A recent landslide that saw a mountainside collapse near one of B.C.’s newest mines is raising questions about whether a copper and gold rush in British Columbia’s northwestern “Golden Triangle” is safe — or in some cases, even possible — as climate change advances.

On July 1, at the height of the record warming event known as the “heat dome,” about five million tonnes of rock and ice fell from the Canoe Glacier, about eight kilometres from the Brucejack gold mine, an underground mining operation that opened in 2020 about 65 kilometres north of the coastal town of Stewart. The mine’s trans-glacier access road was less than four kilometres from where the slide touched down.

“This mine dodged a bullet,” said Brian Menounos, a University of Northern British Columbia glaciologist and Hakai Institute affiliate, who is studying the landslide. “If it had happened on the adjacent glacier, then you would likely have had a lot of fatalities.”

The landslide raises concerns about the viability of safely mining the surrounding mountainous region (see map), home to about a dozen metal mines in various stages of exploration, permitting and production. The province is banking on kickstarting new mines in what’s been named the Golden Triangle — recently paying over $730 million to extend the BC Hydro electrical grid up into this region where large, low-grade deposits of copper and gold have long been stranded by lack of cheap electricity access.

The mine appears to have escaped direct damage, as did the road that Pretium Resources, the mine’s Vancouver-based owner, has built across an adjacent glacier to access the mine, which would have had about 600 workers on the site the day of the landslide.

Menounos suspects that the slide, which happened at the height of the heat dome, was caused by huge volumes of melted snow, ice and melted permafrost, which destabilized the mountain rock, a phenomena that scientists expect will become more common as B.C.’s roughly 16,000 mountain glaciers undergo rapid melting and disappear.

(The Tyee published an in-depth series about the impact receding glaciers will have on B.C.’s ecosystems and people who depend on them. Read it here.)

Research led by Menounos predicts that British Columbia will lose at least 70 per cent of its glacial ice by 2100, which presents both a crisis and opportunity for mining companies.

In the same way that melting ice is opening sea lanes and unlocking new economic opportunities, the retreat of B.C. glaciers will expose new ground for mining exploration. Much of this activity will occur in landscapes destabilized by the loss of glacial ice. The Golden Triangle also straddles southeast Alaska that has, for years, been clamouring for more safeguards to protect the state from the prospects of loosely-regulated, large-scale mining in watersheds that drain into Alaska.

“As these glaciers retreat, they are exposing this mineral rich terrain, but in some of those watersheds, those areas drain to Alaska, you have the situation where a tailing breach could be an international incident,” said Menounos.

The most troubling aspect of the Canoe Glacier slide was not the destruction it wreaked, but how it was detected. On July 18, more than 17 days after it happened, a local resident posted photos to Twitter. Thus tipped off, scientists like Menounos sprung into action, trying to confirm details of what happened.

Found it – 56°23’N 130°04’W. Landslide appears to have come down between July 1 and 3, possibly (?) due to extreme heat. That is a BIGGIE. Debris (or not much) does not appear to have entered the lake. Image below from @planet #CanoeGlacier https://t.co/lOGdou0Mdl pic.twitter.com/GmNg3a8PFf

— Dr Dan Shugar (@WaterSHEDLab) July 19, 2021

In early August, The Tyee called Göran Ekstrom at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory just north of New York City, who oversees a continental listening station for seismic events. He confirmed a slide happened just after 10 p.m. on July 1 — a date that coincides with the peak warming of the recent heat dome event that saw temperatures spike across much of western North America, including the B.C. northwest. (Ekstrom did not detect any seismic activity before the landslide — such as an earthquake or signature of human activity, which might have triggered the event).

“There is no evidence of the landslide having impacted or been caused by mining in the area, and as such [B.C.’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation] is not conducting an investigation,” replied a spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy when asked about the slide on Aug. 8.

High altitude mine operators like Pretium are largely on their own to assess the risks from not only avalanches, but from the worst impacts wrought by melting glacial ice — like the January 2021 “outburst flood” at Bute Inlet documented by The Tyee, which saw over 18 million tonnes of rock and debris, destabilized by melting ice and permafrost, collapse into a giant lake created by a receding glacier, creating a 100-metre-high tsunami that bulldozed 13 kilometres down the mountain.

In both 2020 and 2021, Pretium has been exploring the areas adjacent to the Brucejack mine, including the construction of “exploration trails” across the alpine landscape. This is common practice for mining companies to actively explore the areas adjacent to existing projects in the hopes of expanding operations into the future. After they identify a promising area, deep drilling occurs, bringing core samples to the surface that provide a snapshot of potential ore bodies underground. If enough drill cores show rich mineralization in close proximity, a new mine or mine expansion may result.

On Aug. 13, Pretium president and CEO Jacques Perron told an investor call that its 2021 summer exploration program in the areas adjacent to the mine was “in full swing,” including extensive drilling around the nearby Hanging Glacier, which is about four kilometres from the site of the landslide. He did not mention the Canoe Glacier landslide during the call.

Not far to the northeast of Brucejack is a proposed mine called Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM), which is a daunting prospect for more than its estimated construction price tag topping $6 billion. At elevations as high as 2,300 metres the developers plan to extract and sift through 170,000 tonnes of rock every day, virtually all of it waste, necessitating multiple high-altitude tailings dams, including one standing 20 metres higher than Nevada’s Hoover Dam. Much of the estimated 2.3 billion tonnes of tailings generated over the 52-year mine life will be perched forever above the salmon-rich Nass River watershed, amid glaciers that will possibly disappear before the mine is exhausted. The Alaska-B.C. transboundary Unuk River will also fall into the proposed mine’s drainage.

Based on location and potential water impacts alone, Robert Sanderson Jr., chairman of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission representing 15 member tribes, says a mine on the scale of KSM should never be built.

“Who’s going to take care and look after these tailings [and waste rock] sites once the mines close? They don’t have enough money to do that, they have already proven that with Mount Polley. And Canada has a bad history of just up and leaving bad tailings sites as they are.”

Northwestern British Columbia is just one of the many places in the world where miners will be increasingly forced to confront similar challenges — and hard limits — presented by melting glaciers and associated water scarcity and geohazards.

Foremost of these is the Andes mountains of South America, which run from the foot of Chile to northern Venezuela — a nearly 7000-kilometre chain rich in copper, silver and gold — and a future target for many Canadian and international mining companies.

A global flashpoint for mining amid glacier conflict is the Pascua Lama mine high in the Andes straddling the Argentina-Chile border — the world’s first mine located in two countries. To mine there, Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. has over the years done exploratory drilling through mountain glaciers to access copper, silver and gold in an area dependent on glacial melt as a seasonal water source for at least 70,000 people.

There are at least 10 glaciers within 10 kilometres of the project, and at least three of them have been largely destroyed by dust and debris from mining exploration, which blankets the ice surface with dirt and dust, attracting the sun’s heat.

Neighbouring Argentina has gone as far as creating a national law “for the preservation of glaciers and the periglacial environment” — unanimously supported by congress — which caused a scandal when then-president Cristina Kirchner vetoed the law, a move widely mocked across Latin America as the “Barrick Veto.”

“Up to now, mining projects just had to prove they would not harm the environment,” Damián Altgelt, general manager of the Argentinean Chamber of Mining Entrepreneurs, a mining advocacy group, said in 2010. “Now, if the project is located on a glacier or in this ambiguous concept of being near one, it’s simply banned.”

Not long after, concerns about damage to glaciers and risks to scarce water supplies saw Pascua Lama shut down. In spring 2019, Argentina’s supreme court upheld its 2008 law to protect glaciers (and by extension, water resources), rejecting Barrick’s position that the legislation, which limits mining on and around glaciers, was unconstitutional.

In British Columbia today, there are no explicit legal restrictions around the damage and destruction of glaciers in the provincial Mines Act. If miners on the ground in Argentina today tried to build the equivalent of KSM or even Brucejack right now, they could face fines and imprisonment.

Instead, the province expects miners to police themselves: a spokesperson for the Energy Ministry said companies are responsible for evaluating the risk associated with “natural geohazards” that potentially affect a site, and must assess the impact of mining on the regional terrain to determine whether their activities increase the risk of landslides or other instabilities.

Troy Shultz, Pretium’s manager of investor relations and corporate communications, said they know about the slide and confirmed the event occurred within the boundaries of Pretium’s mine property.

“We are aware of [the landslide]… it’s really of no consequence to us,” Shultz said. “It’s quite far from any infrastructure and the mine site itself, our entire infrastructure and mine site was designed around where there is no potential geological or geophysical risk of any kind, and it’s something that we take into consideration and monitor.”

When asked if their investors needed to be informed about the prospects of more similar events in a rapidly changing alpine environment, he disputed whether the heat dome, thought to have triggered the landslide, was associated with climate change at all.

“This particular [event] was not a climate-related slide. This was just a natural landslide. I don’t think it was a heat dome there [in the mine site area], it was quite cold at the site, as far as I know there’s no relation [to climate change].”

Brian Menounos strongly suspects that the Canoe Glacier landslide was the result of the rapid melting of glacial ice, snow and permafrost, brought on by the late June heat dome event that was certainly impacting the area around the Brucejack mine — a heating phenomenon that experts in July deemed “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”

He says we need to do a better job of early detection: we already have remote sensing technologies operated from aircraft and from space that can detect centimetre-scale movement of steep ground landforms before events like the Canoe Glacier landslide happen. The province has used remote-sensing technologies to manage our forests for many decades, but Menounos says it now must “up its game” for glacier monitoring and hazard mapping in our mountains.

Moving forward, several factors will converge to raise the urgency of finding solutions to mining amid the growing geohazards that will come with climate change. First, B.C.’s mountain glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate, creating highly dynamic, unstable environments; this is happening amid a growing urgency to expedite mining for so-called “battery metals” like copper and nickel, spurred by recent U.S. calls for Canada to ramp up mining, and finally, there will be ever-growing conflict if and when more B.C. mines are built in watersheds that the province and Alaska share.

On the latter, both nations must now live with the decisions of the past, when the then-disputed B.C.-Alaska border was drawn to bisect watersheds, ensuring that some of the future tailings dams and acid-generating waste rock dumps from mines in B.C. will drain into Alaska.

Early detection tools, funded by miners and not just taxpayers, will be just one part of the solution. Another will be stringent reviews of mines proposed for the Golden Triangle, given the daunting challenge of building large tailings facilities that must last forever amid unstable, rapidly melting mountain glaciers.

Menounos urges that people be clear eyed when seeing potential in B.C.’s Golden Triangle. “Future climate change will negatively affect mountain environments, and added pressures such as resource extraction and tourism will only increase the likelihood of future fatalities.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

On a clear, cold day in late October, Paul Berntsen stands on the wooden foundation of a yurt he built himself, watching as his dreams of a non-motorized tourist destination in the Skagit River headwaters go up in flames.

In the valley below, slash piles from recent clearcut logging on East Point Mountain are being burned by forestry company contractors, sending great plumes of smoke into the sky. Through the haze, a vast clear-cut is visible on the flanks of the mountain, which is carved into blocks by a network of new logging roads.

“This is the headwaters of the Skagit River,” he says, pointing to the towering Silverdaisy peak, a mountain immediately adjacent to the clear-cuts, which now provide the backdrop view for his yurt. “It’s going to take decades for this to green up again.”

