Summary

• As other provinces move to restrict access to public records, B.C. insists its proposed changes are about efficiency.
• Critics say these changes could make it harder for British Columbians to access public records.
• B.C.’s citizens services ministry is receiving fewer FOI requests now than it was in 2020, but those requests are producing more pages than ever before.

Maybe you’ve heard the famous lyric from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?”

That wistful lament about the environmental impacts of development seems unfortunately applicable to freedom of information systems across Canada these days.

The federal government is mulling shielding some forms of government communications from the public. Ontario’s government recently passed a law that exempts documents created by the premier’s office, cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries from freedom of information requests. The changes are part of the government’s omnibus bill and are retroactive, potentially stopping hundreds of active requests in their tracks. Meanwhile, Alberta enacted a new freedom of information regime last year, one that significantly restricts access rights and gives the government sweeping powers to withhold requested information or reject requests entirely.

The B.C. government’s freedom of information — known as FOI — legislation is different, at least according to Citizens Services Minister Diana Gibson. Since introducing Bill 9, Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, Gibson has repeatedly talked about other Canadian governments “pulling back” on access to information.

“We are not,” Gibson told reporters. “That’s why these amendments are here, to clarify that we are maintaining oversight and access and one of the strongest FOI acts in Canada.”

Broadly, Bill 9 has two areas of focus. Parts of the bill aim to make it easier for public bodies to share information in response to requests, cutting down on the need for people to contact multiple agencies to get the information they seek. 

Other changes seem geared toward getting more FOI requests rejected, critics say. Currently, the law says an FOI request must give “enough detail to enable an experienced employee of the public body, with a reasonable effort, to identify the record sought.” Bill 9 adds that an experienced employee must be able to identify requested records in “a reasonable amount of time” in “the opinion of the head of the public body.” That potentially gives public sector executives a lot of power to refuse to fulfill requests.

“It degrades freedom of information under the guise of administrative convenience, making the government both judge and juror over what the public can access,” Green Party MLA Rob Botterell said in a statement about the changes. Botterell, who helped draft the original law, which passed in 1992, called Bill 9 an “evisceration of this cornerstone legislation.”

Gibson has accused critics of spreading misinformation and cherry-picking data about B.C.’s FOI system to suit their own narratives.

Let’s unpack the politics and posturing and dig into the current state of B.C.’s freedom of information system and the changes the government is proposing.

What is freedom of information?

Freedom of information is the idea that citizens have the right to access documents and records held by public entities, such as school districts, police forces and government ministries. In Canada, freedom of information rights are laid out in federal and provincial laws. Members of the public can request a range of information from various public entities, from meeting notes and staff communications to databases and documentation about new policies.

Journalists like me can request information to better understand the impact train collisions have on wildlife or uncover a significant equipment malfunction at B.C.’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility.

Most Canadian jurisdictions introduced freedom of information laws around 40 years ago, before the digital revolution. In the years since, the amount of documents public bodies create has grown significantly and many of those documents are subject to freedom of information laws.

How many people actually file freedom of information requests?

B.C. is fielding fewer FOI requests than it once did. In 2020, the citizens services ministry logged a total of 8,347 general requests compared to 4,691 in 2025 — a 44 per cent drop that can likely be at least partly attributed to the creation of a $10 fee for requests implemented by the provincial government in 2021.

But the number of pages generated in response to the average request has increased. The Ministry of Citizens Services says its FOI operations office processed 1.64 million pages in 2020 compared to 2.18 million pages in 2025 — a 33 per cent increase. The average general FOI request filed in 2025 in B.C. yielded 366 pages.

That suggests the public bodies may not be managing information as efficiently as they could be, Mike Larsen, president of the BC Freedom of Information Association, said.

“If we have better ways for people to organize information and if that’s followed consistently, then it shouldn’t be a problem to provide efficient and effective access,” he said. “I think that the minister is not wrong to say that there’s been a shift in the terrain here, but to respond to this with the idea of needing to perhaps curtail access rights in some way, I think, is a step in the wrong direction.”

Larsen also points out that focusing on the quantitative aspects of the FOI system — number of requests filed and pages processed — doesn’t give a complete picture of how well the system is functioning.

An FOI request could, for instance, yield 300 pages, but hundreds of those pages could be redacted, offering no useful information to the requester. In cases like that, knowing the number of pages a public body produced but not how many of those pages contained useful information gives a “totally skewed” impression of the system, Larsen added.

