Forestry giant Canfor is logging critical habitat for mountain caribou, recent video footage reveals.

The company, which donated just shy of $1 million to the BC Liberal Party, has proceeded with clearcuts in the Upper Clearwater Valley, near Wells Gray Provincial Park, despite a legal application for an emergency stop-work order currently under review by federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and a commitment by the company not to log critical habitat for species at risk.

The video, which includes drone footage of a large-scale clearcut on the western slopes of the Clearwater Valley, was made public by the Wilderness Committee.

“We were shocked to see this huge logging operation smack-dab in the critical habitat zone of this threatened species,” said Joe Foy, the organization’s national campaign director.

The area is the subject of an April 7 legal application to the federal government under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) for an emergency order to ban Canfor’s proposed logging in caribou habitat. Filed by lawyer Bill Andrews on behalf of concerned local and B.C. groups, the application argues that logging permits issued to Canfor by the former BC Liberal government are located in federally designated critical habitat for mountain caribou, which are listed as “endangered” by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and “threatened” under SARA.

Endangered Caribou Habitat Clearcut During B.C. Election Uncertainty https://t.co/T4qkgklPsM #bcpoli #cdnpoli @cathmckenna @GeorgeHeyman pic.twitter.com/PDseEwK2ri

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 26, 2017

The application has been under review by the Canadian Wildlife Service for three and a half months. Staff there are preparing a report for the minister on whether there is an “imminent threat to the recovery of the Wells Gray caribou herd,” Andrews has been told.

“The next step will be for the minister to decide whether to recommend that the federal cabinet make an emergency order to stop the proposed logging,” Andrews added.

Panorama of logging in the Upper Clearwater Valley. Image: Courtesy, Wilderness Comittee.

On the provincial front, Andrews is heartened by the results of the recent election, as both the BC NDP and Greens have campaigned for species at risk legislation.

The mandate letter for George Heyman, the new Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, stated that one of Heyman’s priorities is to “enact an endangered species law and harmonize other laws to ensure they are all working towards the goal of protecting our beautiful province.”

While the transfer of power dragged on in Victoria and federal bureaucrats were taking their time studying the caribou issue, Canfor ploughed ahead with its controversial logging. This work even violates the company’s own commitments by CEO Don Kayne to the B.C. Special Committee on Timber Supply in 2012:

• Canfor does not support actions that would overturn landscape objectives set through public planning processes unless there is full public consultation and support.
• We will not support actions that impact parks, riparian areas or areas that provide critical habitat for species at risk, or other important environmental values such as biodiversity and old growth.

REFERRAL GROUP CANFOR Don Kayne Remarks Special Committee by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

The above logging contradicts both promises. The local Referral Group — officially designated to represent the concerns of the community regarding logging plans in the region — has steadfastly opposed this logging, as has the Wells Gray Gateway Protection Society. Moreover, the area in question is designated Type 2 Matrix critical habitat for mountain caribou by the federal government.

While mountain caribou don’t inhabit the Upper Clearwater Valley directly today, its forests are recognized as vital to the survival of caribou in terms of predator management. When Type 2 Matrix habitat is logged, it is replaced by early seral forest, which is a mixture of brush and young deciduous shrubs and trees like willow, alder, and poplar. This is poor habitat for caribou but ideal for other ungulates.

“By clearcutting these areas, you increase the deer and moose population, who feed on the new growth,” explains Foy. “That in turn attracts wolves, which kill caribou.”

Wolves don’t naturally prefer caribou, but they will eat them when the opportunity arises. Given their ability to travel up to 100 km a day, wolves can easily access caribou herds a long way away from these clearcuts.

The mountain caribou herd known as Wells Grey South has plummeted from about 320 animals in 1994 to 120 today. The same disturbing trend is occurring across southern B.C., where caribou are being driven to the brink of extinction, despite the province spending millions of dollars on helicopter wolf kills, with 163 wolves shot in 2016 and likely more to be killed this year.