Berntsen has brought me and photographer Fernando Lessa on a backcountry mountain bike ride into the heart of the Skagit headwaters, about 200 kilometres east of Vancouver. Even assisted by electric batteries, biking to the yurt is a tough slog — we gain more than 850 metres of elevation, riding through a fresh 25-centimetre dump of snow in the upper elevations.

Author Chris Pollon rides an electric bike in the Manning Park ‘Doughnut Hole.’ Slash piles from recent clearcut logging on East Point Mountain are being burned by forestry company contractors, sending great plumes of smoke into the sky. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Piles of discarded wood are burned near East Point Mountain by forestry contractors. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

The Skagit headwaters are located in an area known as the Doughnut Hole, an anomaly of unprotected Crown land about half the size of the city of Vancouver, completely encircled by Manning and Skagit Provincial parks. 

The headwaters were never protected, in part because they are home to a cluster of old mineral tenures, currently owned by Imperial Metals, the company that owns the Mount Polley mine — the site of one of Canada’s worst mining disasters in 2014. 

A clearcut on a slope of East Point Mountain. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

The headwaters are also home to intact old-growth forests with struggling grizzly bear and recently extirpated spotted owl populations, including two pristine, unlogged tributary valleys.

Berntsen is in his early 60s, but retains the wiry stature of a backcountry mountain skier and guide. For 30 years he made a good living guiding wealthy tourists on heli-skiing expeditions all over British Columbia and the world, but what he really wanted to do was to establish his own non-motorized wilderness business here in the headwaters, using the yurt as a base camp for low-impact backcountry ski and hiking tours. 

As a logger in his youth, he witnessed the great surge of smash-and-grab logging across southwestern British Columbia, which saw nearby drainages like the Chilliwack, Harrison and Chehalis trashed and cleared of old-growth trees. But from early on, he knew where he wanted to be.

“I grew up in these mountains,” says Berntsen, who lives nearby in the Fraser Valley community of Mission. “I wanted to find a place that wasn’t totally damaged, and this was that place.”

Paul Bertensen. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Bertensen, left, and author Chris Pollon in Manning Park. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Berntsen’s application to establish a backcountry business in the Doughnut Hole was rejected earlier this year by the province — a decision he is appealing. 

Yet other activities have been permitted. Clear-cut logging commenced in the Doughnut Hole in 2004, followed by another flurry of logging in 2018, which included construction of a road network subsidized by BC Timber Sales, a publicly owned body that markets timber on Crown land. 

When the snow gets too deep, we abandon our bikes and hike for about two kilometres to an abandoned Imperial Metals exploration camp. It was allegedly vandalized and burnt to the ground in the early 2000s, but we find a 2,300-kilogram propane tank more than half-full, sitting in the middle of the site. Even under the blanket of snow, it’s clear the detritus of the camp has never been cleaned up.

Bertensen examines a propane tank left behind at an Imperial Metals exploration site. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

A weathered shack housing multiple drill samples at an abandoned Imperial Metals exploration camp. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Drill samples from Imperial Metals. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

We hightail it down the mountain as the sun starts to creep behind a peak to the west, wary that the lower logging roads will completely freeze over in the chill. When we reach the highway, our access to the road is blocked by a transport truck hauling heavy excavation machinery. 

The driver tells us they are going to be decommissioning logging roads in the headwaters, where BC Timber Sales had permitted logging into 2022. 

Map showing the location of the ‘Doughnut Hole’ between Skagit Valley and Manning provincial parks. The Doughnut Hole lies within the headwaters of the Skagit River. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Logging to end in the Skagit as mining permits linger

On Dec. 3, about a month after our visit, the B.C. government announced it will end commercial logging in the Skagit headwaters, also called the Silverdaisy management area. 

“We’ve heard loud and clear from individuals and groups on both sides of the border that logging should stop in the Silverdaisy,” said Doug Donaldson, Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. 

It was a victory for a vast cross-border coalition of at least 110 tribes, First Nations, environmental groups and many U.S. politicians, but celebrations were muted. That’s because Imperial Metals continues to hold the Doughnut Hole mineral tenures. The company has applied for a five-year permit that, if approved by the B.C. government, will see the building of an access road, surface trenches, drill pads and exploratory pits up to 2,000 metres deep.

To many, the potential for mineral exploration and mining is a cloud hanging over not only the future of the headwaters, but the entire Skagit River. The fact that the company in question is Vancouver-based Imperial Metals — whose Mount Polley copper and gold mine spilled 25 billion litres of mine waste and sludge into salmon-rich Quesnel Lake in 2014 — does not inspire confidence amongst the critics.

“If toxins from mining enter the headwaters, it could be detrimental for our entire way of life, cultural, economic, everything,” Joseph Williams, an elected senator of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, said the day following the logging announcement. 

Williams was standing in the United States when he made the statement, on the banks of Swinomish Channel close to where the Skagit River drains into Puget Sound, about 135 kilometres southwest of the Doughnut Hole.

Elected Senator Joseph Williams of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Senator Joseph Williams from the Swinomish. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

The Skagit River. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Even though the Skagit River begins in British Columbia, most of its 240 kilometres meander through Washington State, where it is the last river in the lower 48 to support all six species of Pacific salmon, including steelhead. To the Swinomish, salmon are everything.

Michelle Mungall, B.C.’s Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, could kill the Imperial Metals permit with a stroke of a pen. But the government has maintained the permit will be evaluated without political interference — and will live or die based on its merits.

A ministry spokesman told The Narwhal the permit is still being reviewed. “First Nations consultation is ongoing,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

As Williams attests, the decision has the power to affect the entire river system, but the headwaters are just a tiny part of the Skagit story. On the same day the B.C. government announced it would end logging, The Narwhal crossed over the border to the U.S. to see the lower Skagit for ourselves.

Over the next three days, we followed the river from the Cascades mountains in northern Washington state to Puget Sound tidewater — to understand what is at stake for our American neighbours if mining becomes a reality in the British Columbia headwaters.

Skagit River at night. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

‘The border is this imaginary line’

It’s tempting to think of the Skagit River, especially the picturesque upper watershed where few people live, as pristine, but that would be a mistake. Joy Foy, who has led the efforts on the Canadian side to protect the headwaters, likens the Doughnut Hole itself to a “pin cushion” because it has been drilled and explored so much by prospectors, including many Americans.

Before the headwaters were cut off by the border, the Skagit River was shared by many First Nations, including the modern-day Sto:lo, Syilx and Nlaka’pamux up around the headwaters. To the south were the descendants of the modern day Upper Skagit and four tribes of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. For 50 years after the War of 1812, settler cultures also moved freely through this area, especially prospectors in search of riches.

“The border is this imaginary line,” Foy says. “It’s in our minds, but the land and water is the reality.” 

Unbeknownst to most Canadians, three hydro-electric dams were constructed on the U.S. side of the upper Skagit in the early 1960s, submerging the Canada-U.S. border and creating three reservoir lakes below the B.C. headwaters. These dams have converted the U.S. Skagit into a river whose flows are no longer determined by glacial melt, rainfall or freshet, but by the need to generate electricity for the city of Seattle.

The Diablo Dam was constructed in 1936 and continues to provide electricity to Seattle. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

The Diablo Dam, close to the village of Diablo,near Washington Pass, is one of three hydro dams on the upper Skagit River. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

A legacy of dam building was ushered in with the signing of the High Ross Treaty in 1984 between the City of Seattle and British Columbia, entrusting four commissioners from each country to resolve disputes over the dams and maintain the environmental integrity of the shared Skagit River. 

This body, called the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, has tried unsuccessfully for decades to buy Doughnut Hole mining tenures. U.S. Commissioner Thomas Curley declined to provide details when The Narwhal asked for an update on the status of negotiations with Imperial Metals to purchase the claims.

Salmon-hungry eagles attract tourists

The Skagit passes through the dams, then winds through North Cascades National Park and the Mount Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, then the valley expands and widens out across a rich agricultural “salad bowl” hinterland, famous for vegetables and tulips.

A December drive along the upper portions of the North Cascades Highway, which traces the river from the dams all the way to Skagit Bay in Puget Sound, is both beautiful and desolate. The parks and small towns like Newhalem and Concrete swell with visitors during the summer months, but when the winter rains fall — 2.5 metres of annual rain is not unusual here — they clear out. 

Tourism slows to a trickle during this time of year, but the Skagit River is the reason it never completely stops.

We meet Judy Hemenway, a retired visual artist who is the coordinator of the Skagit Bald Eagle Interpretive Center, housed in a double-wide trailer in Howard Miller Steelhead Park near Rockport. Runs of chum and coho salmon attract eagles, which in turn draw about 3,000 tourists to the interpretive centre every year. Events for the Skagit Eagle Festival in nearby towns will bring at least 5,000 visitors through the end of January.

Judy Hemenway, a retired visual artist who coordinates the Skagit Bald Eagle Interpretive Center. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

The festival continues to grow, Hemenway tells us, even as the number of eagles they see — mirroring the declines in salmon on the river — drop. The highest count in a single day was 500 in the late ’90s. Last year, the counts were as low as 70 per day.

Yet the Skagit still supports the largest populations of threatened steelhead and Chinook salmon in Puget Sound and hosts the largest run of chum salmon left in the lower 48. 

Despite the low returns, about a dozen fly fishermen arrive while we are here, staying in little cabins in the park; multiple boat tour operators are a regular sight, taking tourists out to photograph the eagles.

A bald eagle claw on display at the interpretive centre. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Hemenway stands on the banks of the Skagit River. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

A male Coho salmon in Clarks Creek, Washington. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Hemenway tells me about the recent plan by multi-national company Kiewit Infrastructure to build a rock mine and quarry about one kilometre from the Skagit banks near Marblemount. “Everybody wrote letters. We told them, ‘salmon don’t lay eggs in silt, they lay eggs in gravel.’ ”

She says the project crumbled after regulators required an Environmental Impact Statement.

Environmental advocates on the U.S. side have taken the same strategy with Imperial Metals. Seattle City Light, the city-owned power company, and the Swinomish tribes formally requested that the B.C. environment ministry require a formal environmental assessment for proposed exploration in the headwaters. 

On Dec. 10, Kevin Jardine, associate deputy minister for the B.C. environment ministry, rejected calls for an assessment. 

“I am not satisfied that the exploration program has the potential for significant adverse environmental, economic, social, heritage or health effects,” Jardine wrote, “ … nor am I of the view that an [environmental assessment] would be in the public interest … ”

Old-growth forest in the Skagit River area. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

The last ‘truly wild’ stretch of the Skagit

We meet John Scurlock at his cabin home near the confluence of the muddy Sauk River and the Skagit, not far upstream from Concrete, Washington. 

The Sauk is the last big, free-flowing tributary of the upper Skagit (even the Baker and Cascade river tributaries have dams), which turns the clear main stem cloudy with glacial silt carried from way up in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

A former mountain climber, Scurlock is a renowned alpine photographer who takes dramatic photographs from a plane he built himself. Today, though, he’s promised to take us on a hike to see what he considers the last “truly wild” stretch of the entire Skagit mainstem in Washington State.

John Scurlock. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

The Skagit River. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

We hike for about 30 minutes along the old Great Northern Railway right of way, which is being reclaimed by a jungle of alder, cottonwood and Himalayan blackberry. (It rains so much here that the trees keep their long-flowing beards of algae and lichen year-round). Cougars, black bears, barred owls and elk are all regular visitors along this stretch of lush riparian zone.