The minister takes issue with the idea that FOI requests are down overall.

“Personal requests are up and those are bigger and more complex,” Gibson told reporters. “Overall, the issue is about sensitive Ministry of Children and Family Development files, where there are multiple parties involved and a lot of sensitive information, thousands of pages. So it isn’t just about numbers being down. Actually, that’s not accurate.”

Gibson is partly right. FOI requests to the Ministry of Children and Family Development — which is responsible for sensitive personal information about adoption, child protection and foster care — have increased. In 2025, the ministry received 2,372 requests, up from 1,858 in 2020.

However, overall requests are still down significantly, from 10,205 in 2020 to 7,063 last year. Citizens Services declined to provide data for the most recent fiscal year, telling The Narwhal those figures are still being reviewed.

How is the government proposing to change B.C.’s FOI law?

Gibson introduced Bill 9 on Feb. 26.

“Taken together, these amendments strengthen [the law] for the future,” she said during her second reading speech. “They protect privacy. They uphold access to information. They enable better services for British Columbians, and they support a more transparent, efficient and people-centred public sector.”

But in addition to the changes aimed at improving information sharing between public bodies, some parts of the legislation broadens the grounds on which public bodies can refuse to respond to requests. That includes allowing a public body to reject requests that “would unreasonably interfere” with its operations or the government’s more broadly. “Abusive” or “malicious” requests could also be thrown out.

Larsen worries public bodies operating with reduced budgets or poor information management policies could use the unreasonable interference language to reject requests “simply because they’re overwhelmed — for reasons that aren’t due to the requester’s actions or the nature of the request in question.”

“If you’re unreasonably resourced, then a reasonable request can look unreasonable,” he said.

If your FOI request is rejected, you can appeal to the FOI and privacy commissioner, Gibson points out.

“The independent office of the privacy commissioner oversees any requests that would be denied,” she said. “What we’re talking about here is things like … death threats or white powder in envelopes. This is about being able to manage that kind of behavior, so that citizens with requests that we want to serve can get served quickly.”

Relying on complaints to ensure good requests still make it through the system doesn’t sit well with Larsen.

“That really worries me when people say, ‘We’re changing things in a way that may make it likely that people are dissatisfied, but don’t worry, there’s an appeals process!” he said.

“Going through a review as a way of trying to manage the scope of requests, that’s just completely inefficient.”

The minister did not directly answer questions about whether the commissioner will get a funding increase to deal with the additional stream of complaints Bill 9 could create. Instead, she touted the government’s proactive disclosure policies and promised Bill 9 will result in the release of more information without FOI request.

“This isn’t about making the situation worse,” Gibson told reporters. “This is about making it better.”

So what is proactive disclosure? And how will Bill 9 expand it?

One way governments can reduce the need for members of the public to file requests is to release documents without being asked, a practice known as proactive disclosure. The B.C. government proactively releases 17 types of records, including binders for new cabinet ministers, lists of briefing notes and expense claims and records requested via freedom of information request.

Typically, these records are kept confidential for months before being published, although the timeline can vary. However, as of the publication of this story, the B.C. government has “temporarily paused” proactive disclosures while it develops and launches a new system to publish these records. (The pause has lasted more than a month so far.)

Gibson did not mention the suspension and, when asked about it directly, did not explain why the old publication platform could not continue until the new one was ready to launch.

“We haven’t stopped doing proactive disclosures. What we’ve got is a new and more modernized system that’s going to deliver better on proactive disclosure and also a new proactive disclosure coming in Bill 9,” she told reporters. “But there’s a temporary gap while we move to the new, more modern system, and we’re hoping to have that online as soon as possible.”

The Citizens Services Ministry said the “pause is temporary and technical in nature,” and that the new system is expected to be operational any day.

How many new types of documents will Bill 9 add to the proactive disclosure schedule? Many or none, depending on how you look at it. The new proactive disclosure provisions in the bill apply only to personal information, not records created by the government.

The changes will give government ministries the ability “to disclose personal information back to the individual the information is about, without going through an FOI request,” according to Citizens Services.

Larsen sees value in making it easier for people to access personal information from public bodies, especially with proper privacy protections in place.

“That’s not the same thing as proactive disclosure of public records, though,” he added. “It’s a very different and meritorious thing to do, but it’s important not to conflate those things.”

