022 the United Nations voted in favor of recognizing that having a clean, healthy, sustainable environment is a human right (1). This resolution was introduced by a representative from Costa Rica who said that the catastrophic impact of climate change, which destroys our biodiversity, pollutes our waters and so much more, is actually infringing on our human rights. And even though this resolution passed with 161 votes in favor, there are some pretty glaring issues (2). The main one is that a UN resolution is not the same as a federal legislation. Even though countries have voted in favour of recognizing that we all have the right to a healthy environment as a whole, nations aren’t obligated to follow a specific set of rules to enforce this or enforce it at all. Plus, different countries will face different issues when it comes to the climate crisis. Some are at a higher risk of flooding, for example (3).

So, what is Canada doing about this? At the time of these UN discussions, Canada already had a federally recognized legislation in place called the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA. This Act was officially passed in 1999, and it primarily focuses on pollution prevention and some of the health risks that can come from a toxic environment (4). CEPA is not necessarily climate change focused; it’s more focused on toxins and environmental exposures from industries and consumption, rather than the impacts of climate change on the health of our environment. Climate change will exacerbate some of the issues that are covered by CEPA, like the frequency of wildfires, which will lead to more air pollution and exposure to toxins in that way (5). 

But CEPA as a legislation is relevant here because it only got its first major update in 2023 to include the right to a healthy environment. So, as we know it right now, the right to a healthy environment as a concept exists as an amendment to CEPA. The right to a healthy environment in Canada is not a law on its own, but it is a part of the updated CEPA law. This amendment to CEPA says, in the broadest sense, that every person living in the country has the right to help the environment (6). As a part of the amendments, the federal government has until 2025 to publish an implementation framework on the right to help the environment under CEPA, which will define what the right is and clarify how it will actually be protected and maintained. If this sounds a bit vague and confusing and maybe too good to be true, you’re not alone, and this is where SUTE comes in. 

We need to know the specifics about this in order to know how to hold our politicians accountable. Environment and Climate Change Canada has been in the process of creating something called a national implementation framework (7). So, like I said, the federal government has until June 2025, to firmly define what the right to a healthy environment under CEPA actually means. To help this process, SUTE, partnered with the Women’s Healthy Environments Network and Finance, Engage, Sustain to host consultation events. We received funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Trottier Family Foundation to go across the country for these events. 

These events took place from coast to coast in the fall of 2024 and we spoke with hundreds of young people about what the right means, how they want to see it enforced, what their concerns are, and so on and so forth. We collected tons and tons of data from these events, and we compiled this into two reports, which we have now given to the federal government to help inform the framework. 

The participants ranged in everything from race, gender, academic background and so much more. People, especially young people, are really passionate about their future, and we are active participants in shaping our lives. So that’s why I’m incredibly fortunate to introduce my guests for this episode. They are my dear friends and colleagues who have been essential in studying the right to a healthy environment and organizing these events. Manvi is the Executive Director and Co-Founder at Shake Up The Establishment, and Anna is our Director of Policy. Throughout this episode, we’ll hear from both of them about this powerful piece of environmental policy, how it could affect Canada’s future, and so much more. 

So, let’s start off with Manvi. Can you tell us a little bit about the right to a healthy environment in general, and why should our listeners care? 

Manvi Bhalla  6:02

So the right to a healthy environment became a part of Canadian law in 2023 when the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA, which is one of Canada’s primary environmental laws, was amended. CEPA was originally passed in 1999, and it’s basically the country’s main tool for regulating pollution, toxic substances and environmental health risks. It sets the rules on things like air pollution, water pollution, chemical safety and waste management. So why everyone should care? Really? Because the right is all about the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the livability of our neighbourhoods. 

When the neighbourhood is not protected, the impacts don’t just show up as abstract statistics. They show up in rising asthma rates, undrinkable tap water, high rates of cancer and extreme weather events that communities can’t cope with because of the lack of resourcing that they have to do (8).

Asha  6:52

Yeah, that was a perfect response. I was actually hoping you could tell me a little bit more about how the right to a healthy environment exists under CEPA as a framework, which is different from a legislation? Can you talk a little bit about how that impacts accountability?

