British Columbia’s regulatory accounts have been receiving a lot of attention lately. Business Vancouver compared them to a shell game, in which expenses are deferred to the future so that the government can report “profits.” Vaughn Palmer writes that the province has “cumulative long-term obligations amount to $102 billion, with Hydro accounting for the bulk of them.” The item that really caught my eye was $50 billion for electricity BC does not need.
Though Justin Trudeau promised to fix Canada’s broken environmental assessment process during the last election, yesterday his government gave another signal this may not happen. Catherine McKenna, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, announced “that the proposed Woodfibre LNG Project, located near Squamish, British Columbia, is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.” Critics point to flaws in the analysis of impacts to herring stocks and the province’s rising emissions, suggesting McKenna Made the wrong call on Woodfibre LNG
The controversial Site C Dam project was rejected twice (back in the 1980s and 90s), before Premier Christy Clark’s government decided to go over the heads of provincial agencies like the BC utilities Commission and Agricultural Land Commission. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government issued the necessary permits to start construction during the last Federal election. As Treaty 8 gave local First Nations use of the land this project will submerge, it seems likely that a treaty is being broken. Despite all of this, BC Hydro began what many view as the environmental destruction of the Site C Peace River Valley. Since then a new Canadian government has been elected. They spoke of the need for social license and promised a new era of respect for indigenous peoples. Will The Feds Intervene On Site C?
This isn’t the first time that there has been disputes over logging in the Chapman Creek Watershed. In response to complaints from the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD), in 2014 the ‘Managed Forest Council hired Madrone Environmental Services to ascertain the cause of “increased turbidity” in the water supply (which services up to 30,000 households). Geoscientist Gordon Butt pointed to logging after the “onset of the fall rains” and concluded, “Although there has been no clear contravention of the regulations, it is clear to me that industry standards for protecting water quality have not been met in CH1. The short-comings are substantially more serious given the fact that this logging has been carried out in a highly sensitive watershed supplying a large population.” [1] When AJB Investments resumed logging operations in late January of this year, Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) responded with a blockade. The latest attempt at negotiation has just broken down and the month long siege of Chapman Creek continues.
Chief Roland Willson, of West Moberly First Nation, said his people celebrated the 100th anniversary of Treaty #8 in 2014. One of the provisions is that they will be allowed to use the land about to be submerged by the Site C Dam “as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the river flows.” This appears to be the Treaty Canada wants to forget.