If — when? — Bill 9 passes, when will these changes take effect?

The B.C. legislature has just nine sitting days left before the summer break. If Bill 9 doesn’t pass by May 28, it will be October before it passes.

The bill is just about to begin committee stage, the point at which opposition MLAs can ask the minister responsible questions about the effect of the changes proposed and put forward changes of their own, though these don’t often end up in the final version.

Gibson has already tabled amendments to Bill 9, ones she says clarify the powers of the information and privacy commissioner.

“I’m really looking forward to committee [stage] where we actually get to speak to the merits of the legislation and have a real debate about the content,” Gibson said. “It’s also a good opportunity to correct some real misinformation and misunderstandings about the bill.”

The B.C. Green and B.C. Conservative caucuses oppose Bill 9 in its current form. Interim Conservative Leader Trevor Halford even tried to have debate on the bill suspended for six months to allow for further consultation, a move that led to hours of late-night debate before the motion was defeated with the support of the NDP caucus and a pair of independent MLAs.

Odds are good Bill 9 will pass this spring, even if the government has to cut debate short to make it happen. Some of its changes will take effect immediately, including the requirement that requests provide enough detail to be located in a “reasonable amount of time.” Most of the others won’t take effect until the ministry has developed regulations to provide more detail about their function.

That process could take weeks, months or more. At least one piece of legislation that passed last spring has yet to take full effect because the regulations are still being developed.

It will likely be a year or more before we know if the changes really will improve B.C.’s FOI system, as Gibson claims. One of her predecessors made similar comments about the bill that created the $10 FOI filing fee, claiming those changes would help unclog the FOI system and result in faster responses to FOI requests. Five years later, we know she was wrong. 

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In the fall of 2024, LNG Canada fired up its flare in Kitimat, B.C., for the first time, burning off gas to test its systems. By December, company officials knew something was wrong.

Residents were also concerned, but had little explanation as 90-metre-high flames lit up the night sky and a deep roaring sound permeated the town.

More than a year later, complaints escalated enough that Kitimat District council sat down for a special meeting with Teresa Waddington, the deputy chief operating officer at LNG Canada. About an hour into the meeting, councillor Terry Marleau asked specifically about flare tips. The response from Waddington was jumbled.

“Uh, I’d say we’re, we’re reviewing the flare tips design,” she said. “We are looking long term at what else could we do other than just reduce flaring in order to make sure that we get to a better place.”  

A couple of minutes later, Marleau leaned into the mic: “So, is there an issue with the flare stacks themselves?” 

“It’s part of the learning curve of new equipment,” Waddington replied. “So on one hand, you know, great that we brought in a technology that gets such high levels of incineration, which results in less slippage of gas, which means you have lower [greenhouse gas emissions] overall, but on the same note, it’s not perfectly working.”

Just a few kilometres away from the nearest residential neighbourhood, LNG Canada had been feeding gas into its flaring system by a magnitude of more than 15 times the typical amount to compensate for what was described as an “integrity issue.” 

Flaring is the burning of excess or waste gas produced during operations. Methane and other gases that escape the Kitimat facility during processing are sent up a metal tube that stands 122 metres high, where they meet a pilot flame and ignite, converting the raw gas into carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water vapour. There are also often additional gases such as nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds and particulates released during the process. 

It’s a necessary safety protocol — if the flare is not designed correctly for the operating environment, the gas may not make it to the pilot flame and instead the flare can creep down the tube and melt the infrastructure. The solution is to increase the pressure, increase the volume of gas and increase the size of the flame. If all the gas is not fully combusted by the pilot, black smoke appears.

The Narwhal reviewed more than 2,000 pages of documents released through freedom of information legislation about the flaring issue in Kitimat. They showed how LNG Canada officials were discussing the flaring issues internally — and that they waited approximately four months to tell the provincial energy regulator. 

We also spoke with several industry insiders, former employees and local residents and analyzed publicly available permits and other government documents to piece together a timeline of events and impacts on the community. The documents reveal regulator and industry officials grappled with the issue for months while community members and local politicians asked questions about the flaring, some complaining about excessive noise and others expressing concerns about potential toxic emissions, black smoke and particulate matter. 

Among the documents is one prepared by the BC Energy Regulator, a government agency that oversees the oil and gas sector and other industries. It detailed an “emerging integrity concern related to one of LNG Canada’s flares” in April 2025, and noted LNG Canada said the issue would take three years to be resolved. 

