Residents of Vancouver Island’s Shawnigan Lake are currently in B.C.’s Supreme Court fighting a waste discharge permit that will allow five million tonnes of contaminated soil to be dumped in their watershed over the next 50 years.

The ongoing case marks the third legal challenge the community has brought against the B.C. Ministry of Environment for granting the hazardous waste disposal permit to company South Island Aggregates.

The feeling of betrayal in the community is palpable, where frustrations with B.C.’s permit granting process and seeming close connection with industry are running at an all time high.

Sonia Furstenau, Cowichan Valley Regional District elected official for Shawnigan Lake, said people in the community have voiced their opposition to the project since day one.

Shawnigan Lake residents fought to prevent the original permit from being granted in 2013 and, when it was granted, challenged it through the Environmental Appeal Board (EAB). The community is now in the B.C. Supreme Court where a judicial review of the EAB’s ruling, which was favourable to the project proponent, is currently underway.

The Cowichan Valley Regional District is also fighting a separate legal battle, arguing the region’s zoning rules don’t allow for the dumping of hazardous waste.

Furstenau said she hopes the judicial review will out the community on a new trajectory.

“So we have a judge looking at all that evidence which was weighed so heavily against this site going forward,” she said. “I hope the judge is going to give us the ruling this community deserves to have.”

She said a win like that could really “help us keep the momentum moving forward.”

“There’s no relenting until the permit is revoked and the soil that’s been dumped already is removed. That cannot sit in our watershed. We are not going to let it stay.”

“I’m an advocate for justice and I always have been,” Furstenau said, “but it’s always been global issues, or climate change, or hunger or poverty — things that are a little bit removed.”

“To have it be so personal is very different and yet I’m motivated by the same things: justice, fairness and what’s right, what’s wrong.”

Right to Healthy Environment Proactive, Provides Access to Justice

Alaya Boisvert, lead for the David Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot movement, said if communities like Shawnigan Lake had a more definite right to clean water, it could change the way they engage with government permitting processes.

“We believe all Canadians have the right to a healthy environment which means — in addition to having the right to breathe fresh air, eat safe food, enjoy a stable climate — they fundamentally have the right to clean water,” Boisvert said. “It’s of critical importance that we have laws to substantiate those rights.”

Boisvert said currently Canada has a disconnected patchwork of environmental laws and regulations, “which do not recognize, fulfill and protect Canadians’ right to a healthy environment.”

“That’s a problem at all levels of government,” she added.

The David Suzuki Foundation, along with legal partner Ecojustice, is currently campaigning for a legislative change that would embed the right to a healthy environment within the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Boisvert said giving Canadians substantive environmental rights could change the way decisions are made about things like hazardous waste disposal.

“This would mean Canadians have access to adequate and safe waste management, which is an issue that is front and centre in the Shawnigan Lake situation.”

“It will also give Canadians procedural rights that include the right to know if there is pollution or contaminants being released in your environment.”

If that were the case, a fundamental right to a healthy environment would mean you would have the right to participate in environmental decision-making about those contaminants, Boisvert said.

“This is also relevant to the Shawnigan Lake situation where citizens have had long-standing concerns about the environmental impact assessment, about the quality and stability of … the infrastructure that is handling the waste disposal.”

A fundamental right to clean water might also give communities more legal standing to challenge decisions after the fact. “It’s also about access to justice,” Boisvert said.

“If there are cases where the environmental rights of citizens are being violated, it’s critically important that citizens are able to seek legal recourse for that, have their rights protected, fulfilled and respected.”

The Cowichan Valley Regional District is one of the more than 100 municipalities in Canada that have passed resolutions recognizing a citizen’s right to a healthy environment.

Legal Challenges Costly

Celine Trojand, community organizer with democracy-advocacy organization Dogwood Initiative, said the right to a healthy environment could compliment the battle for community self-determination that is currently being waged across the province in places like Shawnigan Lake, near the Site C Dam, or in the Walbran Valley’s old-growth forests.

“I think at the municipal, provincial, or federal level it would give communities something to point to that could back up their advocacy work,” Trojand said.

She added, however, that legal protections may not be enough without “boots on the ground” activism that ensures those rules are actually enforced.

“The policy is good if there is political will or a constituency organizing around seeing that law or policy enacted and enforced, because otherwise there are loopholes and it will be back to business as usual.”

Trojand said the way B.C. handles resource and development decisions is somewhat “backwards.”

“A company comes in and their sense of accountability is not to people who live in that community,” she said. “When they have a proposal to put forward they advance it, get the support of government and, if they’re able to, go through the hoops to get the support of the community.”

“If the process were that the community needed to be part of the proposal creation first, then we wouldn’t run into this cycle of communities feeling like their interests aren’t being represented at the government level — or anywhere really.”

Trojand said legal challenges — like those currently ongoing against the Site C Dam, Northern Gateway pipeline, the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, and waste disposal in Shawnigan Lake — are expensive and time consuming.

“It’s a long road to walk,” she said.