“No scientific evidence has ever been published showing that killing wolves can help recover caribou populations,” explains lichenologist and local resident Trevor Goward. “That’s because cull programs don’t get to the root of the problem: habitat loss from logging and other industrial activities, which drive the increased predation.”

The Clearwater River. Courtesy, Wilderness Committee.

Mountain caribou are a unique subset of woodland caribou, seen only in southern B.C. today. They depend on old-growth and mature forests for food and predator avoidance. Over thousands of years, they evolved the practice, unique among all caribou, of heading to high alpine country in the winter to avoid wolves and cougars. There, they subsist on black hair lichens that hang from subalpine fir and spruce.

Despite the area being federally designated as critical habitat for caribou, the site plan for Block B131, where this footage of Canfor’s recent logging was captured, makes no mention of caribou under the “Wildlife” section of the plan. Instead, it states:

“The block is not within critical deer winter range or moose habitat…no critical wildlife features were found during development of this block.”

Canfor Logging Plans B131 Specs by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Canfor representatives declined to comment for this story.

On July 16, Canfor suspended local logging operations due to forest fire activity in the region, but indicated last Friday on its Facebook page that it intended to reopen its Vavenby Mill and logging in the region on Monday July 24.

As the smoke clears, tensions over caribou issues and logging are likely to resume. A recent Facebook post from the Wells Gray Gateway Protection Society noted construction work on Road 80, which could be laying the groundwork for more logging, this time at Block T121, on the east side of the valley, for which Canfor received a permit from the BC Liberal government earlier this year.

But with a decision on an emergency order banning logging expected soon from the federal government and new provincial leadership committed to protecting endangered species, the clock may now be ticking for Canfor’s logging operations in critical habitat for endangered caribou.

Main Image: David Moskowitz

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The B.C. government is granting logging permits in critical caribou habitat, despite evidence that B.C.’s Southern Mountain Caribou are being driven to extinction by habitat loss — a move that has driven citizens to call on the federal government to enforce the Species At Risk Act.

Among the hardest hit regions in the province is the area in and around Wells Gray Park, the scenic home to Helmcken Falls, two hours north of Kamloops.

There, people like Trevor Goward, a longtime local resident, naturalist and professional lichenologist, are sounding the alarm over the province’s failure to protect caribou.

Goward, along with a group of local citizens, is currently preparing to file with the federal government for an emergency stop to a fresh round of clearcuts in the Upper Clearwater Valley, which lies just outside of the southern boundaries of Wells Gray Park.

Canfor has obtained permits to log blocks W101 and W102 on the west side of the Clearwater River, and block T121 on the east side — all designated critical habitat for caribou. The company is sitting on nine more blocks on the east side, covering hundreds of hectares, and has indicated imminent plans to file for a number of additional permits there.

Canfor and its subsidiaries have donated a total of $884,366.08 to the BC Liberals since 2005, according to data released by Elections BC and the BC Liberals. The Council of Forest Industries, of which Canfor is a member, has donated an additional $54,815.00.

Canfor did not respond to a request for comment.

Image: Trevor Goward and Jason Hollinger

In filing their petition, Goward and his group are essentially going over the head of the province, which has jurisdiction over logging and caribou management, but not over endangered species. That constitutional responsibility for endangered species falls to the federal government, under the Species at Risk Act (SARA).

The Southern Mountain Caribou were listed as “threatened” when SARA was created in 2002. Then in 2014, they were designated as “endangered” by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

“The province of B.C. has utterly failed to prevent logging in areas outside the Wells Gray Park where logging boosts deer and moose populations and artificially increases the number of wolves that then prey on caribou,” explains Bill Andrews, lawyer for Goward’s petition group.

A major point of divergence between the province and federal government’s approach to endangered Southern Mountain Caribou is in the treatment of “matrix habitat” — areas where caribou may not necessarily roam, but, because they are adjacent to other critical habitat, are nevertheless important to the caribou’s survival.

When matrix areas are clearcut, they attract and sustain predators, including wolves which can travel up to 100 kilometres per day — yet the B.C. government does not prevent logging in these areas, restricting industry only in those it narrowly defines as “core habitat.”