In the meantime, the facility was “routing additional gas” to the flare to mitigate the problem, according to the document. The system should be fine to operate by burning 11,000 cubic metres of gas per day, but due to the issue it would need to burn at least 170,000 cubic metres daily, the document stated. Burning the extra gas would result in “a noticeable impact in the community with respect to noise, light and visual disturbance,” according to the regulator’s internal briefing note.

When asked about this document, a spokesperson with the regulator confirmed awareness of the issue and said the average numbers were even higher. LNG Canada reported flaring an average of “approximately 205,000 cubic metres per day between July 1 and Nov. 30, 2025,” the spokesperson said via email. 

The email included detailed data and showed that on Sept. 1, 2025, LNG Canada flared 1,708,649 cubic metres of gas, making it the highest single day, according to the data. 

The spokesperson did not answer questions about whether the government agency communicated the problem with flaring equipment to the public, instead explaining LNG Canada had “fully mitigated” the integrity issue by “ensuring additional gas is flowed through the flare tip facilitating appropriate combustion.” The regulator spokesperson added LNG Canada is required to notify residents and local authorities “regarding certain flaring events.”

The Narwhal asked LNG Canada several detailed questions about the integrity issue, including why it did not appear to communicate clearly with members of the public, but a spokesperson with the consortium declined to answer.

“The LNG Canada facility has been commissioning and is currently in its early operations phase,” the spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. “Flaring during commissioning and early operations is a normal occurrence in any LNG asset. In regular operations, flaring activities and associated noise reduce significantly.”

BC Energy Regulator officials kept the flaring issue quiet for more than six months

Kitimat sits at the end of a long fiord, surrounded by mountains and subject to extreme weather. Dramatic shifts in air pressure, high winds and other local environmental factors exacerbate the problems LNG Canada faced with its flare. As The Narwhal previously reported, community members have documented black plumes of smoke from the flare and some residents living close to the facility have said their yards, houses and vehicles are often left covered in a thin film of black residue.

According to the documents, LNG Canada — a consortium of foreign-owned companies led by Shell — first reported non-compliance with government permits in May 2025, citing increased emissions were required to mitigate the integrity concern. The company said a replacement part, called a flare tip, would be needed and it could take up to three years to fully integrate the new equipment, but interim changes could be made. The BC Energy Regulator responded, asking the company to clarify the environmental and health risks of any modifications and said the company might also need to apply to amend its Air Waste Discharge Permit.

In July, the regulator wrote to LNG Canada officials saying the company was on the hook for the additional emissions and needed to fix the problem. The reason, it explained, was that because the additional flaring was for the purpose of “long-term integrity management,” it was not considered a “process upset,” a designation that would exempt it from permit limits. The regulator also required the company to report any emissions exceedances. After the consortium successfully sent its first shipment of LNG overseas in late June 2025, the regulator also issued a requirement for LNG Canada to file daily reports and updates.

The regulator told The Narwhal the consortium filed six “monthly self-disclosures [related] to document flaring which is not consistent” with the facility’s permits and noted it has not issued any penalties for non-compliance. 

“The [BC Energy Regulator] does not disclose information with respect to any ongoing investigations that may be underway, but to date, no penalties have been issued to LNG Canada.”

The regulator also noted it ordered LNG Canada to contract a third-party assessment of air quality in July, which concluded “no measured adverse impacts to air quality from the increased flaring rate.”

“The [BC Energy Regulator] is engaging with LNG Canada to minimize flaring rates from all facility flares,” the spokesperson added.

The Narwhal asked LNG Canada why it didn’t communicate the problems with the flare tip to the public. We also asked for clarification on the nature of the issue, its impacts on operations and the community, including noise, emissions and other issues raised by community members. The Narwhal asked what had been done to ensure residents were kept informed about the risks posed by faulty or inadequate equipment. 

LNG Canada did not directly answer these questions.

“We continue to remain focused on safely operating the facility and minimizing disruptions to the community,” the spokesperson wrote, adding the 37th shipment is scheduled to depart in the coming days.

“We continue to meet regularly with community members, First Nations, local stakeholders and government agencies to listen and respond to any concerns raised about our activities. LNG Canada extends its continued appreciation to the Kitimat community and to the Haisla Nation for their continued support.”