Manvi Bhalla  7:09

So right now, what’s happening is the government is developing an implementation framework which outlines how the right will be upheld in practice, but there’s actually no legal mechanism to hold decision makers accountable or political leadership accountable, in making sure that this actually happens. It’s really kind of like a guiding principle, and that’s the biggest distinction between a policy and a law (7). So CEPA itself is a law. It’s legally binding, meaning that there are specific duties and obligations that must be followed, and non compliance can lead to legal consequences. But a policy or a legal framework, on the other hand, is more of a guideline or a government commitment more broadly, and it can shape decisions and priorities, but it isn’t legally enforceable in the same way (9). 

So right now, the right to a healthy environment is sitting in this gray area. It’s embedded within a legislation but it’s not an enforceable right in and of itself, and that’s why ongoing public engagement, including these consultations that we just had, are so important. Because without public pressure, there’s a real risk that this right will remain symbolic, rather than something that people can actually take to court and uphold if their right is infringed upon.

Asha  8:16

Now SUTE worked with two other groups; Finance, Engage, Sustain and the Women’s Healthy Environments Network to hold consultation events across the country, and this was really important to collect everyday youth’s perspective on how the government can help maintain a healthy environment for them. So why do you think it’s so important that we got to speak to young people directly about these issues?

Manvi Bhalla   8:38

Thanks Asha. I think this is a really important question, and something that I hope that there is more dialogue about, especially from older decision makers. Young people are inheriting the consequences of today’s environmental decisions, yet are often excluded from the spaces where those decisions are being made. Through these these consultations, we wanted to flip that dynamic. We wanted to center youth voices in shaping the policies that impact their present day and their futures to come. 

But beyond just future impacts, I think young people, importantly, are already facing these disproportionate burdens I’m speaking of. We heard across the country from young people dealing with climate anxiety, unsafe drinking water in their communities, air pollution affecting their health, financial barriers to participating in advocating for community-led climate and environmental solutions, and many, many more issues. 

We heard from people across race, Indigeneity, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, so many different backgrounds of people expressing unique concerns to their groups and their communities that they care about, with respect to environmental harms that are going largely unaddressed. And these issues are all having intergenerational impacts upon the young people to come in the future as well (10).

So I think it’s more than just, you know, like, are these people being consulted? But we’re hoping for these consultation processes that also are these people being heard and are their perspectives actually meaningfully informing and shaping this framework that determines how the federal government implements and upholds everyone’s right to a healthy environment. 

And I’ll just say it’s also not just about young people. There are so many other communities that have been historically left out or even ongoing on an ongoing basis, presently left out of environmental health decision-making. Indigenous communities, racially and ethnically, minoritized communities, newcomers, people with disabilities (11). There’s so many different groups, but those are to name a few who face unique environmental injustices that need to be acknowledged and addressed. 

And that’s why doing the kind of work that SUTE did in collaboration with FES and WHEN is something that I see as really boots on the ground, critical policy advocacy work because we’re failing to create solutions that work for everyone if we don’t bring them all to the decision-making table.

Asha   10:49

What were some key issues that people brought up at these consultation events across the country? 

Manvi Bhalla  10:56

So in our community-based feedback report, folks will be able to read into these themes in detail, but I’ll touch on a few of the ones that I think are really important to highlight. 

In general, across the board, we saw that young people are reeling from mental, physical and community health impacts from environmental exposures and climate change, and they’re concerned about a lack of urgent, meaningful actions that are being taken to address these issues, as well as the inequities societally that are happening that make it so that certain groups have to disproportionately bear additional burden of exposure to environmental health risks. And so across the board again, and we saw this with conversations in small groups and big groups, and the survey (12). 

Investing in community-based solutions is seen as really important to help build stronger and more resilient communities, but there is a dedicated lack of funding to do so. So something like if the right to healthy environment framework had something that allowed for communities to access more funding to build resiliency for their own neighbourhoods, if they are being impacted by environmental hazards, then that would be the first step to try to empower communities, for example, to try to reclaim their health within those contexts where they are lacking the agency to stand up against industries that are polluting in their neighborhoods (12). 

And another one that I think is really important, that ties to this is not only that, you know there needs to be more resources or funding of support, but community members are really vulnerable to share that many of them lack the knowledge to confidently navigate how to protect their health from harmful chemicals, toxins and pollutants, because they’re they feel that there is insufficient communication by government agencies and education systems on potential environmental hazards (13), or there’s inconsistent updates that are being provided about changes and what’s what’s safe and what’s not safe is threshold safe? Oh, now there’s no safe threshold.