“However if a legal approach is backed up by a political approach in terms of applying pressure on decision makers and building a grassroots constituency that can organize and mobilize in key moments on an issue — in combination those things are really effective.”

Trojand added whether you’re fighting legal battles in the courts or working on developing stronger policies, like the right to a healthy environment, community participation “hasn’t been made very easy.”

“It’s not often clear to the average voter or citizen how to engage with either of those institutions.”

She added: ”That’s really what’s exciting, I think, about all of these very local community concerns really starting to take centre stage in B.C. as people are seeing that if they become activated on those issues and activated in their local communities they can see the change.”

“Local people are catalyzing around an issue, trying to trigger both legal and political processes, to combat the industry-driven status quo,” she said.

Image:  Shaw Creek near Shawnigan Lake, located below South Island Aggregates sites 21 and 23.* Photo provided by the Shawnigan Residents Association.

* Caption updated January 15, 2016 10:25am.

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A report released today by Samara Canada — a charity dedicated to reconnecting citizens to politics — calls into question the idea that Canadian youth are apathetic and stresses the importance of contact from political leaders to increase voter turnout.

The report, Message Not Delivered, finds that across 18 forms of civic and political participation beyond voting — including signing petitions, talking about politics, volunteering or attending a protest — Canadians under 30 participate at a rate 11 percentage points higher than those 30 and above.

Yet in the 2011 federal election, only 41 per cent of people under 30 voted — compared to 63 per cent of people over the age of 30.

The report compares political participation and contact rates between citizens and Canadian political leaders across three age groups and finds that Canada’s political leaders are not reaching out to all Canadians equally. In a 12-month period leading into an election year, only 55 per cent of Canadians ages 18 to 29 reported being contacted, compared to 75 per cent of Canadians ages 56 and older.

“This news is troubling,” says Jane Hilderman, Samara’s executive director. “Contact from political leaders is powerful: it encourages people to vote — increasing turnout — and strengthens their awareness of politics.”

Indeed, Elections Canada’s 2011 National Youth Survey found that turnout for youth contacted by political leaders was 15 percentage points higher.

In Samara’s study, among young Canadians who reported contact via all five methods (e-mail, phone, mail, social network and in person), 61 per cent said they are affected by the decisions made by elected officials “every day.” Among young Canadians who reported no contact only 22 per cent agreed with the statement.

“The upshot is that younger Canadians aren’t more politically apathetic or tuned out than their older counterparts; they’re more ignored by parties, candidates and leaders than older Canadians, which may partially explain declining voter turnout amongst youth,” the report finds.

Part of the issue is that youth are generally harder to reach because they move more frequently than other age groups and rarely have a landline telephone or listed address, but the problem goes beyond that to the types of issues political candidates are talking about.

“When it comes to political engagement, people talk about the vicious cycle, where candidates don't prioritize younger Canadians, so younger Canadians vote less, so candidates make younger Canadians even less of a priority, and on it goes,” says Eric Swanson, executive director of Generation Squeeze — a group that lobbies for policy changes that would benefit younger Canadians.

To break that cycle, Swanson says candidates need to not just contact young people, but also demonstrate a real understanding of their lived experience “whether it be precarious work, high housing costs, student debt, the costs of starting a family, anxiety about climate change, etcetera.”  

The Samara report also points a finger at political messages that fail to resonate with young people. 

“This failure could be a result of the way the message is framed or the type of language that’s used," the report finds. "It could also be that the issue itself isn’t appealing to youth and doesn’t stand out amidst all the other media competing for their attention."

In the 2015 federal election campaign, Swanson gives credit to all parties for raising issues such as child care and affordable housing, but says many of those promises lack sufficient funding commitments to make the day-to-day difference younger Canadians are looking for.

With political parties often missing the boat on connecting with younger Canadians, other groups are stepping up to fill the void. Dogwood Initiative, for instance, is focused on connecting politics to issues British Columbians care about, such as oil pipeline and tanker proposals.

The non-partisan citizen’s group has about 260,000 supporters in B.C. and its teams of volunteers are having face-to-face conversations with potential voters in 20 federal ridings.

“The first questions we ask are about values,” says Celine Trojand, Dogwood’s field director.

After making contact, Dogwood follows up with updates and makes ‘get out the vote’ calls before election day to ensure citizens have a plan to get to the polls.

It's a strategy that works. After the last municipal elections in B.C., Dogwood analyzed the different levels of contact people received from the group. In Vancouver, for instance, the general voter turnout was 39 per cent. The turnout of Dogwood supporters who had received an e-mail communication about voting was 67 per cent. When people also received a phone call, voter turnout increased to 81 per cent.

“So we’re seeing a 14 per cent increase on voter turnout based on real, live contact with people,” Trojand says.

As for young people, Trojand says the Samara findings aren't surprising.

“Our feeling is that it’s not that the younger demographic isn’t engaged,” Trojand says. “It’s that the local parties aren’t engaging about issues that they care about. Third parties like Dogwood and others have an advantage because they’re actually connecting about values first, on things young people care about like climate change.”

Photo: Dogwood Initiative

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