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ASSOCIATES Fighting for Ecojustice Hugh Wilkins prefers public-interest law to the 'golden handcuffs' of Bay Street. BY B ILL ROGERS W hen you think of "al- ternative fuel," you probably don't think of burning old tires and slaughterhouse offal. But tires and of- fal are indeed considered alternative fuel, and there's a cement factory in Ontario that wants to burn them for energy. Hugh Wilkins, a lawyer with the Toronto office of Ecojustice, is try- ing to stop it. "It's an important case," he says. "It's the first time the Ontario government has permitted the use of 'alternative fu- els,' as they call it." Wilkins is set to appear before an environmental review tribunal to argue against the plan. Toxins from burning tires would come out of the smokestacks, he says, not to mention the odour problems that would be caused by burning animal parts. Plus, the ash goes into a dump where more gunk might seep into the water table. "To the cement people it makes sense," Wilkins admits. "They can get tires for free or they might even get tipping fees, where they actually get paid to take the tires." This is the kind of issue Wilkins has devoted himself to since joining Eco- justice back in 2006. It used to be called the Sierra Legal Defence Fund but the group recently changed its name be- cause, as Wilkins explains, "We had no link to the Sierra Club of Canada, we didn't do defence work, and we weren't a fund." Before joining Ecojustice, he was a policy advisor for the World Wildlife Fund, and before that he did a master's 18 FEBRU AR Y 2008 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com in environmental law at the London School of Economics. "I've been inter- ested in environmental law since law school at Queen's," he says. "I've just fol- lowed my interest. For me, Ecojustice is a perfect place to be. It's a small orga- nization, which is able to make effective progress strengthening environmental law in Canada. We do see results on the ground." For example, he cites the Hudson pesticide case (114957 Canada Ltée (Spraytech, Société d'arrosage) v. Hudson (Town)) which Ecojustice worked on. Ultimately the Supreme Court of Can- ada in 2001 upheld the power of mu- nicipal governments to restrict the use of cosmetic pesticides within their com- munities. "That litigation was a great success," he says.