And with these changing things and a lack of consistent communication and a lack of trust, fundamentally with governments, everyday people, and particularly young people that we spoke with, are feeling like they don’t know if period products or menstrual products are safe. They don’t know if consumer products, such as beauty products, everyday kitchen, you know, appliances or cleaning products, things that we interact with in our everyday life, there is a lack of trust about both in industry and in government, and in some ways, a sense of collusion between these two entities. Because prioritizing profit for these industries has been in the economic interests of the government, to paraphrase some of the speakers, some of the participants in our community-based sessions, and feeling this distrust in the government in looking out for citizens’ health interests over these economic benefits that also then support political careers (11). 

So those are just a few to give you a sampling of some of the key themes and conversations, but there were so many more rich conversations that took place across the country, in person and also online, with all of the young people that we spoke with.

Asha  13:56  

So what are some of the ways that we’ve been trying to ensure bias-free data collection when we’re making these two reports?

Manvi Bhalla  14:03

All of the facilitations that took place, we had an interview guide. We validated it with a bunch of different audiences, made sure that it was asking open-ended questions that would let participants speak for themselves, and all of the events were facilitated by myself, Megan [Devoe] or Mei Ling [Patterson], and the three of us all have research backgrounds. We’re all people that have conducted community-based research for our various degrees, Master’s and PhDs research. So it’s something that’s really part of our training to be able to elicit this kind of information from community members in an ethical way. 

And I think the biggest thing is that then, in our data analysis as well, whether it was the three of us or other people, which we did have numerous other people support with data analysis that are all also very experienced across very different backgrounds. We ensured that the data spoke for itself. So you’ll see throughout our report that there’s quotes directly from participants, and I think our presence that is felt throughout this research, and we’ve acknowledged that, but I think the data speaks for itself. When you read the quotes and you see the stories, there’s like, some quotes that we left completely: they’re very long because they’re they’re beautifully long, personal stories shared by participants, and we really couldn’t even paraphrase them any better than the participants of them themselves. So all of our policy recommendations really tie directly to these stories that were shared from across the country. And I think that shows if you read the extremely long community-based participatory feedback report (11).

Asha  15:31

Now let’s hear from Anna SUTE’s, Director of Policy and Research. So Anna, we have this technical feedback report, and then we also have the community-based report. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the differences between these two reports?

Anna  15:47

Yeah, so for the technical report, that was entirely the work of our three organizations, our collective team effort there. So that was us acting as experts on the right to healthy environment. A lot of us, we had folks who have legal backgrounds, folks have policy backgrounds, folks who have science and environmental backgrounds, and folks who do a lot of community-based work. And so with our technical report, it was really using our collective expertise in order to provide direct feedback on the draft framework itself (14), whereas with the community-based feedback report, that was entirely what we collected from the events, from the survey, and so that the community based feedback report doesn’t really have any of our own organizational editorial in this at all. It’s all directly feedback quoted from what we collected from community members. And so it’s really at the end of the day, it’s us showing what the youth that we were able to consult are really concerned about when it comes to their right to a healthy environment.

Asha   16:41

So now that the consultation period is over, we’ve put out the technical report and the community-based feedback report. I think the big question on everyone’s mind is, what comes next?

Anna  16:54

Yeah, I will just say first of all, with in terms of what comes next with the right to a healthy environment implementation framework. We’ve all submitted our feedback to the federal government. They’re going through it right now, and we should see a final draft of the implementation framework. And I believe it’s June 2025, so I think that’s a really big opportunity coming up for us to be able to see whether or not our feedback was actually heard and implemented.I think it’s a really exciting opportunity for us too, just because this was one of the first policies that I felt like we had so much input on. We commented on the discussion document that was released back in April 2024 (15) and then we got the opportunity to run through these consultation events and bring in more youth. 

And so I think I’m really excited to see how that gets worked into the final framework itself. And then, as well, 2025 is a federal election year. We have a federal election coming up. One of the resources we’ve always provided since our establishment, which is funny to say, of our organization, in 2019 is our platform comparison chart, where we do a break, a non-partisan breakdown of the climate policies of the sitting political parties. 