The new Canfor cutblocks fall directly within what is considered Type 2 Matrix habitat by the Species At Risk Act, meaning it should be kept relatively free of predators

“The federal government has constitutional authority to step in and protect the critical habitat of an endangered species where the province is unwilling to do so,” Andrews says.

“My clients are petitioning federal minister of environment Catherine McKenna to do just that.”

#BCLiberals Grant Major Political Donor Permission to Log #Endangered Caribou Habitat https://t.co/wazlcuTtnm #Canfor #bcpoli #bcelxn17

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 3, 2017

Caribou’s True Culprit: Habitat Destruction

While the province of B.C. has placed much of the blame for disappearing caribou on wolves, a closer look reveals the real culprit: decades of habitat loss from various forms of industry and, most notably, landmark changes to B.C.’s logging regulations under the 16-year tenure of the B.C. Liberal government.

Goward has produced a graph that lays key policy and legislative changes over declining caribou populations, revealing a stark parallel.

In 2004, the B.C. Liberals switched to the Forest and Range Practices Act, which essentially deregulated the forestry sector and put logging companies in charge of policing their own operations. As a 2011 B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union report, “B.C. Forests in Crisis,” put it:

“Under FRPA, industry was given control over its operations, and entrusted to achieve on-the-ground results with less government supervision. Industry was allowed to define its own ‘results,’ as long as the results were consistent with general government objectives, and forest professionals would be relied upon to ensure sustainable practices (called “professional reliance”)…These policy changes significantly reduced the role of government in the forest industry. Direct government involvement in on-the-ground forest management was seriously limited, and key levers to influence industry activities were removed.”

These regulatory changes ushered in a series of devastating clearcuts throughout the Wells Gray region and all around the province.

Image: Trevor Goward and Jason Hollinger

In February, the B.C. government issued an election-time announcement, committing $27 million toward caribou recovery efforts. But the announcement downplayed a dramatic reduction in caribou numbers and plans to expand the province’s controversial wolf cull program to new caribou regions.

“It’s a policy to influence politics,” Chris Darimont, Hakai-Raincoast professor at the University of Victoria, says. “The province needs to be recognized for ‘doing something’. And despite the controversy about wolf control now, it’s easier politically than halting industry where endangered caribou roam.”

Christy Clark’s Caribou Numbers Game

In its February announcement, the B.C. government released population figures for the total of B.C.’s woodland population herds — numbers that mask precipitous declines in specific herds.

“Today there are some 19,000 caribou in the province, compared to between 30,000 and 40,000 at the turn of the last century,” the press release states. Yet only around 1,300 Southern Mountain Caribou remain across the province and many herds — including the Northern Woodland Caribou in the Peace region — are now endangered or even extirpated (locally extinct).

All of B.C.’s caribou are of the woodland variety, but there are different subpopulations within that.

South of Prince George roams a unique variety known as mountain or “deep snow” caribou. What makes the Southern Mountain Caribou special is their wintertime vertical migration into the high country. Their saucer-like hooves enable them to walk on top of 3-meter deep snow into alpine and sub-alpine habitat, where they evade predators like wolves and cougars and feed on black hair lichens which hang in abundance from the branches of spruce and fir.

It is the Southern Mountain Caribou that has experts worried the animal is being ignored by the B.C. Government.

The South Columbia herd around Mount Revelstoke, for example, has fallen from 120 animals in 1994 to just four in the 2016 census.

The Monsahee herd was recently classified as extirpated — meaning locally extinct — with just one very lonely animal noted in the census.

The province’s recent announcement acknowledges the need for habitat protection but much of the program’s focus is on “predator management” — which is more or less a lovely euphemism for killing wolves — and a maternal penning program, the effectiveness of which has been questioned.

Helicopter wolf kill programs have been taking place since 2015 in the South Peace and Southern Selkirks, but this year the province has added a new one in the North Columbia, near Revelstoke.