Between September 2024 and January 2026, LNG Canada posted more than 27 notifications of flaring events on its website and social media, some preparing the community for weeks or months of flaring.

“Flaring is a provincially regulated safety measure that ensures the controlled, efficient combustion of natural gas during specific operational phases,” LNG Canada regularly said in these notifications. “It is a critical part of safely operating a facility of this scale and is not expected to be routine during regular operation.”

But the consortium was not telling the public why the flare was so big nor explaining why so many “unplanned” flaring events were occurring. In early November 2025, for example, LNG Canada published a notification warning residents flaring would extend beyond the “originally anticipated timeframe.” It noted this would mean more “intermittent” noise and more emissions, without explaining why. 

Around the same time, the consortium offered to temporarily relocate some residents who had expressed concerns about the noise and emissions, if they agreed to “not make any complaints or raise any concerns or objections with respect to LNG Canada, the LNG facility or the works with any third parties, including but not limited to members of the media, the [BC Energy Regulator] or the District of Kitimat” related to flaring activities.

But complaints from residents continued to come in.

Just a few months ago, in that late November 2025 council meeting, Waddington addressed questions about the flaring from Marleau and other members of council. She was accompanied by a sound analyst hired to monitor ambient noise over Kitimat.

There had been more than 30 complaints from the town’s residents about unexpected noise since the LNG export facility started flaring excess gas a year earlier, Waddington said at the meeting. The council wanted to see the results of the consortium’s monitoring, understand the cause and hear how the company was managing the disruption.

Waddington assured Marleau, and council, the company was investigating.

“If you look at how the LNG Canada startup has gone, it’s actually been smoother than most,” Waddington concluded. “We are actually kind of setting the bar.” On Jan. 5, 2026, LNG Canada published its first notification of the year, of a week-long flaring event that had already begun.

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.

Editor’s note: This story is a collaboration between the Investigative Journalism Foundation and The Narwhal. A Canadian oil and gas firm successfully pressed Canada’s spy agency to start sharing government intelligence with the country’s wealthiest companies, something advocates say will protect critical infrastructure but that critics worry could infringe on civil rights. 

TC Energy, a major North American pipeline company, asked the former head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to set up regular “information-sharing” meetings between the agency, RCMP and representatives of major Canadian companies, according to internal government documents. TC Energy said the meetings would allow for “private, high-level discussions about security threats facing Canadian industry.”

The Canadian government has since passed legislation allowing CSIS to more easily share intelligence with outside organizations, including other governments and private companies. 

TC Energy’s proposal, detailed in documents the Investigative Journalism Foundation and The Narwhal obtained via access to information legislation, argued the creation of a “Canadian Security Alliance Council” would let CSIS share “unclassified but sensitive” intelligence it collects on behalf of the government with select major corporations. The company proposed the council would include corporations with annual revenues of $500 million or more.

In a February 2024 email, TC Energy argued it needed access to this kind of information because of unspecified “acute risks from foreign adversaries” seeking to sabotage critical infrastructure. 

“[G]iven the severity of the present threat, we support immediate action as current law permits,” the company’s proposal noted. 

That pitch was seemingly well received by then-CSIS director David Vigneault, who told an executive assistant of TC Energy’s CEO, François Poirier, that he would help “advance our shared interests.” The names of TC Energy employees in those emails are redacted but their titles are not.TC Energy did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.“While the implementation of a formal program like this is a project involving multiple private and Government of Canada stakeholders, we’re seized with the issue and we appreciate your support,” Vigneault wrote to TC Energy in May 2024.

Nicole Giles, a senior assistant deputy minister at CSIS, told attendees at the Vancouver International Security Summit on Oct. 16 that the agency has given such briefings to members of the Business Council of Canada, which was involved in TC Energy’s proposal to Vigneault. Poirier is on the council’s board of directors.The result is that large Canadian corporations have unprecedented access to intelligence collected by Canada’s spy agency. 

Magali Hébert, a spokesperson with CSIS, said the agency and the business council, which represents the country’s wealthiest and most powerful companies, “have enjoyed a productive relationship that has advanced the interests of Canadians and of Canada’s economic security” since 2022.

“CSIS is considering formal mechanisms for enhancing information sharing with those outside government to help increase their resiliency to national security threats, such as foreign interference,” Hébert wrote in an emailed statement, adding the Canada Security Alliance Council is “conceptual.”Hébert said CSIS made 28 disclosures in 2024 to governments, “ethnic, cultural and religious communities” and businesses, but would not say which ones. 