“The Skagit was a wild river, one of the greatest we had before the dams were built,” Scurlock says. “There used to be 70-pound kings [Chinook] on this river.”

We emerge from the jungle to a stretch of river wild on both sides, with the Eldorado mountains rising into the clouds to the east. Eagle cries fill the air, so loud they interrupt our conversation. 

“They’re our national buzzard,” he laughs.

Scurlock is concerned that mining in the headwaters could replicate the transboundary fiasco on the Columbia River. 

The remains of a spawned-out salmon on the sandy bank of the Skagit River. The metal cord is a remnant of former logging activities in the area. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Scurlock looks out at the Skagit River. Eldorado Peak is visible in the background. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

“You don’t want what happened with Roosevelt Lake,” he says, in reference to the U.S. Colville Confederated Tribes’ 20-year fight in court against Canadian mining giant Teck, which polluted the lake and downstream Columbia River with toxic waste from its lead-zinc smelter on the Canadian side of the border.

He sees a way forward, similar to what happened with a big American mining company called Kennecott. In 2010, Scurlock tells us, the U.S. Forest Service took control of more than 150 hectares of the enormous Glacier Peak Wilderness in the North Cascades, where copper giant Kennecott wanted to build a huge open-pit copper mine in the Skagit drainage. 

“[Change] will require the will of people in British Columbia. What’s the value of the Skagit up there? That’s what people have to ask themselves.”

Kennecott abandoned the plan amid fierce opposition, including from Washington Senator Henry Jackson.

Regardless of opposition in Washington State, getting to that point with the Skagit will depend on Canadians and not Americans, Scurlock says. “[Change] will require the will of people in British Columbia. What’s the value of the Skagit up there? That’s what people have to ask themselves.”

Even sprawling mega malls need the Skagit

The city of Burlington is only about 45 kilometres downstream from Concrete, but it may as well be in another country. Our chain motel is located close to a huge bend in the Skagit, but you would never know the river is there. 

The core of this city sprawls out for miles upon miles of big box chains and low rise “drive-through” retail. The Skagit may be invisible, but even here, the river is all important. That’s because almost half of the water consumed by 70,000 people in the communities of Burlington, Mount Vernon and Sedro Wooley, is piped directly from the Skagit. The other half comes from four streams that rise up into the Cultus Mountain watershed near Mount Vernon.

Kevin Tate, community relations manager for the Skagit Public Utility District, says when the stream flows dip below a certain point — usually during the summer months — the utility takes water from the Skagit, which tends to have higher flows in the summer thanks to snow melt coming off the Cascades.

Kevin Tate, community relations manager for the Skagit Public Utility District. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

A water drain in Burlington is a reminder of the Skagit River flowing under the city’s concrete infrastructure. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Meanwhile, 15,000 people in the nearby community of Anacortes rely on the Skagit River for 100 per cent of their water — as do the nearby Shell and Marathon oil refineries, two major employers in the region.

Tate says they are not aware of a detectable impact from logging in the headwaters in terms of silt or turbidity but confirms they are watching the situation in British Columbia closely. 

“Our water quality has won awards every year in Washington State for the last 18 years,” he says proudly. “There’s very little turbidity.”

Just outside Concrete, we meet up with Tom Uniak of Washington Wild, an environmental group focused on lands and water across Washington State that is a leading U.S. voice on the headwaters issue. 

Standing over six feet and seven inches tall, Uniak is a shrewd, uncompromising organizer who has brought together many of the U.S. politicians, businesses, environmentalists and tribes that oppose headwaters development.

Tom Uniak. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

With him are Lynn Best, chief environmental officer for Seattle City Light, and environmental policy manager Kate Engel, who shares her time between the power company and staff duties at the Skagit Environmental Endowment Fund.

The trio is happy about the logging announcement, but wary about potential mining.

“The claims should be cancelled or bought — they should be extinguished — and that land put back in the park where it should be,” says Best, who was in the room when the High Ross Treaty was signed in 1984. 

Best puts numbers to what is at stake with the Skagit. Seattle City Light alone has spent more than US$77 million on the river since the dams were constructed, while the state’s investment for ongoing salmon recovery is at least US$90 million to date.

Seattle City Light chief environmental officer, Lynn Best, left, and environmental policy manager, Kate Engel, right, on the Skagit. Both Best and Engel are concerned about the potential impacts of mining in the headwaters of the river. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

The Skagit River just outside of Concrete, Washington. Engle told The Narwhal the river’s quality is carefully monitored. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Multiple groups, including the federal government, actively monitor baseline water quality on the Skagit, Engel says. “We know that this is a system with high-quality water on the U.S. side. If that changes, we will know.”

In response to questions about potential mining, Uniak says people south of the border can’t afford to say “ ‘oh, this is just exploratory drilling,’ because guess what? You give them an [exploration] permit and then maybe they find what they want, and all of a sudden, you’re half-way to dealing with a real mine.”

The goal, he says, is to “protect what we have left.” 

Nations call for Skagit headwaters protection

Just downstream of Mount Vernon, the Skagit River breaks into two forks that drain into Puget Sound. We follow the north stream to the four-hectare reserve of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community on the southeastern side of Fidalgo Island. 

Where the Skagit meets the sea, the entire delta, including the reserve on Skagit Bay, forms a globally significant nursery and refuge for migrating shorebirds, song birds, raptors and rare wintering waterfowl like trumpeter and tundra swans.

Until recently, the Swinomish Tribe — the union of four Coast Salish tribes — thrived on a year-round bounty of Pacific salmon. Williams is an elected leader responsible for business enterprises worth many millions of dollars — including a nearby casino, golf course, multiple gas stations and cannabis business — but he never stopped being a fisherman.

Skagit estuary close to the Swinomish First Nation Reserve. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

Standing on the banks of the Swinomish Channel where his grandfather once fished for chum salmon, he says the Swinomish are netting about one per cent of their historical catch on the Skagit system. The threat of damage to the headwaters, exacerbating the already fragile state of most salmon returns, has prompted them to join voices with Washington Wild, Seattle City Light, other U.S. tribes and Canadian First Nations opposing mining exploration in the Doughnut Hole. 

“The First Nations up there are our families too, a ton of my family is still up [in British Columbia],” he says. “The lines that were drawn in the sand by these two countries split our families in half.”

Senator Williams from the Swinomish stands along the Skagit estuary. Photo: Fernando Lessa / The Narwhal

In a show of cross-border solidarity earlier this year, the Swinomish and Upper Skagit tribes of Washington State joined with Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and called on the B.C. government to reject Imperial Metals’ exploration permit for the headwaters.

“We are sovereign tribal nations who have stewarded the lands and waters of the Skagit River area since time immemorial, and along with our brothers and sisters at the Tulalip Tribes, the Nooksack Indian Tribe and the Lummi Tribe, we ask you to stand with us and urge B.C. Premier [John] Horgan to deny the permit for exploratory mining in the Doughnut Hole of the Skagit River Headwaters,” they said.

The announcement harkens back to a time, not so long ago, when the Canada-U.S. border did not exist, and it was understood that whatever happens in the headwaters touches everyone living downstream.

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“The most transparent lobbying regime in Canada.”

That’s what Attorney General David Eby told British Columbians they were getting when the provincial government announced amendments to lobbying rules last year.

“Big money and political insiders have had too much influence for too long,” Eby said. “These changes are long overdue and build on our continuing work to strengthen B.C.’s democracy for all British Columbians.”

Eby’s comments are part of a long line of promises from the B.C. NDP to clean up politics, eliminate big money donations and ferret out corporate influence — which includes Bill 54, the province’s lobbying amendment act introduced last October.

But in spite of much talk and limited action, the secret lobbying of elected officials remains a common practice in B.C. today, according to Duff Conacher, coordinator of Democracy Watch, an Ottawa not-for-profit focused on making Canadian governments and corporations more accountable.

“Secret, unethical lobbying is very easy to do in B.C. still,” Conacher says. “[The NDP] started with very strong rhetoric, but they didn’t follow through.”

Conacher says all of the recently announced changes — including a strengthened two-year ban on lobbying for politicians or high-level bureaucrats after leaving office — only apply to those who officially register with B.C.’s Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists.

But if you are not being expressly paid to lobby, or do less than 50 hours of in-house lobbying a year, registration isn’t required. 

And if you’re unregistered, your interactions are not reported, documented or scrutinized by government or any public watchdog. In other words, at any moment in B.C., an unknown number of unregistered lobbyists are working to influence elected officials on the sly, and it’s completely legal.

‘It’s a sad joke’: gaping holes in lobbying law

This is not just a B.C. problem.

Conacher is calling for broad changes to how Canadian governments regulate lobbying and political donations, noting that lobbying loopholes are found at the federal, provincial and territorial level across the country.

Over his 26-year career in democracy advocacy, he has observed that governments only take action on closing loopholes in the wake of scandal, and in the case of the NDP, to create the impression that the wild west days of the BC Liberals, who ruled the province from 2001-2015, are over.

But not much has really changed, says Conacher, as he reads aloud over the phone from Section 2 of B.C.’s Lobbyist Registration Act. The province’s lobbying rules do not apply to oral or written submissions made to a public office holder concerning the “enforcement, interpretation or application of any Act or regulation.” Nor do they apply to the “implementation or administration of any program, policy, directive, or guideline” by a public office holder.

“It’s a sad joke,” he says. “That almost [exempts] everything. What else is there? The biggest loopholes that allow for secret lobbying in B.C. are still in the law.”

Why do loopholes continue to exist?

Allowing unregistered lobbying opens the door to situations where hired-gun consultants, who usually have to register, can be hired and paid for “strategic advice” — but can lobby without payment. 

The same goes for board members who are paid but agree to lobby for free.

Unlike the province of Quebec or City of Toronto, B.C. has not closed this loophole.

Lobbyists also aren’t required to register if a public office requests contact “for advice or comment.” 

This is a recipe for corruption, Conacher says, particularly in the case of high-level government officials. Theoretically, a cabinet minister can reach out to a lobbyist and make deals in secret, yet there’s no record of it.

“The Access to Information Act doesn’t apply to minister offices, and the [B.C.] Lobbying Act does not apply to that communication either.”

The federal government eliminated this loophole 16 years ago, but it remains on the books in B.C. The question is, why do so many loopholes persist?

The Ministry of the Attorney General turned down multiple requests for an interview with David Eby, and a spokesman would not directly address questions to clarify the persistence of loopholes for unregistered lobbying.

Conacher has a disturbing explanation for why the NDP has talked tough on cleaning up lobbying, yet failed to go the full distance.

“There’s no other reason to leave the loopholes open, except that government wants secret, unethical lobbying, so they can do secret deals behind closed doors with interests they favour.”  

“And they want that all to be off the record.”

‘Deep state’ lobbying a growing tactic of fossil fuel industry, report finds

Lobbying’s dodgy revolving door

It has been less than 10 years since information about lobbying even became available to the public in B.C. In 2010 the Lobbyists Registration Act, for the first time, required lobbyists to register actual or intended meetings with public officials. 

There is now a publicly accessible, searchable database that provides a window into how government works, including the thousands of lobbying records of former B.C. politicians and turned advocates. 

There are many familiar names. Former lands and agriculture minister Pat Bell successfully lobbied for a company seeking contract work on BC Hydro’s Site C dam and, according to LinkedIn, he currently holds board positions with an energy firm and junior mining company. 