In 2016, 163 wolves were killed by the government’s program, a doubling from the previous year.

With the addition of a third kill program in 2017, the number is expected to grow again.

Although a portion of the $27 million is specifically set aside to support wolf culls in the Southern Mountain Caribou region, the announcement emphasized recovery work for the healthier woodland caribou north of the Peace Valley and in less industrialized portions of northwest B.C. — herds that still matter to hunters, an important voter constituency for the B.C. Liberals.

A 2017 protection study from the joint Canada-British Columbia Southern Mountain Caribou (Central Group) in B.C., found more than a quarter of the $12.5 million spent on caribou recovery between 2006 and 2016 went to predator-related initiatives — half of which was spent specifically on killing wolves.

Only $168,000, or about 1.3 per cent of the total, was spent on habitat management.

The Ministry of Forest, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO) declined to provide details on how this new $27 million will be allocated, stating simply, “since the funding has just been announced, a detailed breakdown of how the funds will be spent is not yet available.”

Caribou in the Timber Sacrifice Zone

The province began the Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Program in 2008 — the goal of which was to return mountain caribou from the Prince George and the Omineca Mountains south to the Washington border to 1995 census levels by 2028.

Nearly halfway into that timeframe, the program has been a dismal failure.

Most notably, the province has resisted protecting caribou habitat in areas rich in timber resources.

Just 0.65 per cent of B.C.’s Timber Harvesting Land Base has been set aside for ungulate winter range — and of this amount, very little is prime habitat for caribou.

Those lands that are protected from logging are often impacted by heavy-duty snowmobiling, which carves a path for predators to access caribou in alpine habitat.

Forestry clearcuts and recreational activities create a cascading effect by stripping the landscape of old-growth and mature forests. What grows in their place is a mixture of brush and young deciduous shrubs and trees like willow, alder, and poplar — known as early seral forest.

Seral forest makes for poor caribou habitat but attracts and sustains lots of deer, moose and elk, which in turn attract predators such as wolves and cougars. Caribou often end up killed as “by-catch.”

The de facto response from the province has been to emphasize removing these predators rather than protecting caribou habitat from industry — the fundamental method of caribou recovery consistently recommended by the scientific community.

B.C. Liberals Walked Away from Local Use Plan

For Goward, however, the problem is much bigger than concerns over logging and its impact on Wells Gray’s mountain caribou.

“What we’re looking at here,” he says, “ is a breakdown of participatory democracy — a situation where the B.C. government called for, supported and signed into effect a land-use agreement with local residents — only to walk away from it a few years later.”

Goward belongs to the Upper Clearwater Referral Group, which grew out of a relatively collaborative land use visioning process with the NDP government in the mid-to-late nineties.

Recognizing local concerns over clearcuts, the government engaged with citizens to develop a local use plan under the Kamloops Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP). The resulting agreement, called the “Guiding Principles,” was intended to achieve a lasting balance between industry and other user groups in the Upper Clearwater Valley.

In 2000, a year after the B.C. government signed onto the Guiding Principles, it convened the Referral Group, which it mandated to act as a watchdog committee to ensure the Guiding Principles agreement was respected by all parties.

While the B.C. Liberal Government of the 2000s maintained some contact with the group, it has steadily backed away from those earlier commitments and now, in 2016, has abandoned them entirely.

This left locals like Goward feeling frustrated and without a voice as new clearcuts loom over the valley.

Logging near the south end of Wells Gray Park since 1984. Image: Damien Gillis via Google Maps

Problem Widespread in B.C.

This problem is far from isolated to the Wells Gray region. It’s a pattern visible all across southern B.C.

In the Selkirk Mountains, caribou face an uphill battle too.

Like Goward, naturalists there see it as a problem of habitat destruction and are seeking to stem the decline by creating a new provincial park that would connect to other exiting ones and preserve some of the last truly intact sections of old-growth caribou habitat from clearcuts. (This is the subject of a new short documentary I directed called Primeval: Enter the Incomappleux.)