Sharing intelligence the spy agency gathers with industry “can serve to protect Canada’s research ecosystem and economic prosperity from foreign interference, espionage and unwanted knowledge transfer that could pose a threat to Canada and Canada’s national security interests,” Hébert said.

‘A chilling effect’

The Business Council of Canada says information sharing is crucial to foil increasingly frequent cyberattacks from criminal networks and hostile states which aim to steal Canadian data and intellectual property, hamstring the country’s economy and even disrupt public utilities. Some hackers have even targeted smaller government entities like cities and hospitals. 

Council president Goldy Hyder told the audience at the same Vancouver summit on Oct. 16 that Canadian companies “can’t be boy scouts” in a world where such attacks are routine.“We’re being honest with people that businesses are under attack. Our economy is under attack. Our way of life is under attack,” Hyder said. 

Hyder added he considers Vigneault, who now works in the private security intelligence sector, a “dear friend,” and said they communicate regularly.The Investigative Journalism Foundation and The Narwhal approached Vigneault in person to ask about his relationship with the council and the friendly language in his emails.He referred reporters to his employer Strider, an American private intelligence company, which declined to comment.Business Council of Canada spokesperson Michèle-Jamali Paquette said the flow of information from CSIS to businesses was “tightly limited” and that it could only be used to “strengthen resilience against security threats.”But some critics and observers worry information sharing between CSIS and private companies could chill legitimate political protest, particularly demonstrations against oil and gas projects led by companies like TC Energy.

CSIS said its legislation prohibits investigating lawful protest and dissent. Hébert said the spy agency “would only investigate individuals if there was reasonable suspicion that said they were planning activities that fit within the scope of our mandate (threats to the security of Canada), such as violent extremism.”

But Vibert Jack, the litigation director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, argues the existence of such an information-sharing agreement could still discourage people from expressing their views.

“I think the overall prospect it raises is a chilling effect on overall dissent and protest,” Jack said. 

“The more data is being collected about people who are voicing dissent and the more that data gets shared between different parties, the more consequences can flow for all those people.”

TC Energy, Business Council of Canada said spy intelligence needed to ward off threats

TC Energy has long sought to increase corporate access to CSIS intelligence, which historically has rarely been shared even with other governments.

The Calgary-based energy company retained former staffers from the office of U.S. President Donald Trump to lobby CSIS for such changes, including at an October 2023 security summit in Palo Alto, Calif. 

The Narwhal previously obtained recordings of internal TC Energy meetings including one where Michael Evanoff, a former assistant secretary of state in the Trump administration who went on to work for TC Energy, said he had directly approached Vigneault about making it easier to share classified intelligence with companies. 

TC Energy, in its February 2024 proposal, described the agency’s information-sharing rules as “archaic.”

The pipeline company pitched the security working group as an “interim” solution, saying it could be used to distribute intelligence that was unclassified but still sensitive. The proposal suggested the group would be composed of CSIS, RCMP, the federal Ministry of Public Safety and representatives from a select group of Canadian companies.

TC Energy suggested the “convenor” of those meetings could be the Business Council of Canada, which represents banks, telecommunications firms, automakers, energy companies and accounting offices. 

But TC Energy and the Business Council of Canada also appear to have lobbied to loosen CSIS rules around sharing more sensitive information, which may have helped ultimately change Canada’s legislation. 

In November 2023, a month after the Palo Alto conference, Vigneault wrote an email to a TC Energy representative, saying its participation was “widely recognized by our partners as an important sign of Canada’s commitment to broadening and deepening relationships and cooperation with governments and private sector partners on national security matters.”

Vigneault later wrote in May 2024, encouraging TC Energy and the business council to bring its concerns about CSIS information sharing to Parliament.

The business council went on to support legislation — Bill C-70 — which included amendments to the CSIS Act allowing the agency to share classified information outside of government with the permission of the minister of public safety. 

The bill also created new criminal offences for sabotaging critical infrastructure and made it a criminal offence to distribute material that can be used to sabotage such infrastructure.Paquette, the council’s spokesperson, said CSIS previously “lacked the legal authority to proactively share threat intelligence with the private sector for the purpose of building economy-wide resilience.” She contrasted that to the United States and the United Kingdom, which have long had programs allowing intelligence agencies to more easily share information with private businesses.