Former cabinet minister and Dawson Creek mayor Blair Lekstrom also lobbied on behalf of a business seeking Site C contracts, and among other things, has represented Chinese coal mining company HD Mining. (He was fined in 2016 for breaking lobbying rules.)

But most revolving door examples involve less familiar, former high-level bureaucrats. 

For example, Karina Brino, former assistant deputy minister for the Ministry of Energy and Mines, left her job in July 2011 and by August was the president and CEO of the Mining Association of B.C., the province’s most influential mining advocacy organization (see one of her op-eds here).

Kirk Miller, after a 25-year career with the Agricultural Land Commission, including about seven as chair/CEO, turned around to lobby his former employer on behalf of landowners seeking to exclude land from the Agricultural Land Reserve.

Lobbying undermines public confidence in government

In 2017 Corporate Mapping Project researchers looked at registered lobbying in the province, and discovered that 22,000 lobbying “contacts” were made between public officials and the fossil fuel industry alone between 2010 and 2016. 

They concluded that “B.C. stands out in Canada in terms of its weak regulations against corporations influencing public policy.”

Researcher and lead author Nicolas Graham said the findings were “alarming,” but told The Narwhal his research did not include unregistered lobbying.

The report also found “substantial overlap” between the top corporate political donors and the most frequent lobbyists — suggesting the two practices “work in tandem” to ensure companies with ample resources can leverage those resources to gain the ear of politicians.

According to Bennett Jones lawyer Sharon Singh negative public perception of lobbying undermines public confidence in government and casts suspicion on legitimate communications between public officials and stakeholders.

“Lobbying … generally serves an important purpose by allowing stakeholders to communicate their concerns to public officials,” Singh wrote in a 2018 blog post about B.C.’s lobbying changes. 

“However, recent B.C. experience with political donation issues suggests that lobbying still suffers from negative public perception.”

Speaking with The Narwhal, Singh said the most important change brought in by the B.C. NDP has been the monthly reporting requirement. 

In the past, lobbyists have only been required to list who they think they might lobby. Now lobbyists have to report monthly with details about who they specifically talked to. 

The recent changes also address the need to improve lobbyist disclosure — for example, the new rules notably lower the threshold under which an in-house lobbyist has to register from 100 hours down to 50.

But many of the proposed amendments remain stuck in limbo.

Amendments to the B.C. Lobbyist Registration Act proposed by the NDP government in 2018. Although some changes have been made, many of the amendments remain stuck in limbo one year after being introduced.

A spokesperson with the Ministry of the Attorney General told The Narwhal a majority of the lobbying changes are not yet in force and provided no specifics about when they will be in place. 

He said implementation will be announced via future updates to the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists. (No such updates have been posted between August-mid and November 2019.)

‘Funneling’ and buying government access

Although B.C. banned corporate and union donations, rules still allow for individual political donations of $1225.17 (B.C. actually increased this amount from $1,200 in 2018).

Conacher told The Narwhal that everywhere in Canada where a personal donation limit persists of $1,000 or more persists there has been suspected or confirmed illegal “funneling.”  

The funneling of personal political donations can work like this: a large company sends one of its executives to the door of a political party with 3,400 separate personal cheques (say $100 each) for each of its employees, telling the party that he is simply facilitating the delivery of personal donations. The party pockets the $34,000. (In reality, the company paid the donation).

In a similar way, SNC Lavalin illegally funneled almost $118,000 to the federal Liberal and Conservative parties, riding associations and candidates through its executives and employees from 2004 to 2011. 

Elections Quebec recently performed an audit that found almost $13 million in likely illegally funneled donations between 2006 and 2011. 

Democracy Watch is calling on Elections B.C. to do a similar audit of donations, looking for patterns that suggest multiple personal donations are connected to a company or other entity. 

Dermod Travis, executive director of Victoria-based democracy advocacy group IntegrityBC, suspects funneling is occurring in British Columbia today. It should be mandatory, he says, to include details about your employer when any personal political donation is made, which would make it much easier to detect funneling.

Elections B.C. director of communications Andrew Watson told The Narwhal they have not identified any cases of “indirect political contributions,” nor have any been brought to their attention to date. 

But he confirmed an audit is imminent. 

“Since the law changed in 2017, we have not audited the accounts of registered political parties. We plan on doing so before the next provincial election.” 

Fixing the system: onus on governments, not lobbyists

The answer to closing lobbying loopholes, according to Democracy Watch, is to reverse the onus on who has to register when lobbying takes place.

Conacher is calling for the creation of a database that records every time a government office is contacted by a person, company or entity trying to lobby. The result would be a comprehensive, searchable database of all government influencers, from an angry local constituent to a lobbyist representing a large corporation.

Database technology is now easily capable of managing a task this big, Conacher says, and government ministries and MP offices already extensively track and record when letters and contacts are received.

Travis mostly concurs.

He says B.C. should exclude normal constituent contacts with MLAs from such a database (for privacy purposes), and lobbyists and the public officials should both have to report any lobbying contact, making it easier to police and cross-check interactions.

With British Columbians waiting on the promise of the most transparent lobbying regime in the country, it remains to be seen if the province will follow through.

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In early July, Tahltan Central Government President Chad Norman Day boarded a helicopter in Dease Lake, flying to a nearby cluster of rogue mining claims exploiting one of the world’s richest deposits of nephrite jade.

“Jade mining has put a nasty facelift on the land,” says Day of what they saw on the flight. 

“They’ve built roads and ripped up a lot of land and forest.”

Jade miners have also built camps with outhouses and garbage dumps, he says, and the Tahltan suspect the waste is being buried instead of hauled out.

It’s becoming a cliché to say that British Columbia is a “wild west” for mining, but when it comes to nephrite jade, the official provincial gemstone, it’s no exaggeration. 

Location of Tahltan traditional territory in northeast B.C. Map: Tahltan Central Government

Jade placer mining operations occur without an environmental assessment. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

Out on this remote landscape 1,750 kilometres north of Vancouver, critics say there is no active enforcement to speak of, no meaningful requirement for reclamation, and no necessity to consult and seek permission from the Tahltan Nation to work on the land. 

Back in June, Day sent a letter demanding the province take immediate steps to shut down the jade and gold placer mining (mining surface areas near streams and digging in old riverbeds) across the Tahltan Nation’s nearly 100,000 square kilometres of territory. 

Weeks later, Day showed up in person with a film crew to document his eviction of the biggest players, putting them on notice that the party was over. 

The growth of B.C. jade

The term “jade” refers to two different kinds of ornamental rocks — jadeite and nephrite, which have been revered in China since the Stone Age. Today British Columbia is the world’s largest producer of nephrite jade, with deposits documented in more than 50 sites — but nowhere is it more plentiful than in the northwest corner of B.C., including east of the Stewart Cassiar Highway near Dease lake. 

Jade is an unusual mining commodity, says Glenn Grande of the Fair Mining Collaborative: some miners finding it by placer mining, while others mine it from hard rock like other minerals. There’s an opportunistic element to it as well — sometimes big jade boulders are found randomly by miners looking for other things, like gold. 

“It can be a deliberate seek or an accidental find,” Grande says.

In recent years especially, there is a big cash incentive to look for jade. 

Jade scattered on the ground near a placer mining operation. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

Jade claims near Dease Lake, B.C. Because of B.C.’s antiquated mining laws, anyone can stake a mining claim online, even in Indigenous territory.

According to a report from Visual Capitalist, the average AAA B.C. jade price jumped from less than $200 per kilogram in 2004, to around $1,400 per kilogram in 2016. During that same period, average yearly B.C. jade sales grew from fewer than 400 tonnes per year to about 1,000 tonnes per year.

Talk of this lucrative trade is a sore point for Day.

“In terms of Tahltan Nation benefits, revenue sharing, anything like that, benefits that would flow to the nation as a collective and in a significant way, there’s nothing.”

Day points to the “impact benefit agreements” the Tahltan has with other industries — including mining exploration, guide outfitting, logging and clean energy — and says the jade industry will need to follow these examples.

“We’re very experienced in terms of drawing up agreements to make sure that the Tahltan are intimately involved, in processes, especially around permitting and the environment, and that our people and our communities are receiving benefits and opportunities,” he said. “None of these things are currently [in place] with the jade industry at all.”

Placer mining in particular is a bust for the province too: according to research by the Fair Mining Collaborative, B.C. collected less than $79,000 in royalties from 558 permitted placer mines in 2017. That same year, placer gold sales alone were estimated at almost $16 million.

Reality TV catches Jade Fever

Excitement about Dease Lake-area riches has been fanned by the Discovery Channel reality show Jade Fever, which follows a group of financially stressed jade miners, working on and off for Chinese backers, as they do battle with the rough, mountainous topography of jade country.

Like other mining reality shows in recent years — there are at least 13, most dedicated to placer gold mining — Jade Fever is a clarion call to every weekend warrior with access to heavy machinery and dreams of making easy money plucking “million dollar” jade boulders from streambanks and out of mountainsides.

“This isn’t mining,” says one of the hapless miners on Jade Fever. “It’s treasure hunting.”

The drama doesn’t always stop when the camera cuts. In October 2017, CBC reported that Ken Foy, the star of the History Channel’s Yukon Gold was fined $145,000 for the environmental damage inflicted on his placer claim near Dawson City. The actual taxpayer cost was reportedly closer to $1 million.

If Jade Fever is any indication, you find jade not with geological knowledge, but with “your gut” — and by driving lots of heavy equipment through watercourses, drilling speculative holes, and digging big pits in the ground.

Clash of two legal systems

The conflict over jade in northwest B.C. is the result of two clashing legal systems. 

According to B.C. law, the gold rush that started in 1859 never ended; in many cases, mining remains the highest use of Crown land. 

The current system of free-entry not only allows you to stake claims online without physically touching the land, but once you’ve done so, your rights to access the subsurface trump most other land rights.

Jade miners have staked claims and applied for permits that give them the right, under provincial law, to be on the land exploring and mining for jade.

Jade placer mining operations on unceded territory of the Tahltan nation. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

But many of these same miners are coming on to unceded Tahltan Nation territory, without any contact or consultation with the First Nation, creating significant land disturbances and environmental harm as they go.

Although B.C. recently proposed some mining reforms, they only apply to the Mines Act and not the Mineral Tenure Act which undergirds the free-entry system. 

That’s why, when Day was flying around in a helicopter, he was evicting jade miners that have every right to be there under provincial law.

“The online staking regime, it’s definitely illegal under Tahltan law,” says Day. “I’m sure if we took this thing to court at the highest level, the Supreme Court of Canada would likely agree.”

President of the Tahltan Central Government, Chad Day, speaks with a placer miner during the process of handing out eviction notices. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

Implementing new Indigenous rights framework

There is real hope that B.C. mining laws will be reformed in the near future, thanks to the NDP government’s unveiling of new legislation to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP).

Under article 32 the declaration grants Indigenous peoples “the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources.” 

It also requires governments to “consult and cooperate in good faith” with Indigenous peoples through their own representative institutions. 

When it comes to resource development like mines, UNDRIP mandates governments obtain free and informed consent of Indigenous peoples prior to the approval of “any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.”

Placer mining in some areas takes place along watercourses but has not been subject to an environmental assessment. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

Members of the Tahltan survey placer mining operations from the air. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

B.C.’s proposed legislation, introduced through Bill 41 in late October, would require the province to work in tandem with Indigenous legal systems. 

But just what the integration of colonial and Indigenous law will look like on the ground and in places like Tahltan traditional territory remains unclear, although some have indicated it could be transformative when it comes to long-promised nation-to-nation decision-making. 