And so we’re really looking forward to be able to engage again. As you mentioned, Asha, youth have a lot of power when it comes to civic engagement. And so we’re really hoping to further the connections that we made through these consultation events and these connections that we we’ve been able to make with young people through our different projects in order to really connect with them on voting and making sure they’re voting with climate in mind, and voting with the issues that they really care about in mind, and looking to see what kind of policy solutions are being promised by the different parties in order to make the best decision they can for the issues they care about. And really just engaging young people in this opportunity to help shape what their government looks like and what their leadership looks like, and ensuring that they really are working for the issues that young people care about.

Asha  18:46

And with that, I want to give a very warm thank you to both of our guests today, Manvi and Anna for joining me in this great discussion. Join us on the next episode as we continue these important conversations about climate justice. For more information on the  Establish podcast and to access the show notes for this episode, which include a transcript and all links to all sources, visit our website at shake up the establish.org/podcast. 

This episode of Establish was produced by Mike Redston with audio files provided by Greg Markoff. Thanks for listening!

SOURCES:

1) United Nations. (2022, July 22). In historic move, UN declares healthy environment a human right. United Nations Environmental Programme. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/historic-move-un-declares-healthy-environment-human-right 

2) Mason, R. (2024, January 15). CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE RIGHT TO A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT: INTERNATIONAL AND CANADIAN DEVELOPMENTS. LIBRARY OF PARLIMENT. https://lop.parl.ca/staticfiles/PublicWebsite/Home/ResearchPublications/HillStudies/PDF/2023-12-E.pdf 

3) Igini, M. (2023, October 9). Sea level rise projections: 10 cities at risk of flooding. Sea Level Rise Projections: 10 Cities at Risk of Flooding. https://earth.org/sea-level-rise-projections/ 

4) Justice Laws Website, Government of Canada. (2025, March 28). Consolidated federal laws of Canada, Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-15.31/ 

5) World Meteorological Organization. (2024, September 4). Vicious circle of climate change, wildfires and air pollution has major impacts. World Meteorological Organization. https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/vicious-circle-of-climate-change-wildfires-and-air-pollution-has-major-impacts 

6) Government of Canada/Gouvernement du Canada. (2025, March 19). Update: A Right to a Healthy Environment under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. Canada.ca. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/canadian-environmental-protection-act-registry/right-to-healthy-environment.html 

7) Government of Canada/Gouvernement du Canada. (2024, April 11). Share your thoughts: Implementation Framework for a Right to a Healthy Environment in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. Canada.ca. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/corporate/transparency/consultations/right-healthy-environment.html 

8) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2024, December). Air Pollution and Your Health. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/air-pollution 

9) Government of Canada/Gouvernement du Canada. (2021, October 12). Introduction to policy. Canada.ca. https://www.canada.ca/en/heritage-information-network/services/digital-preservation/concepts-developing-policies/introduction-policy.html 

10) Wang, J.-A., & Chan, T. (2024, August 16). What is meant by intergenerational climate justice?. Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment. https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/explainers/what-is-meant-by-intergenerational-climate-justice/ 

11) Berberian, A. G., Gonzalez, D. J. X., & Cushing, L. J. (2022, September). Racial disparities in climate change-related health effects in the United States. Current environmental health reports. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9363288/ 

12) Shake Up The Establishment. (2025, March 5). Youth-led environmental organizations published community feedback on the draft implementation framework for the right to a healthy environment under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Shake Up The Establishment. https://shakeuptheestab.org/rthe-community-feedback-report/ 

13) Knutti, R. (2019, September 20). Closing the knowledge-action gap in climate change. One Earth. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332219300284 

14) Shake Up The Establishment. (2024, December 9). Youth-led environmental organizations submitted technical feedback on the draft implementation framework for the right to a healthy environment under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Shake Up The Establishment. https://shakeuptheestab.org/rthe-technical-feedback/ 

15) Shake Up The Establishment. (2024, August 1). Shake up the establishment’s feedback on the National Framework for Environmental Learning Discussion Document. Shake Up The Establishment. https://shakeuptheestab.org/shake-up-the-establishments-feedback-on-the-national-framework-for-environmental-learning-discussion-document/