“This gap left Canadian companies often fending for themselves despite CSIS possessing the knowledge and expertise to help them withstand such threats,” Paquette wrote in an email to the Investigative Journalism Foundation and The Narwhal. “By limiting CSIS’s ability to meaningfully engage with businesses, it also left CSIS, and the broader Canadian government, without a more complete understanding of the national security threats facing the Canadian economy.”

Paquette did not explain the nature of security threats the council is concerned its members face. 

Experts warn corporate access to government intelligence could be used to quash protests, advance projects

Many in the intelligence community see such partnerships as universally beneficial. 

Nitin Natarajan, a consultant who previously served as the deputy director for the American Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said sharing intelligence with private partners and local governments can help spur needed spending on things like cybersecurity.“We’re asking state-level jurisdictions and small cities to use taxpayer dollars to increase their cyber defences. We’re asking water utilities that have no money … we need to be able to do a good job of saying why,” Natarajan said.Natarajan, who helped start up multiple intelligence-sharing programs in his prior role, said such collaborations are “more critical today than [they’ve] ever been because hackers are targeting organizations like public utilities, municipalities and even small and medium-sized businesses.”

Natarajan said the goal of those attacks is to “disrupt the day-to day-lives” of citizens. “That’s a very different tactic,” he added.

Other observers, though, see risks in spy agencies partnering with the private sector.

Tia Dafnos, an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick, said the informal relationships between corporate executives and intelligence agencies add a layer of secrecy the public should be concerned about.

“One of the key concerns here is around the lack of transparency — and therefore accountability — when you have these discussions happening in spaces that are outside of public access.”

Dafnos said formalizing a group where powerful companies can discuss security issues with the likes of CSIS and the RCMP opens opportunities for corporations to advance their interests. 

“Creating these venues is sort of creating space for the blurring of interests.”

Companies like TC Energy employ extensive in-house security personnel and also contract out to third parties, which “engage proactively in forms of information collection and monitoring related to threats, which includes protests and opposition, the political climate surrounding their company and proposed projects and so forth,” Dafnos said.

“Those informal kinds of relationships are also significant, whether or not it’s having an impact in sort of directing the gaze or focus, or leading the RCMP, for example, to spend more time looking at a certain group or certain issue,” she explained, noting it is uncertain to what degree this takes place. “But those resources are there and they can be capitalized on.” 

The BC Civil Liberties Association previously filed complaints against CSIS, alleging the agency spied on environmental groups opposed to a pipeline project in northern B.C. 

Jack, who works for the organization, worries allowing CSIS to share such intelligence with companies — even unclassified information — could be used to quash similar protests in the future. 

“I think it’s fair to assume that part of the goal here for TC Energy is to find ways to prevent protest or lessen their impact at least on their operations,” Jack said. 

He is also perturbed by the tone of the emails between Vigneault and TC Energy. 

“It really seems as though CSIS views oil and gas companies as their partners, and when we see what they say about protestors and Indigenous land defenders, it’s clear they don’t see them as having shared interests,” Jack said.

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Every year in B.C., oil and gas companies conduct more than 100,000 activities at industrial sites across the province, which include natural gas and oil wells, pipelines, processing plants and more. Most of this activity takes place in the northeast — and it’s ramping up to support the province’s new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export sector.

Keeping watch is the BC Energy Regulator, which is responsible for ensuring compliance of more than “1,000 individual regulatory requirements,” according to documents obtained through freedom of information legislation. Those requirements include monitoring everything from the condition of industrial equipment to allowable water use for fracking to emissions levels to ensuring “ecologically suitable species” are used to restore sites after they are no longer active.

The regulator is absorbing an increase in responsibility as the northeast starts to feel the impacts of an uptick in drilling and production to feed LNG Canada, the Coastal GasLink pipeline and potential additional LNG export projects. It is also being given additional powers over other energy projects, like transmission lines, wind and solar. 

BC Energy Regulator officials conduct more than 4,000 in-person inspections every year, accessing remote oil and gas sites in trucks, helicopters and all-terrain vehicles. When inspectors find evidence of pollution or public safety issues, they follow policy guidelines on how and when to escalate their findings for enforcement. However, inspectors “do not have the knowledge and skill set to manage for long-term contamination,” according to the documents obtained by The Narwhal.

Instead, when government officials find a problem, they note the issue in inspection notes and refer the issue to an unspecified “environmental stewardship group” because resolving long-term contamination can “often take years,” the documents said.