It is written into the mandate letter of Michelle Mungall, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources that her ministry participate in bringing “the principles of the [U.N.] declaration into action.”

Terry Teegee, regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, said the new legislation is likely to bring more certainty to mining operations because it will more clearly establish what is required for gaining Indigenous consent. 

“Consent is about agreement. It is a process to achieving and maintaining agreement … about respecting our laws as equals and as partners,” Teegee said at the B.C. legislature, during Bill 41’s unveiling. 

“One of the greatest uncertainties for project development in B.C. is not knowing if a project has the consent of affected First Nations,” he said. “Laws that are co-developed … will deliver economic, legal certainty and predictability in this province.”

Placer mining operations in a valley. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

“The courts have been clear that Indigenous peoples have rights in their territories and the legislation will help provide a plan and a path forward for all of us,” Sarah Plank, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, told The Narwhal.

In mid-September, Day attended meetings with the ministry to talk about what the implementation of UNDRIP will look like for the Tahltan.

“I think [UNDRIP] will definitely play a role in how to address these issues with jade mining,” says Day. “It’s a hopeful step, but the devil’s in the details.”

No shortage of solutions

Day says another part of the solution is to complete Tahltan land use planning — already under way for several years, buoyed by new funding, which will ultimately dictate where resource development happens in Tahltan territory.

“The big change that needs to take place is that Tahltan land use planning needs to take place ahead of time, to ensure that no outside interests can stake land that [we] have said is off limits.”

Mount Edziza Provincial Park in the territory of the Tahltan nation. Mining occurs on the outer boundaries of this park. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Day points to the success of the Klappan Plan, unveiled by the province and Tahltan this past summer, which has created three separate land use zones across about 640,000 square hectares, including the subalpine basin known as the Sacred Headwaters. 

In the recent past, this area has been a conflict flashpoint in conflict over coalbed methane extraction via fracking, coal mining, mineral exploration and moose poaching.

Future land use planning like in the Klappan, Day says, will not only determine where resource activities can happen, but will “ultimately bring more certainty to everybody, including industry.”

Make claims conditional

B.C. could solve a lot of problems by making mineral claims conditional, depending on what other activities and uses are competing for the same area, says Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel at West Coast Environmental Law.

This would end the persistent idea, born in the 1860s gold rush era, that mining is always the highest and best use of B.C. land — and could spell the end to mining claims being staked in sensitive First Nations territory, important watersheds for drinking water and fisheries, and more.

“The idea that mineral claims are appropriate in any of these places is a bit crazy, really.”

Day walks around jade placer mining equipment while posting eviction notices at mining camps, some of which were empty. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

B.C. also needs to rethink the statutory right to compensation, introduced by the B.C. Liberals, which forces taxpayers to generously compensate miners if their claims to an area must be sidelined for things like park creation.

Clogg adds that updating B.C.’s mining laws will be a boon to industry.

“If we reform our mineral tenure system to be clearer about where mineral claims and mining activity is not appropriate, it will create greater certainty for industry, and avoid situations where millions and millions of dollars are expended, only to be mired in controversy and lawsuits.”

You only have to think of recent mining history for examples: the ongoing Taseko Mines debacle, the proposed Ajax mine near Kamloops city limits, and now, the rush for Dease Lake-area jade.

Preemptive changes already being made

The province says it has already made changes to begin meeting UNDRIP — including committing $500 million over 10 years to support the construction of Indigenous family housing, and $50 million to revitalize languages.

In mid-September, they also proposed a plan to modernize the environmental assessment process, which could potentially affect placer mining. 

The threshold that would trigger an environmental assessment for a placer mine has been lowered from 500,000 tonnes to 250,000 tonnes of annual “pay dirt.”

(Pay dirt is an old term for mined gravel that is processed in a sluice box, wash plant or other device for extracting precious metals.)

Jade placer mining operations. Photo: Tahltan Central Government

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the miners themselves, often working in very remote locations, would be expected to “self-report” when they reach the threshold to trigger an assessment which means a placer miner has to phone up the ministry and request an environmental assessment.

“Project proponents are responsible for making their own determination as to whether or not their proposed project falls within the thresholds set out in the Reviewable Projects Regulation,” wrote a spokesman from the B.C. Ministry of Climate Change and Environment. “[They] must identify themselves to the [Environmental Assessment Office] if they are reviewable.”

Sharing the benefits of jade

Back up near Dease Lake in July, Chad Norman Day is reading an eviction notice to Claudia Bunce and her husband Robin, the stars of the reality TV show Jade Fever, as the cameras roll.

It’s a strange moment: a film crew is already on the site filming the show, and the Tahltan have brought their own cameras to document the eviction process for their members.

“To be clear, your activities here are unlawful and deeply disrespectful to our Tahltan culture, people and ancestors who shed blood for these lands,” reads Day from the eviction notice he is delivering to Bunce. 

“This letter is your final notice to shut down.”

Months have passed since the eviction notices were presented to the jade miners in Tahltan territory. In the interim at least two miners have indicated to the Tahltan that they have ceased operations and are exploring options for moving forward.

The Tahltan Central Government also confirmed they are now working with the province to chart a path forward. 

The days of the roaring 1860s gold rush are long gone, and the Tahltan are determined to move British Columbia’s jade industry into the 21st century, one way or another.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The last 50 years have seen the traditional territory of the Dane-zaa, now the homeland of the modern Blueberry River and Doig River First Nations, transformed beyond recognition.

By 2016 more than 110,000 kilometres of roads, pipelines and transmission and seismic lines had been cut across 40,000 square kilometres of land. The collective sum of this environmental devastation has been likened to a “death by a thousand cuts.”

The traditional territory of the Blueberry River First Nations overlaps with the Montney formation, one of the largest deposits of natural gas on the planet. Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Out of desperation, Blueberry River continues to seek protection for the last few intact wilderness areas in court, claiming that their treaty with Canada, signed in 1900 in reaction to the depredations of the Klondike gold rush, has been breached.

The following nonfiction comic was more than a year in the making, and is published now as a court case brought by Blueberry River continues to wind through B.C. Supreme Court with a potentially precedent-setting decision coming in 2020.

Special thanks to the Uncharted Journalism Fund, Robin Ridington and Jeffrey Ellis. Written by Blueberry River First Nations and Christopher Pollon. Pencils by Daniel Lafrance. Inks by Kelly Chen. Production by Carol Linnitt and The Narwhal.

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On the day The Narwhal went out on pollution patrol with Transport Canada’s National Aerial Surveillance Program in early June, the morning started in a second-storey office on the outskirts of the Vancouver International Airport in Richmond

The team (two pilots, two surveillance technicians and a manager/senior technician) assemble in a briefing room. The crew pours over the latest weather reports, satellite imagery of real-time shipping traffic and any reports of weekend spills. In this way, each day’s flight plan is a custom creation.

I’m with filmmaker David Lavallee to get a first-hand view of what it’s like on the front lines of marine pollution first response on British Columbia coast.

We are briefed for emergency readiness and board the cherry-red plane — a highly customized former commercial Dash-8 — one of three maritime pollution surveillance planes that Transport Canada employs on the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic coasts under the banner of the National Aerial Surveillance Program.

On the day we fly, an oil slick has been reported in Vancouver’s False Creek, which is the first top of the flight.

The Dash-8 has been heavily modified with radar, specialized cameras and much more — with modified fuel tanks that make a six-hour, return flight to the Alaska border possible.

No spill is visible as we cross False Creek, but as the plane rises over Burrard Inlet, an unreported iridescent slick of suspected hydrocarbon comes into view. The pollution is photographed and analyzed to produce an estimate of the amount of fuel on the surface.

This spill is what senior technologist Owen Rusticus calls a “mystery spill” — there is no obvious source (such as a nearby ship trailing oil), but one possible explanation is that a ship has left its bilge pump on auto, discharging fuel-tainted water into the inlet.

For densely populated areas with heavy shipping traffic, the crew relies largely on sight to detect spills, with the background help of built-in technology that can detect the unique surface effect of oily substances on water.

As we cut across Georgia Strait to scan the shipping lanes off the west coast of Vancouver Island however, the plane rises much higher (20,000 feet is the limit) and relies entirely on sensors for its pollution detection.

Before we rise above the clouds about 65 km off the coast of Tofino, we spot and photograph a group of about nine white Risso’s dolphins, followed by two separate pairs of fin whales — which are photographed and reported to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Pilot Simon Pearce says they typically see “a lot of humpbacks and sometimes sperm whales” closer to shore off Vancouver Island at this time of year, and further offshore, fin and blue whales.

During the nearly five-hour flight, we witness how dedicated and skilled the Transport Canada surveillance crew are. In 2018 alone, the Pacific aerial surveillance program reported 550 spills (between April 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019) — many of them relatively small hydrocarbon spills.

On our flight, the Burrard Inlet spill was estimated to contain fewer than four litres, and a tiny slick near Nanaimo was fewer than 0.5 litres. So what happens to mystery spill reports of small quantities?

Transport Canada spokesman Simon Rivet later tells me the mystery spill information informs Transport Canada’s “overall knowledge of marine oil spills in Canadian waters, including their location, extent, frequency and the total amount of oil spilled.” The data also informs where future patrols will happen.

Despite the Canadian government’s stated “zero tolerance for polluting Canada’s marine environment,” (as per a pamphlet for the surveillance program from Transport Canada in 2011), there were just two “administrative monetary penalties” issued to two vessels for discharging pollutants in the Pacific region last year — both of them for less than $2,000.

With the recent federal approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which could see a seven-fold increase in the number of oil tankers plying the southern B.C. coast, the surveillance work of these little-known eyes-in-the-sky will only become more important.

Video by White Gold Productions

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It’s been five years since the Mount Polley tailings dam burst and spilled 24 million cubic metres of mining waste into critical salmon habitat in the Fraser River watershed, but B.C. hasn’t learned its lesson, according to a new report released on Tuesday.

If another mining accident happened today, B.C. taxpayers would still be at risk of paying the clean-up bill according to the report released by the First Nations Energy and Mining Council, which calls on the B.C. government to compel mining companies to provide funds for cleanup.

“The lack of financial assurance for mining disasters is a serious policy gap in British Columbia — one that increases the risk of another Mount Polley,” said report author and economist Jason Dion. “By implementing smart financial assurance requirements, B.C. can better protect the public while still ensuring a thriving mining sector in the province.”

The cost of cleaning up B.C.’s abandoned mine sites was pegged at more than $500 million in 2016.

Financial assurance is a system of ensuring funds are available to pay for a cleanup even if a company goes bankrupt. It screens out companies that can’t afford the risk of their own projects.

British Columbia currently relies on a phased system of financial assurance, in which companies do not have to put up the full estimated clean-up cost up front; companies can rely in part on the value of the untapped commodities in the ground, an approach that is vulnerable to commodity swings, company bankruptcies and technological innovations at competing mines elsewhere in the world, Dion says.

Two tailings dam failures expected each decade under current regulations

The expert panel that reviewed the cause of the Mount Polley mine disaster warned B.C. can expect two dam failures every 10 years unless mining laws are updated. Nearly five years later, no fines and no charges have been laid against the mine’s owner Imperial Metals, which is now on precarious financial ground. One economist has estimated that British Columbians are on the hook for a $40 million clean-up bill for the Mount Polley disaster.

