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Law student lands 'big one' with pipeline hearings

It didn't take long for Anthony Ho to decide what project he wanted to work on as part of his environmental law class this semester at the University of Victoria. The third-year student jumped at the chance to work with Prof.
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It didn't take long for Anthony Ho to decide what project he wanted to work on as part of his environmental law class this semester at the University of Victoria.

The third-year student jumped at the chance to work with Prof. Chris Tollefson and clients B.C. Nature and Nature Canada as interveners into the National Energy Board hearings into the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.

"At the end of the day I was very lucky to be able to land this one," he said in an interview Friday at the Ramada. "This is Enbridge, this is the most important environmental issue in Canada right now and I can think of no other place I'd rather be."

The 25-year-old from Richmond is enrolled in the environmental law clinic course, a hands-on seminar which gives students the chance to work on real-world cases as part of the Environmental Law Centre at the university.

Ho is following up on work done by students in previous semesters as well as an articling student who have helped prepare for the expected four hours of cross-examination Tollefson will provide during Joint Review Panel hearings next week.

"I'm very fortunate to be able to have this opportunity and to have this opportunity at this particular time to be able to come up to Prince George and actually see this process unfolding," Ho said. "It's a real eye-opener for me, it's my first time actually being physically at an administrative proceedings."

The program is designed to "train the next generation of environmental lawyers," according to Tollefson, by providing them with the experience they'll need in the workforce.

Each semester the program accepts 12 to 14 upper-year students - some like Ho are in an intensive stream which allows them to additional course credit for doing more work. The pair are working 14-hour days while attending the hearings and Ho had to get permission from other professors to miss some classes.

Tollefson and Ho arrived in Prince George on Tuesday night with the expectation it would be there turn to ask questions late this week. Longer than anticipated questioning from other interveners has pushed them back and they likely won't complete their cross-examination until sometime on Monday.

While Ho is working on Northern Gateway, his classmates are working on projects ranging from reforming the laws around underground storage tanks to working with First Nation groups seeking to protect the eulachon fish stocks.

Ho has spent a lot of time going through the "mountains of evidence" filed for the hearings to assist Tollefson in his questioning and perform administrative functions related to listing exhibits and aids to cross-examination.

"Oftentimes in law school we deal with a lot of case law, a lot of theoretical things but this program allows me to get into the mud, get dirty and have a lot of fun doing it as well," Ho said.

The university has been running the clinic for nearly two decades and Tollefson said the Northern Gateway file has produced additional challenges.

"It's the first time we've taken on a file this large that has involved multiple days of hearings, cross-examination, significant scientific evidence," he said. "It's a very rich file for us in providing help to two clients, B.C. Nature and Nature Canada, who have done an amazing amount of good work on this file on their own and as well for students to learn."