An experienced environmental and climate change lawyer with deep involvement in the energy, infrastructure and mining sectors, Tyson brings strategic acumen, skillful advocacy and technical insight to his work advising clients on their most complex matters.
Tyson leads the firm's Climate Change Practice, providing critical guidance to clients as they navigate the energy transition. He has advised on many of North America’s most high-profile energy projects, including on the development, permitting and financing of more than 50 wind, solar, gas, hydro and energy storage projects, together representing over 7,000 MW in installed capacity, as well as on significant electricity and gas transmission projects. He also advises on major carbon management projects, including innovative carbon dioxide removal projects and some of the world’s largest carbon capture and sequestration projects. Tyson gives strategic advice in navigating complex and often challenging environmental assessment and permitting processes, as well as on negotiations with regulatory agencies, Indigenous communities, local municipalities and other stakeholders.
Tyson also has decades of experience in the carbon markets, having worked on some of the country's earliest carbon offset deals and emissions reduction funds. He now advises clients with responsibility for over 100,000 kilotonnes of GHG emissions as they transition to a low-carbon economy. He is regularly retained to advise on the development of carbon trading and compliance strategies, on agreements for the purchase and sale of carbon credits and renewable energy certificates (in both compliance and voluntary markets), and on long-term offtakes for carbon removal and avoidance projects. He has negotiated transactions in every major North American compliance market, and under every major voluntary standard.
As a co-leader of the firm's Sustainability Practice, Tyson also regularly advises on high-stakes, reputationally sensitive ESG issues for major financial institutions, pension funds, asset managers and energy and resource companies. He is currently helping some of the country's largest companies in developing their strategies to achieve net zero GHG emissions. He also advices these clients on their climate-related disclosures (both under evolving securities laws and voluntary reporting frameworks such as the final CSSB standards), including on strategies to mitigate greenwashing risks.
In the mining and metals sector, Tyson acts for companies acquiring, financing, developing and operating major uranium, potash, coal and precious metals operations across the country. He regularly advises these clients on stakeholder relations and permitting, compliance and enforcement matters, including investigations and prosecutions under provincial and federal environmental laws. He has also worked with national and provincial industry associations on strategies to address environmental risks and seize climate change-related opportunities.
Tyson advises clients in many other sectors, including pulp and paper, water treatment, communications, iron and steel, chemicals, and manufacturing. He provides advice on the full range of issues in the environmental and energy-regulatory fields, including environmental assessments, project permitting, contaminated sites remediation, endangered species protection, spills response and reporting and the inspection, investigation and defence of environmental offences.
He is a great lawyer to work with, very knowledgeable on climate matters.’
—Chambers Canada, 2023
2016-2025 | Chambers Canada—Leading lawyer in environment |
2011-2024 | Chambers Global—Leading lawyer in environment |
2021-2025 | The Legal 500—Leading partner in environment |
2020-2025 | Best Lawyers in Canada—Leading lawyer in environmental law |
2018-2023 | The Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory—Leading lawyer in environmental law |
2016-2022 | Who’s Who Legal— Global and National leading lawyer in environment and climate change |
2018 | Guide to the World’s Leading Energy and Environment Lawyers |
2017 | Lexpert’s Rising Stars: Leading Lawyers Under 40—One of Canada’s leading lawyers under 40 |
A former Fulbright Scholar at Stanford Law School, Tyson has published leading research on the Clean Development Mechanism in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law and co-authored The Law of Climate Change in Canada, Canada’s leading text on the subject and winner of the Walter Owen Book Prize. Tyson has presented extensively on climate change issues, including at the University of Toronto Law School, McGill University Faculty of Law, Osgoode Law School, Stanford Law School, the Lincoln Alexander School of Law and the United Nations Environment Program. Tyson is currently Canada’s national rapporteur at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
Tyson is a member of the Environmental Law and International Law Sections of the Ontario Bar Association, as well as the National Environmental, Energy and Resources Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association.
During his articles, Tyson was seconded to the legal department of Ontario Power Generation.