“B.C. has a polluter-pay policy under its Environmental Management Act, but that’s not the reality on the ground,” said Allen Edzerza of the First Nations Energy and Mining Council.

“By accepting our recommendations, the government would not only ensure that polluters pay when there are disasters, it would also reduce the risk of another Mount Polley by giving mining companies a financial incentive to reduce risk in their operations.”

The recommendations would bring the mining sector into line with other heavy industrial sectors — pipelines, offshore oil and gas production, tanker traffic and nuclear power generation — which must provide financial security against the risk of disaster, in many cases up to $1 billion, according to the report.

A June report from the First Nations Energy and Mining Council found that British Columbia does not need to reinvent the wheel in terms of mining rules. It can emulate other jurisdictions such as Quebec and the United States.

A case in point: in 2013 Quebec tabled legislation requiring all new mines to provide a guarantee sufficient to cover the estimated costs of clean up. A mining operation today must provide a financial guarantee in three separate payments in the earliest stages of mine life: 50 percent of the total amount within 90 days of mining plan approval, with two payments of 25 percent each, made on the subsequent anniversaries of approval.

‘The power exists to do it today’

These changes could be made in B.C. with a stroke of the pen, says report author Dion, a researcher at Ottawa’s Ecofiscal Commission.

“The power exists to do it today,” he says of requiring any new B.C. mine to put up a full clean-up cost with cash or other secure financial instruments. “Under this scenario, only the mines that could afford to clean themselves up would go forward, from now on. This is definitely low-hanging fruit.”

This spring, the B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources confirmed it was engaging industry and First Nations on legislative changes to the Mineral Tenure Act, specifically around changes to placer mining and mineral tenure rules. In late July, a spokesperson for the ministry confirmed that there are also plans to change B.C.’s reclamation security policy this year, although details and more specific timelines were not provided.

The Quebec policy shift, part of a wider body of reforms, is noteworthy because a big multinational mining company operating in Quebec today needs to put up full clean-up costs upfront, regardless of how much money it has in the bank. Meanwhile in B.C., mining giant Teck Resources has unsecured reclamation costs of $700 million for its mines.

Tulsequah Chief mine polluting for decades

Emulating the Quebec approach could eliminate the conditions that created the fiasco at northern B.C.’s Tulsequah Chief mine. In that instance, a large company developed the mine and later sold it off, only to be taken over by a succession of small players without the means to clean it up.

The Tulsequah Chief, which has been polluting a shared Alaska-B.C. transboundary salmon river for decades, has not only strained B.C.’s reputation and relationship with Alaska, but B.C. taxpayers are now on the hook to pay for clean-up.

Water pits filled with acid mine drainage at the Tulsequah Chief mine in northwestern B.C. The mine has been discharging waste into the transboundary salmon-bearing Taku River for 60 years. Photo: Chris Miller via CSM Photos

B.C. also gives its Chief Inspector of Mines, an unelected bureaucrat appointed by the ministry, a large amount of discretion in setting the terms of financial assurance, which appears to occur on an ad hoc, mine-by-mine basis without posted guidelines. The province did not facilitate The Narwhal’s request for an interview with Herman Henning, B.C.’s new Chief Inspector of Mines. Henning’s LinkedIn page as of July 24 showed his current occupation as a “self-employed mining consultant.”

Edzerza of the First Nations Energy and Mining Council cautions that more is necessary than simply insisting on full up-front reclamation costs. Mechanisms are also needed to ensure that estimated reclamation costs reflect the real clean-up cost — including when a mine expands beyond the originally permitted size.

‘No negative effect’ from Quebec’s strengthened reclamation policy

In Quebec, political will was required to make the policy changes. Government faced criticism from a wide range of industry-related groups in the lead-up to the changes, including warnings that tougher bonding rules would make the sector internationally uncompetitive.

But more than five years later, the sky has not fallen in Quebec.

“There has been no negative effect on investment attraction,” wrote Sylvain Carrier, a spokesman for Quebec’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, in an email to The Narwhal. “This policy change had a positive effect on public confidence, fostering social responsibility, and on mining investment.”

Carrier says that in 2014, the year after the changes were made, total mining investment in Quebec was $2.9 billion; last year, it was more than $3.1 billion.

“We can say with reasonable confidence that [the Quebec changes] haven’t led to the kind of major crash in mining sector investment that some might have predicted when the policy was put on the table,” says Dion. “It might mean less mining investment, but given the risks and costs of remediating some of these mines, if they cannot pay their own costs down the line, that might make sense.”

Dion cites the latest Fraser Institute’s annual survey of mining companies, sent to 2,600 global mining professionals, which ranked Quebec fourth out of 83 mining jurisdictions in terms of “investment attractiveness.” British Columbia came in at number 18.

The Quebec Mining Association (Association Minière du Québec), one of the groups that cautioned about the changes in advance, declined comment for this story.

Should B.C. have a Superfund program?

One approach to paying the massive costs of future disasters, recommended in the June report from the First Nations Energy and Mining Council, is for British Columbia to create something akin to the U.S. federal government’s Superfund program.

Superfund is the name given to 1980 federal U.S./ legislation that empowers the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up contaminated sites, forcing parties responsible to either perform cleanups or pay for government-led cleanup work.

At its outset, Superfund was funded by excise taxes on the petroleum and chemical industries, which makes it a useful model to consider for raising money to deal with future industrial disasters in B.C. Dion says it might be possible to “pool risk” across industrial sectors that are provincially regulated — for example, requiring mining and natural gas fracking companies to pay into a single disaster clean-up fund.

“We think the Superfund [approach] should be looked at closely as a model to replicate,” Edzerza said. “Because as we found out with Mount Polley, you’ve got to scramble to find funds to initially respond, and then to assess [damages] and do restoration work.”

Such an approach creates an industry-wide incentive — a sort of peer pressure — to ensure that all companies across a sector don’t let operations slip, because each company is indirectly on the hook for costs if a disaster occurs.

While this pooled risk approach is commonplace in many sectors, not a single province or territory in Canada currently uses such an approach to pay the cost of mining disasters.

— With files from Emma Gilchrist

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Back in January, Premier John Horgan stood in front of the leaders of B.C.’s exploration industry at the annual Association for Mineral Exploration conference in Vancouver to announce that two B.C. tax credits — among the most generous mining tax breaks in Canada — would become permanent.

It wasn’t exactly a bombshell announcement — the new policy had been recommended by an industry-friendly task force months earlier, as part of a government-led process to promote mining exploration and jobs.

Within a month of Horgan’s announcement, B.C.’s 2019 budget approved $20 million in new spending for mining, accepting multiple recommendations from the same task force.

Permanent tax subsidies go a long way to explain why B.C. is home to more exploration mining companies than anywhere else on earth.

Of the 1,200 mining companies that consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates are based in the province, about 800 are junior companies — not miners per se, but small enterprises searching for new deposits of minerals and metals.

B.C.’s concentration of junior companies is all the more impressive given that the province holds a relatively tiny amount of the world’s reserves of metallurgical coal and copper (our two biggest mining commodities by net revenue), and Vancouver is a financial backwater compared to New York, London and Shanghai.

So why do the world’s exploration companies gravitate here?

Robyn Allan, a former president and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and senior economist with B.C. Central Credit Union who has written about the province’s mining industry, says there are three primary reasons why B.C. — and Canada — is a good place to call home.

“First, there is a long history of mining in Canada, and particularly in British Columbia,” she says. “There is the relative ease of becoming a publicly-traded company.”

“And then there are the tax incentives.”

Persistence of the frontier

Our long history of mining has created clusters of expertise that in turn attracts companies to the province, concentrated in greater Vancouver. If you want to start a mining business, everything you need is here: there are specialist law firms, biologists and environmental consultants for hire, accountants, auditors, chemists and geologists. There are also specialist machinery companies, transportation-logistics expertise and multiple ports.

The geology on the west side of the Rockies is much more varied than in the rest of Canada, meaning there is a variety of ore deposits. Over the last 150 years, this too has attracted a lot of exploration interest.

There is a darker side to this long history. If you’re a B.C. exploration company, in some ways little has changed since the first mainland gold rushes of the mid-19th century. You can still stake a claim to sub-surface rights almost anywhere, regardless of what’s on the surface. This includes under river headwaters and other sensitive ecological areas, First Nations traditional territory and private property.

Under B.C.’s “free entry” system, a prospector with a claim can legally access virtually any land in their quest for metals and minerals.

British Columbia remains an outlier in Canada — provinces like Ontario and Quebec have reformed their archaic free-entry rules, while the Northwest Territories is currently in the process of changing its system.

And in 2005, B.C. introduced an online staking system that makes it possible to register mining claims on a computer, without having to physically stake the ground as in the past. So staking ground and calling yourself a prospector is easier in B.C. than in many other places — and easier than ever before.

(The Association For Mineral Exploration and the Mining Association of Canada declined interviews for this story; the Mining Association of B.C. did not respond to phone calls).

All resource roads lead to Toronto

A junior exploration company, in theory, is engaged in the business of searching for new marketable deposits of ore — which, if found, will be passed on to a mining company with the ability to bring it to production.

So how do speculative prospecting companies with no producing assets or revenue streams actually make money? And what does B.C. and Canada offer that nowhere else can?

Such questions lead to the Toronto-based TMX Group  — including the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) for more established companies and the TSX-Venture Exchange (TSXV) for mostly “juniors” — which in 2018 listed about half of the world’s public mining companies. Companies on the TSX and TSXV raised $6.5 billion in 2018 alone — a figure representing about half of global completed public mining financing and more than a third of the mining equity capital raised in the world.

“The TSX is first and foremost an institution fostering the frenzied speculation that the industry loves,” philosopher and political scientist Alain Deneault wrote in his 2015 book, Canada: A New Tax Haven. “On this exchange it is notoriously easy for a company to list presumed deposits and magnify their value.”

Deneault writes that the TSX gives juniors “more leeway than they have anywhere else to cultivate ambiguity” — because they are allowed to disclose both mine reserves and resources, the latter being a crude estimate of everything the deposit may contain. (Deneault did not respond to interview requests by press time.)

“Disclosure of resources encourages stock market speculation and makes the price of mining stocks go up,” he wrote.

He cites research showing that both the TSX and the Ontario Securities Commission, the provincial regulator, have historically been “negligent” when it comes to addressing illegal insider trading. “Unlike practice in the United States, such trading is rarely investigated.”

Tax breaks are the biggest perk

While generous provincial and federal tax breaks make Vancouver a good place to set up shop, two tax perks are particularly attractive to exploration companies.

B.C.’s mining exploration tax credit (made permanent in 2019; previously it had to be renewed annually) allows a mining exploration company to deduct a huge list of good-and-service costs from its payable provincial income taxes — including prospecting, drilling, sampling, carrying out geological surveys and much more.

There’s also an enhanced credit available that rises to 30 per cent (from 20 per cent of qualified exploration expenditures) if a company is exploring in an area affected by mountain pine beetle, which is a huge chunk of the province.

The province estimates that $15 million per year will be “provided” through the mining exploration tax credit in 2019/2020.

On the federal side, the flow through shares program provides a critical tax subsidy by enabling mining exploration companies to transfer their undeclared business expenses to the investors who buy their shares.

Purchasers of flow through shares pay extra for each share, but then are allowed to transfer and deduct mining company’s expenses as if they were their own, lowering their taxable income. B.C. also offers an income tax credit to individuals who have purchased FTS from a B.C. mining company.

