Daily Archives: July 9, 2018

I attended a meeting at the Community Arts Center (old fire hall) dealing with the Dasiqox Tribal Park proposal. ..During the discussion period I think most of the 25-plus attending were supportive of an approach that meets the needs of the First Nations following the Supreme Court Judgement (SCJ), Case 34986. The DTP summary document made available at the meeting had a section on “sustainable livelihoods”. …Also mentioned was the creation of value-added economic initiatives for forestry. It is emphasized that any forestry activities are “not subject to industrial-scale resource use or extraction.” 

A deal between a group of First Nations and a paper company in The Pas will give Indigenous Peoples more say on timber harvesting on traditional First Nations land, and boost the number of Indigenous forestry contractors. Canadian Kraft Paper and Nekoté, a corporation that represents seven area First Nations, partnered to create the Nisokapawino Forestry Management Corp. “Nisokapawino” means “two standing together” in Cree. The partnership was finalized Friday in The Pas, where the paper mill is the largest employer. It directly employs more than 300 people, plus harvesters and service providers. The new corporation will co-manage nearly 21.5 million acres of boreal forest where the mill sources its lumber. It includes the traditional territory of nine First Nations.

…David Elstone is the executive director of B.C.’s Truck Loggers Association (TLA)… Many of its members are contracted to log portions of the province’s remaining old-growth forests each year. …But according to the TLA, a moratorium on old-growth logging would have a severe economic impact on B.C.’s forestry sector. …The TLA believes loggers will eventually have to transition to only harvesting second-growth forests… But old-growth products are currently far more valuable on the free market compared to their second-growth counterparts, due largely to their strength, durability and appearance. …According to the TLA, transitioning to a complete second-growth harvest should take 90 years in order to minimize the economic impact on the industry and communities. …But many environmentalists think the transition should happen a lot sooner. Last week, 223 international scientists signed a letter urging the B.C. government to take greater responsibility for the remaining old-growth rainforest in the province.

Robson Bight may be the world’s most famous orca sanctuary. Orcas have visited the beaches of the small bay located on Vancouver Island’s northeast coast between Port McNeill and Sayward for perhaps thousands of years to rub their bodies against the smooth pebbles of its shores. But ecologists and at least one Indigenous chief say that logging in a nearby old-growth forest could destroy those “rubbing beaches,” dealing a significant blow to a population that’s already threatened. The major fear among ecologists — denied by the province and a coalition of area Indigenous groups — is that logging operations will destabilize the hillsides, especially during periods of heavy rainfall, resulting in landslides of debris into Johnstone Strait.  “My concern is that it’s a very steep slope, and I think that it could very well suffer from a landslide,” said longtime whale researcher and ecologist Paul Spong.

Four years after its inception the City of Williams Lake and Williams Lake Indian Band have profited for the first time from their joint Community Forest Agreement Tenure. In June the City received a cheque in the amount of $987,000 and the WLIB received $861,000. Steve Capling, Community Forest board chair, said the cheques covered both a dividend and a repayment of previous loans and costs associated with setting up the Community Forest. At its regular meeting on June 26, city council passed a motion asking staff to put the money into a reserve fund and bring forward a report on how it can be managed in the future. “The idea is to have it earmarked so that it doesn’t just end up in general revenue without being able to identify the projects that it goes toward,” Mayor Walt Cobb said.

Industry associations have warned that the B.C. government’s move to overhaul its environmental oversight of industrial projects is a move towards over-regulation. Environment Minister George Heyman ordered a study last year, as required by its minority government agreement with of the B.C. Green Party, to “review and address failures in the professional reliance model in B.C. so that British Columbians’ faith in resource development can be restored.”  Professional reliance is a policy of requiring mining, forest, petroleum and other industrial companies to produce their own environmental studies on proposed projects, rather than have government experts conduct studies. Professional associations for biologists, foresters, engineers and other fields were given responsibility for codes of ethics and discipline of members. The report by University of Victoria environmental law professor Mark Haddock recommends the province establish a new “office of professional regulation and oversight” to work independently of resource ministries. 

The province of British Columbia’s review of professional reliance in natural resource decision-making was released last week with 121 recommendations aimed at 51,000 professionals in engineering, geoscience, forestry, biology, agrology and applied science. …The review findings immediately provoked strong criticism from mining, forestry and business groups. Little wonder. In the first place, the process was spearheaded by environmental lobbyist Mark Haddock, a UVic academic with strong ties to the environment minister, George Heyman. …He is tied to West Coast Environmental Law, which is concurrently advocating for “a complete overhaul of BC’s environmental assessment law.” …The province of BC could not possibly have believed that, with his appointment, a neutral arbitrator was being put in charge of the review process. …If that obvious conflict of interest is not compelling enough, consider that Haddock is also an alumnus of Ecojustice, an advocacy group that is in the business of suing Canadian governments on environmental issues.