Craig Pettitt, a charter director of Valhalla Wilderness Society, based in New Denver told DeSmog Canada caribou can be pushed over the recovery threshold.

“Once these mountain caribou are wiped out, we can’t simply import woodland caribou from further north to repopulate the region,” explains Pettitt.

Previous attempts to transplant northern woodland caribou into southern mountain herds have proved an utter failure.

The issue also goes beyond any individual cut block or road to a bigger picture of repeated habitat destruction by many activities over a prolonged period.

This notion was underscored by an important 2015 paper published in the journal Biological Conservation, titled “Witnessing Extinction: Cumulative impacts across landscapes and the future loss of an evolutionarily significant unit of woodland caribou in Canada.”

“Currently, we are observing the decline, extirpation, and perhaps extinction of several evolutionarily significant units of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), an iconic and cultural keystone species,” the authors note, drawing on 11 years worth of data and observations on declining caribou populations.

“The cumulative impacts of multiple anthropogenic activities are now recognized as one of the most pressing problems facing the conservation and management of wildlife across North America and beyond.”

The authors look at habitat destruction through the lens of cumulative impacts — the piling on of various layers of industrial development on the natural landscape — or, as Goward’s group refers to it in a new website dedicated to raising these issues, death by a thousand (clear)cuts.

A similar situation has unfolded in B.C.’s Peace region where decades of road building, logging, mining, dams, power lines, conventional gas and fracking have heavily industrialized two thirds of the landscape, leaving little contiguous habitat for species like caribou.

While cumulative impacts are an important legal consideration in decisions on resource projects in the U.S., in Canada, they aren’t given much weight in environmental reviews, as the Joint Review Panel into Site C Dam sharply pointed out in its final report, noting “the Panel recommends that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency undertake, on an urgent basis, an update of its guidance on cumulative effects assessment…”

Mountain Caribou. Photo: David Moskowitz/Mountain Caribou Initiative

As conservation biologist and wolf expert Paul Paquet puts it, “A long history of shortsighted and misguided accommodation of the forest industry has conspired to deprive mountain caribou of their life requisites and placed their survival in jeopardy. Their future now depends on our repairing the environmentally destructive mistakes of the past while stopping those of the present.”

It also depends on British Columbians demanding their government put the survival of an iconic species ahead of the interests of deep-pocketed donors.

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.

This article originally appeared on the Common Sense Canadian.

It all started off so well. Justin Trudeau launched his career as Prime Minister with big promises to First Nations and the growing number of Canadians concerned about the environment. He installed indigenous MPs in key portfolios like Justice and Fisheries; vowed a new respect for Aboriginal people and their rights; re-introduced the climate to Environment Canada.

But five months later, it appears former New York Governor Mario Cuomo was right when he famously said, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” And the prose Justin Trudeau is authoring these days tells a very different story than it did on the campaign trail.

Tough Choices

It’s all frankly understandable. The forces behind major pipelines, hydro dams and LNG projects are considerable and deeply entrenched. It was always going to be a challenge for young Justin to appease two sides seemingly so far apart.

At the recent World Economic Forum, when he spoke of Canada shifting from “resources to resourcefulness” and joining the global green economy, he drew a mixture of ridicule and outrage from Calgary to Bay Street. Even as the rest of the world is getting it, we, as Canadians, clearly have a depressingly long way to go.

Yet there are some hard realities here which are simply unavoidable. And that means Prime Minister Trudeau has some very difficult choices to make.

Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

He cannot, for instance, ignore the pleas and court challenges of Treaty 8 First Nations on the catastrophic and treaty-breaking Site C Dam and still claim to be respectful of First Nations.

He cannot approve LNG projects and pretend to care genuinely about climate change.

He cannot keep approving and subsidizing heavy oil pipelines and pretend to champion the green economy.

These, unfortunately for Justin, are not grey areas. There is no room for “balance” or a “middle path” — simply because of a stubborn little thing called facts.