(An accountant based in B.C. told The Narwhal flow through shares are typically employed by high-net worth investors in the $200,000+ income range, who can use them to lower their high taxable incomes.)

Not everyone is happy about these kinds of perks. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has criticized Canada in the past for granting “direct subsidies and fiscal incentives” to industry and has recommended that the preferential tax system for minerals and metals be eliminated.  

What is a subsidy?

For 2019, the federal government estimates that flow through share deductions will total $110 million for personal income tax, and $40 million for corporate income tax.

A spokesperson for Finance Canada said that flow through shares “could be characterized as a subsidy” — something this ministry loosely defines as “a tax or non-tax measure that provides preferential treatment.”

But B.C.’s Ministry of Finance would not provide a definition of a subsidy, or confirm if its $15 million/year B.C. mining exploration tax credit is a subsidy by any definition.

For the sake of clarity, economist Robyn Allan provided The Narwhal with a simple definition. A subsidy, she said, is “anything that reduces the cost to the company benefiting from the activity, and thus incentivizes either more activity or greater [financial] returns than would otherwise be available. That’s a subsidy.”

Allan points to excellent subsidy definitions from the April 2019 report to parliament by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development.

The most important thing to know about subsidies, Allan concludes, is who ultimately pays the cost.

“Taxpayers may bear it, sometimes the environment bears it, and in other cases, it’s a local community.”

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After almost a year of negotiations with the province, a northern B.C. First Nation is returning to court on May 27 — kickstarting a potentially precedent-setting case against B.C. that could disrupt the multi-billion dollar natural gas industry if successful.

The Blueberry River First Nations traditional territory, located in the Peace River region of northeastern B.C., sits atop one of the largest deposits of natural gas on the planet. Over the last 50 years, the region has been transformed beyond recognition by run-away cumulative impacts from oil and gas, forestry, hydro and mining.

A 2016 report based on B.C. government data found that almost 75 per cent of the territory now lies within 250 metres of an industrial disturbance.

The traditional territory of the Blueberry River First Nations and the Montney formation. Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Legal action by Blueberry dates back to 2015. Last March, Blueberry adjourned the trial and entered mediation with the province in an attempt to solve the ongoing crisis on the land, likened by one lawyer to a “death by a thousand cuts.”

The year-long negotiations and trial were born out of desperation to save the handful of critical wildlife areas left in their territory, said Chief Marvin Yahey.

He said solid progress was made to directly involve Blueberry River First Nation in resource decisions and managing development impacts, but the province has since stepped back from this collaboration — which means the trial is back on.

“Instead of pursuing reconciliation and negotiating a solution, we are forced to seek a court-imposed order to protect our treaty rights, which may prohibit further taking up of land in our territory until our treaty rights are met,” Yahey said.

He added that they did not want to go back to court, but were forced by the government’s abandonment of a cooperative agreement reached last November to allow Blueberry more input into how resource decisions were made in their territory.

Blueberry River First Nations territory from the air. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

A Blueberry victory could be disastrous for the government: while B.C. was in negotiations with Blueberry, they were also working to reach a deal with a Shell-led consortium whose LNG Canada plant on the B.C. coast will necessitate a new boom of natural gas development across much of Blueberry territory.

If the First Nation wins, the court could order the province to suspend the issuing of permits for land clearing and other activities critical to oil and gas, until such time that the province meets its treaty rights.

Maegen Giltrow, council for the Blueberry River First Nations, couldn’t comment on case specifics but confirmed that it will take about 100 days for the trial to unfold, ending after Christmas. A decision is expected some time around mid-2020.

Blueberry’s litigation is unique. Instead of focusing on a single industrial impact, the case is based on thousands of individual authorizations, which have collectively degraded the land and water over time. At the heart of the trial is the idea that the province has breached the terms of Treaty 8, which Yahey’s forebearers signed in 1900.

Under Treaty 8, government has a right to take up land for settlement, but also has a corresponding duty to protect a way of life. The First Nations signatories of the treaty were adamant at the time that they would be able to continue their core way of life the way no matter what, something that is getting harder to do.

Since 2012, the B.C. government has authorized the construction of more than 2,600 oil and gas wells, 1,884 kilometres of petroleum access and permanent roads, 740 kilometres of petroleum development roads, 1,500 kilometres of new pipelines and 9,400 kilometres of seismic lines, according to the 2016 report by Ecotrust Canada and David Suzuki Foundation. Approximately 290 forestry cutblocks were also harvested in Blueberry River traditional territory over the same time period.

The report also found that almost 70 per cent of Blueberry traditional territory is now covered by active petroleum and natural gas tenures. There are 4,676 abandoned oil and gas wells in the territory.

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If a mining company cannot provide the full security to pay for clean-up and reclamation costs upfront, it should not be allowed to open a mine.

This is one of almost 70 recommendations released today in Victoria — part of a sweeping package of legal reforms launched by at least 30 mining advocacy and law organizations — designed to overhaul the way British Columbia regulates exploration, placer mining and metal/mineral mining.

“This will be the day that we begin to change B.C.’s outdated, archaic mining laws,” said Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria. “Too many of our laws find their origin in the 19th century.”

There are 1,100 closed mines across British Columbia, which Sandborn called “ecological ticking time bombs.”

B.C. Mining Law Reform: A Plan of Action for Change is the product of almost two years of research initiated by the Environmental Law Centre, with support from Indigenous advocates and groups like MiningWatch Canada.

British Columbians impacted by mining shared their stories from all corners of the province at a press conference launching the reform campaign.

“We were devastated on the morning of August 4, 2014,” said Christine McLean of the Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake, referencing the Mount Polley mine disaster, which resulted in an estimated 25 billion litres of contaminated materials flowing into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake.

“Despair turned to anger for me and many of our friends and neighbours when the B.C. government allowed the mine to resume full operations, and in April 2017 issued a permit to build a pipeline to discharge mine waste water directly into the lake, allowing the ongoing pollution of Quesnel Lake.”

Christine McLean of the Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake launched an appeal to challenge Mount Polley mine’s permit to discharge effluent into Quesnel Lake. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Cindy Charleyboy of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining spoke of the Tsilhqot’in’s fight for the past decade to stop the Taseko Mine, proposed for Teztan Biny, also known as Fish Lake.

“The lake is pristine and that water is needed there, untouched, so we can continue our Indigenous ways of life, our culture, language and spirituality uninterrupted so we can provide for our families,” Charleyboy said.

Cindy Charleyboy of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining said: “We are all here together in what is known as ‘Super, Natural BC.’ What are we going to do about it?” Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Sandborn said most British Columbians haven’t been aware of the urgent need to update B.C.’s mining laws. He pointed to an expert panel report on the Mount Polley mine disaster that predicted two tailings pond failures every 10 years and called on the province to phase out liquid tailings ponds.

“That hasn’t happened,” Sandborn said. “That’s why we’re here.”

The proposed law reforms target nine subject areas, including water protection, First Nations governance, mining tenure and the imperative to protect taxpayers from billions in mine clean-up costs.

Water is the common thread that runs through the reform package.

“We want to change the way mining is done in B.C., and in particular, the need to protect water,” said Ugo Lapointe of Ottawa-based MiningWatch Canada, which participated in drafting recommendations. “We say yes to mining, but not if it contaminates water.”

Good timing for changes?

The timing of the launch reflects three things: May is B.C. Mining Month, an annual industry celebration. It’s also the same month that McLean was supposed to get her hearing to challenge Mount Polley’s permit to discharge effluent into Quesnel Lake. And finally, B.C. has already started reviewing several mining-related laws.

The Mount Polley mine in central B.C., owned by Vancouver’s Imperial Metals, got permission in spring 2017 to discharge almost 60,000 cubic metres per day of tailings effluent into Quesnel lake. Christine McLean, who lives close to the lake, is currently trying to quash this permit and close this pipeline for good. On Wednesday, she released this underwater video.

“This is the opportune time to bring up the problems we have identified over the last few decades,” Sandborn said. He said many of the recommendations are designed to anticipate current government efforts to reform mining laws — including possible changes to the way mine securities are set for mining companies and the Mineral Tenure Act, which regulates placer and mineral rights.

“For years we had a government that wasn’t going to reform anything, they were totally in the thrall of the mining industry,” Sandborn said. “Now we have a government that will at least listen, so there’s a better opportunity [for change] today than a few years ago.”

Step one: change how mining claims are staked

B.C.’s mineral tenure laws, which determine where mining can occur, are a relic of our gold rush past and must change, Sandborn said. Today a prospector can go online without setting foot on the land and secure access to the sub-surface in most of the province, including beneath private property and First Nations traditional territories.

The dysfunction was apparent back in 2017, when Bev Sellars, a former chief of the Xat’sull First Nation at Soda Creek (and member of advocacy group First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining — located not far from the Mount Polley mine), grew so frustrated with the lack of placer mining regulation (e.g., mining streambeds for gold nuggets and dust) that she legally staked the subsurface rights to the Cranbrook area property of then-energy and mines minister Bill Bennett. (It took Sellars less than an hour and about $130 in fees from her desktop computer.)

The coalition is calling for government to consider a broad range of interests before issuing tenures to miners, including Indigenous free, prior and informed consent. Landowner consent should also be required for mining activities to commence on private property, and “no-go” areas need to be mandated to protect sensitive environments. The latter could prevent situations like Imperial Metals’ current exploration plans in the “doughnut hole,” located in the headwaters of the Canada-U.S. transboundary Skagit river.

Lapointe said this legal overhaul is long overdue.

“B.C. is the only province in Canada that has not yet revised its mineral tenure laws,” he said. Ontario now requires information sharing and consultation with First Nations, while Quebec requires written consent from landowners before exploration work can start.

Ugo Lapointe of Mining Watch Canada. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

A spokesman for the B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources confirmed the ministry has started “pre-engagement” with First Nations and industry on proposed changes to tenure laws, but would not confirm specific content or a timeline for changes.

Mount Polley’s long shadow

Many of the coalition recommendations address legal deficiencies exposed right before and after the Mount Polley mine disaster in 2014.

Most recently, the mine got permission in spring 2017 to discharge almost 60,000 cubic metres per day of tailings effluent into the lake. The company has been found out of compliance at least three times in 2018 alone, and has yet to pay a fine for this or the 2014 spill.

Sandborn said B.C. needs to finally act on the government’s expert panel recommendations made in the wake of the disaster. This includes an end of wet tailings storage for new mines in most cases, and a plan to safely retire at least 60 active mine tailings dams in B.C.

Perpetual pollution and the mother of all subsidies

A major thrust of the reform campaign is to ensure present and future generations are not on the hook for billions in mine clean-up costs.

“The taxpayers of B.C. are put in jeopardy by the archaic mining laws we have today,” Sandborn said, pointing out there are 123 tailings lakes in the province.

Today across B.C., 14 major mines rely on water treatment facilities to ensure water does not pollute the surrounding environment. The province estimates an additional 45 mines have moderate-to-high acid rock drainage/leaching potential — and predicts that 12 of these will require perpetual water treatment.

A cautionary tale is the long-closed Britannia mine, which cost taxpayers $46 million to control acid rock drainage, and now requires $3 million per year, every year (in perpetuity) to treat water.

The coalition is pushing for B.C. to stop permitting mines that have serious potential to require permanent water treatment — and adopt the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance standard for responsible mining water management standards, which sets good practices for mining and water protection at an industrial scale.