Just the Facts

Treaty 8, signed and adhered to beginning in 1899, guaranteed First Nations throughout the Peace Valley Region the right to hunt, fish, trap and practice their traditions on the land unimpeded by colonial settlement and development. Flash forward a century and it is abundantly clear this promise has been shattered.

Over two thirds of the region has been impacted by heavy industry — in many places multiple layers of development stacked on top of each other. Logging, mining, roads, power lines, conventional gas, fracking, pipelines, massive hydro dams. As for the latter, there are two already. Site Site C would be the third and, undeniably, the final nail in the coffin of this treaty and the lives First Nations have lived there for some 10,000 years.

In other words, you cannot sign off on Site C — or refuse, in this case, to revoke illegitimate permits issued by your predecessor on the eve on an election, literally — and declare yourself a friend of First Nations. These two realities are utterly and completely incompatible.

Wilson-Raybould Between a Rock and a Hard Place

And this is where it gets very messy for even the best-intentioned, brightest young stars of the Trudeau Cabinet.

I’m talking specifically about Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. The former B.C. leader of the Assembly of First Nations has run smack into a wall of political reality. She claims no conflict between her current role and her former. But here we must go back to what she to said to me and others 4 years ago at the Paddle for the Peace, where she took a passionate, unequivocal, legal, treaty-based stand against Site C.

See for yourself here. Ms. Wilson-Raybould is the first indigenous person to be minster of justice in Canada. She is a smart, capable leader and she understands Aboriginal law perfectly well, as she attests to in the above video, noting:

The legal reality is that Aboriginal people have rights and treaty rights that must be respected…The country’s reputation is at stake with approval of these projects like Site C…running roughshod over Aboriginal title and rights, including treaty rights, is not the way to improve that reputation. 

But what good is all that if she can’t put it to use and do the right thing, legally, for the people of Treaty 8 territory, now that’s she’s finally in a position of real influence?

Suicide and Dams

Before leaving off on Site C, I want to direct readers to Emma Gilchrist’s poignant and accurate piece titled “Want To Reduce Suicide in Native Communities? Step 1: Stop Destroying Native Land.” Mr. Trudeau has recently come face-to-face with the tragic epidemic of suicides on native reserves in this country. If he’s honest about it, he will stop compartmentalizing this issue from that of environmental devastation.

This is no big leap. It is abundantly fair to connect these issues and it brings home the gravity of the decisions he now faces. There are, literally, many lives hanging in the balance. That’s a big responsibility for anyone to bear, but no one said being Prime Minister is easy.

The Dirtiest Fossil Fuel on the Planet

Next, we move onto LNG. And more unavoidable facts, which are as follows: B.C.’s LNG industry would require a massive increase in fracking in — once again — Treaty 8 Territory.

This is not Liquefied Natural Gas but Liquefied Fracked Gas (LFG). Fracking is far worse for the climate — not to mention water, local air quality, wildlife habitat, etc. — than old school “natural” gas. It’s also even worse than coal.

When you then take that fracked gas and pipe it to LFG terminals on the coast, in order to turn it into a liquid you can load onto Asia-bound tankers, you first have to chill and compress it. This requires the burning of copious amounts of additional gas to create the electricity for the cooling process. One plant alone, the proposed, Petronas-led Lelu Island project, would increase the province’s greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 8.5 per cent. 

Plus all that dirty fracking to get it out of the ground.

Don’t take my word for it: listen to the world’s top independent experts, like Cornell University’s Dr. Robert Howarth.

Woodfibre Approval a Bitter Pill

Suffice it to say, you cannot be a friend of the climate and still approve LNG projects. No way, no how. Which is why it came as a huge — though not surprising — disappointment when, this past Friday afternoon, the Trudeau Government quietly approved the proposed Woodfibre LNG plant in Howe Sound. (PS you don’t make an announcement you’re proud of on a Friday afternoon).

Once again, this decision came with casualties, including the tarnishing of another bright new MP’s credibility — that being West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country’s Pamela Goldsmith-Jones. This just after she held a series of public meetings to discuss the climate impacts of the project.

My colleague Rafe Mair called bullshit at the time, noting that climate calculations can easily be fudged and admonishing Goldsmith-Jones for ignoring all the other issues associated with the project — like tanker danger and the millions of gallons of hot, chlorinated water that would be dumped into local fish habitat by the plant. Some called Rafe cynical for not giving Pam a chance. Well, though it gives me no pleasure to say in this case, my friend Rafe was bang-on.

Pipelines to Nowhere

Finally, a few more inconvenient truths on pipelines:

There is no market justification for them. As this recent study shows, Canadian oil sands producers are already getting the highest value possible for the resource — despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about getting bitumen to tidewater.

There is no growth in demand for fossil fuels. As our contributor Will Dubitsky has aptly noted in these pages, “according to the International Energy Agency, in 2015, an astounding 90 per cent of all global electrical power capacity added was attributable to renewables.” Global emissions have been flat since 2013 — which is really, really good news. The shift to the green economy is real and it’s happening right now — everywhere except Canada.

So instead of continuing our massive subsidies to the oil and gas sector and approving new pipelines, our prime minister needs to follow through on his bold statements about green energy and actually start supporting the stuff. That will lead to far more jobs, which will prove far more reliable into the future than would continuing to flog a dead oilsands horse.

Again, that is simply what the best available facts point to, so wherever you stand morally on these issues, if you care about jobs, then this one is a no-brainer.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

So where does Mr. Trudeau go from here? I’m happy to report it’s not all bad. Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo appears to be listening seriously to First Nations on the Central Coast of B.C. about the upcoming herring fishery. The commercial quota has been significantly cut back this year and tensions appear to be much eased compared with the fierce standoff I documented in these pages last April. Fingers crossed.

As for Site C, I know it’s messy. It’s tough for a new administration to reverse the policies of the old one — especially once they’re already in motion. Our new PM doesn’t want to run roughshod over B.C. Premier Christy Clark and this one is clearly her baby.

Yet Site C is still in its infancy. There is still time to reverse a very bad and politically unpopular decision — for taxpayers, ratepayers, farmers, fish, wildlife, and, frankly, all British Columbians. Make no mistake – this one decision will cast the die for Mr. Trudeau’s legacy with First Nations. That’s the choice before him, whether he likes it, recognizes it or not.

Lelu Decision Looms

As for LNG, Mr. Trudeau has already made the tragic mistake of approving Woodfibre. Still on his docket is the larger Lelu Island project that would, in addition to being terrible for the climate, also threaten our second biggest salmon run, the Skeena, and further alienate First Nations (I’m not talking about the band council that reversed its position on Friday, rather the clear opposition of the thousands of band members it represents who voted nearly unanimously against the project last year).

Mr. Trudeau received a letter from over 130 respected scientists slamming the government’s draft assessment of the project and urging it to protect wild salmon by turning down the permit. We shall see how the review panel finds and then how Mr. Trudeau’s Cabinet rules. But if they say “Yes” to this one, it will be exceedingly difficult to tell the difference anymore between Mr. Trudeau and his predecessor.

If that last line causes some to gasp, so be it. Nearly three years ago, I wrote a piece titled, “Why Justin Trudeau may be more dangerous than Harper,” which touched a nerve back then. I take no pleasure in being right about such unfortunate matters. But my thesis then was essentially that Justin represents a better-packaged version of the same policy positions as Harper on many defining issues — trade deals, oil and gas, the environment, and foreign ownership of strategic resources.

The way things are shaping up today, I can see little justification for altering that assessment.

Here’s Hoping

I hope I’m proven wrong. I hope, sincerely, that Mr. Trudeau, Ms. Wilson-Raybould, Ms. Goldmisth-Jones, and all their well-meaning, bright-eyed Liberal colleagues find the courage to right the ship, even if that means braving rough political waters ahead.

It would be good for this country and the world if the next four years proved radically different from the last.

But, then, as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

You can click here to read more about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and climate change.

Image: Prime Minister's photo gallery

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.