B.C. must also start regularly inspecting the closed and abandoned mines across the province, “to see how many of them are ticking timebombs,” Sandborn said.

He cites the example of the shuttered Jordan River mine, closed in 1974, which the government didn’t inspect for decades and, in that time, devastated the river’s salmon runs.

Ken Farquharson, a former Canadian commissioner of the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, with a map of B.C.’s active and inactive mines from the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Farquharson points to Jordan River, where a mine has left a toxic legacy, but isn’t even marked on the B.C. government’s map of the province’s mines. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Paying for clean-up costs upfront

For the mines that do go forward, British Columbia needs to get 100 per cent of the full clean-up and closure/reclamation costs upfront, the report recommends.

This would prevent what MiningWatch Canada research coordinator Catherine Coumans has called the biggest subsidy that miners receive — the ability to walk away from a mine and have taxpayers (or the environment) pay the cost. MiningWatch estimates that old B.C. mine sites collectively account for more than $3 billion in “unfunded clean-up liabilities” for taxpayers.

“We need to ensure that taxpayers don’t pick up the tab for this,” Sandborn said. “The polluter must pay.”

B.C. must follow the lead of places like Alaska and many others, which require 100 per cent security provided upfront before a mine is permitted to operate. For B.C. mines already in operation, the report said, owners would have two years to come up with the full amount.

The lax nature of B.C. law has created a surreal situation for Canadian mining giant Teck. For an Alaskan mine, they have been forced to provide the full security for estimated reclamation costs ($560 million), yet the same company’s B.C. mines have unsecured reclamation costs of $700 million dollars.

The province is currently looking at updating how securities are set for new mines, but Sandborn (who has seen draft policy ideas) said the province is not planning on requiring 100 per cent of cleanup costs upfront.

What’s next?

After today’s event in Victoria, Lapointe and other campaign leaders plan to meet with the provincial government to discuss legal reform. And instead of one organization talking to government, they will present a united front of 30 different groups.

Moving forward, they hope to grow the coalition, reaching out to the public, municipalities and labour unions. “The idea moving forward is to broaden the circle of support for change,” Lapointe said.

The coalition also plans to continue its support of McLean and the Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake in their efforts to get the pipe out of their lake.

McLean’s citizen-launched appeal to challenge Mount Polley’s discharge permit scheduled for May has now been delayed. This comes as Mount Polley prepares to close down and enter “care and maintenance” at the end of this month — eliminating precious hinterland jobs and raising a whole new set of uncertainties around how and when the mine will be cleaned up.

Imperial Metals has struggled financially, with experts warning the company may be on the brink of bankruptcy, and the company selling off a 70 per cent stake in its Red Chris Mine earlier this year to Australia’s Newcrest Mining.

— With files from Emma Gilchrist

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Gord Johns is not a popular man at French Creek harbour.

On a windy March morning, fishermen are mobilizing to greet millions of herring that have migrated to the shallow water near Parksville, B.C., to spawn.

A group of men smoking in the parking lot do a double-take and glare at Johns as he walks to the dock, recognizing the squat politician in his gumboots and rain gear.

Johns has been an MP for Courtenay-Alberni since 2015, but this is the first year he has come out against the herring fishery in the Strait of Georgia — one of five herring populations on the coast of B.C., and the last relatively healthy stock left.

Despite a campaign to close this commercial fishery, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has allowed it to move forward: on the day Johns came to visit (March 12), about 15 big seiners were hovering offshore.

Gord Johns with herring spawn activity visible in the background. Photo: Chris Pollon

Herring boats in the Georgia Strait spring of 2018. Photo: Pacific Wild

By many accounts, Georgia Strait herring are coming back in “near historic” numbers this year, but it’s hardly something to celebrate.

Coast-wide, herring have become so depleted, they no longer can support commercial  fisheries at all. And historic runs in places like Haida Gwaii, the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and the Central coast have failed to rebound, despite a cessation of commercial fishing pressure.

Which leaves the fishery on the east coast of Vancouver Island as one of the last industrial herring fisheries on the entire North American Pacific coast.

“This is like our Atlantic cod story, everything that happened there is now happening here,” says Johns of Pacific herring.

“What I’m hearing from my constituents, and coastal people overwhelmingly, is that they oppose the opening of this fishery.”

Catching 20 per cent of the biomass

To come back in the afterlife as a herring is a curse, an old saying goes, because almost everything out there wants to eat you.

Herring are the dominant forage fish in British Columbia waters — meaning they are the critical prey base, serving as an intermediary between plankton at one end and all the seabirds, chinook salmon, humpback whales (and much more) on the other.

The “sac-roe” fishery that started on March 9 uses seine and gill nets to catch female herring for their eggs, which are sold as “kazunoko” in Japan. This is the highest value product of the fishery.

All the rest, including all the males, will be turned into slurry to feed pets and farmed salmon.

Herring fishing boats on the Georgia Strait. Photo: Pacific Wild

DFO has estimated that catching 20 per cent of the returning biomass of Georgia Strait herring is sustainable (see how they do it here), which means that for the sac-roe fishery alone, fishermen can catch up to about 20,000 tonnes of herring.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s a pittance compared to 1959, when over three times that amount was taken from the Strait of Georgia alone.

Herring harvest at Butedale, B.C., 1946. Photo: Campbell River Museum

Repeat spawners

Herring are invisible to humans for most of the year, except during a brief window in spring when they migrate to coastal shallows to spawn.

According to Caroline Fox, a coastal ecologist and conservation scientist who has investigated the contribution of herring nutrients to health of coastal ecosystems, this movement is not so much a migration as a “pulse” of biomass that nourishes coastal waters and land.

The milky white waters off the B.C. coast during the herring spawn in 2018. Photo: Pacific Wild

Fox grew up in Lantzville near Parksville, and never forgot the big annual spawns. The herring would be “very cryptic” in the days leading up to the spawn; they would appear suddenly, sometimes overnight.

Each female lays up to 10,000 adhesive eggs that stick onto kelp, blades of eelgrass, boulders and even gravel. The males then “milk the water” releasing milt to fertilize the eggs, creating great white and aquamarine clouds that can stretch for tens of km for days on end. When the eggs ripen and hatch, a secondary pulse of nutrients nourishes the coast.

These young herring don’t become spawning adults until they reach three or four years old (some live up to 10 years), and unlike salmon, they live to spawn repeatedly.  

Provided they aren’t eaten or caught first.

Female herring can lay up to 10,000 eggs, each the size of a grain of sand. Photo: Ian McAllister / Pacific Wild

Herring during the 2018 spawning season. Photo: Pacific Wild

A return to ‘historic abundance’

On March 12, Gordon Johns boarded a sea taxi to visit the fishing grounds. Less than a kilometre offshore, with Mount Arrowsmith looming to the west, big seiners are sounding the depths in search of the fish.

A single set by one of these big boats like The Western Investor or Snow Queen, can scoop up over 100 tonnes of herring in a single set.

Timing is critical for this roe fishery — the seiners are constantly tracking the fish, because they have to time their catch before the females deposit their eggs. The water is rough with big swells, forcing the herring to hold in deeper water.  

For now, it’s a waiting game.

The taxi arrives and disgorges Johns and a few journalists and NGO types onto The Habitat — the temporary home of author, photographer and Pacific Wild executive director Ian McAllister, who is coordinating the campaign amid the fishing boats.

Sitting in the cabin in a baseball cap and ripped jacket mended with duct tape, McAllister looks exhausted. He’s been on the fishing grounds for about a week, coordinating the campaign with the support of groups like SeaLegacy, which are taking the campaign to a global audience via social media.

McAllister says there should be no industrial herring fishery, and the goal should be to return herring to a state of “historical abundance” along the coast.

The question of what historical abundance is, in terms of hard numbers, is open to interpretation.

Ian McAllister. Photo: Christopher Pollon

Herring harvest in the Georgia Strait, spring of 2018. Photo: Pacific Wild

Part of the reason DFO stock assessment is so out of whack, McAllister insists, is that DFO bases its quota on a baseline snapshot of herring abundance from the early 1950s — the earliest point that standardized population estimates exist.  

But Pacific herring were already depleted by industrial fisheries by this time: he says using this compromised historical baseline to gauge sustainable levels of harvest is “deceitful.”

Instead, McAllister looks to First Nations oral history and archaeological studies to gauge historical abundance — the latter suggesting that herring were far more numerous and widespread between 2,500 and 10,700 years ago than they are today.

Fisheries and Oceans did not provide an interview in time for this story.

Herring harvested for roe and dumped at the University of British Columbia farm for fertilizer, 1966. Photo: Museum at Campbell River

Herring feed chinook

Johns opposes the fishery because herring feeds chinook salmon and the wider $1 billion tourism industry, including sports fishing and whale watching, that sustains his riding.

He is mystified that DFO talks about curtailing high-value B.C. chinook fisheries to protect killer whales, but allows a low-dollar value herring fishery that will mostly become animal feed.

“What happens if the food source for chinook salmon collapses?”

As he does throughout the day, MP Johns steers the conversation back to working fishermen, a constituency he is painfully conscious of alienating.

Regular working fishermen are the ones really feeling the squeeze here, he says.

Herring fishing boats out on the Georgia Strait in March 2019. Photo: Pacific Wild

Most of the herring quota is owned by absentee “arm-chair fishermen” who then hire local crews to catch the fish. For the latter it’s an important “stop-gap” fishery — a spring-opening at a time when there is nothing else happening commercially.  

“People keep asking us ‘why aren’t you guys going after Pattison instead?’ “

The reference is to Jimmy Pattison, the billionaire who owns the Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco), which in 2016 reported owning about a third of seine and more than 10 per cent of gillnet licenses for herring roe, and 30 per cent of the facilities that process the catch.

The Narwhal asked Phil Young, Canfisco’s vice president of fisheries and corporate affairs, what he thought about calls to close the fishery.

“There are people saying we shouldn’t fish salmon, and shouldn’t fish anything. Is it on [our] radar? Absolutely. But we’ve lived by the science for 30-plus years in this fishery. If an area of the coast has not had good recruitment [meaning the fish survive to a certain size or reproductive stage], we don’t fish. We haven’t argued with DFO on that.”

Young says Georgia Strait herring are at near record levels this year.

“You just have to look at the number of seals, sea lions, and whales coming back into that area [to see] it’s healthy in there, it says there’s lots of herring, as they feed a lot of those.”

Herring sperm or ‘milt’ whitens the water during the 2018 spawning season. Photo: Pacific Wild

Coastal wolves, often referred to as seawolves, feed on herring roe. Photo: Pacific Wild

A black bear feasts on herring roe. Photo: Pacific Wild

The angry crew of the Golden Chalice

Hours later the water is still too rough for fishing, so the taxi departs back to the marina.

By now many of the fishermen waiting in docked boats know the taxi (and Johns) by sight, and as the boat lands, there are loud catcalls coming from a large fishing boat called The Golden Chalice.

The words are not audible, but the tone is not friendly.

“Emotions run high on both sides, between the environmental [sector] and the fishermen,” said Chris Wick, who is coordinating fishing activity on the herring grounds for North Delta Seafoods, a family business that has been involved with B.C. herring fishing for over 80 years.

“This should be about science.”

For Johns, our arrival to the dock is just the latest unpleasant moment for a man who has lived his whole life on Vancouver Island. It’s also become personal.

“My cousin is out there fishing right now,” he says. “He’s really pissed off at me.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.