The regulator declined to explain to The Narwhal what the environmental stewardship group is, nor did it provide information about how the group manages long-term contamination.

The BC Energy Regulator is a Crown corporation that answers to the Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions, headed by Adrian Dix. Through a suite of agreements with various B.C. ministries, the regulator has long had special powers to make decisions related to ecosystem health, wildlife, cultural heritage sites, climate, Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and more.

Regulator officials can issue tickets, fines and warnings and order companies that are breaking the law to stop working. The agency is also responsible for issuing permits for energy projects — everything from pumping water from a stream and laying a pipeline under a river to setting allowable levels of greenhouse gas emissions at natural gas wells.

BC Energy Regulator ‘actively scaling’ compliance and enforcement

The documents were in response to an investigation by The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation published earlier this year. They appear to be part of an internal review of the energy regulator’s compliance and enforcement regime.

Government communications noted “plans are in place for the [BC Energy Regulator] to begin posting full inspection records on its website, by the end of 2025” and that it is improving the way it manages its compliance and enforcement department, including implementing “new training materials and standardization for inspection note taking.”

When asked whether the regulator is planning to increase its capacity to conduct inspections by hiring more compliance and enforcement staff or using tools, such as remote monitoring equipment, the regulator said it is “actively scaling its compliance and enforcement capacity” without specifying how it will do so. 

“This expansion is not just a response to increased workload, it is a deliberate move to reinforce the [BC Energy Regulator’s] commitment to robust, land-based oversight and to ensure regulatory coverage remains strong and effective across the province,” the spokesperson said.

The regulator currently employs 17 compliance and enforcement officers and three technical advisors to conduct field-based inspections. Those employees report to seven senior staffers, who also have “a role in conducting field compliance, from inspections to investigations,” according to a previous response from the regulator.

According to publicly available information, B.C. is currently home to more than 6,500 active facilities — but that does not appear to include pipelines, which span thousands of kilometres. The BC Energy Regulator database also appears to be outdated, listing the LNG Canada facility as “under construction” despite its start of operations earlier this year. 

The regulator plans to conduct 2,800 “data and risk-informed” inspections in the next year, according to its annual compliance plan, as well as an unknown number of “officer-selected inspections … to ensure flexibility and professional judgment in the field.”

“The [BC Energy Regulator] is confident in its inspection rate, methodology, staff expertise and tools which collectively uphold its mandate to protect British Columbians and the environment from impacts of energy resource activities,” the regulator told The Narwhal.

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This investigation is a collaboration between The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation.

One of Canada’s largest oil and gas companies violated a deal it struck with B.C.’s energy regulator to address thousands of inactive pipelines in the province — and faced no financial penalties for doing so. 

Internal government documents obtained by The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation reveal Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (commonly called CNRL) failed to meet targets it proposed to the BC Energy Regulator to gradually deactivate more than 4,300 pipelines it operated across the province. 

Companies like CNRL operate thousands of short pipelines which connect natural gas wells — including fracking operations — to major pipeline networks. When the wells no longer produce gas, companies operating in B.C. are required to decommission pipelines within 18 months. The legal timeline is aimed at protecting the environment from leaks and damage as pipelines gradually decay. Deactivating a pipeline includes removing any fluid and disconnecting it from the system. The sealed-off pipeline will remain in the ground in perpetuity.

In 2020, the BC Energy Regulator found CNRL hadn’t deactivated thousands of pipelines and set out to get the company back into compliance with the law. CNRL proposed a detailed, multi-year plan for decommissioning its pipelines as part of an exemption from B.C.’s normal environmental regulations.Under that plan, CNRL was to deactivate a targeted number of pipelines each year until 2028, with exact annual targets ranging from 398 to 544.The regulator agreed and gave CNRL the extra eight years to get the work done. 

But in 2023, the regulator revoked CNRL’s exemption after learning the company “failed to deactivate the pipelines in accordance with the timelines set out in the plan,” according to the documents obtained under freedom of information legislation. The regulator later said in a statement that CNRL had failed to meet targets for three years in a row.

That led to the regulator issuing an order demanding CNRL clean up some of its pipelines. The company complied. The BC Energy Regulator then approved a second exemption for CNRL in 2024 and says the company is exceeding targets under that plan.

The regulator told The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation in an emailed statement it did not fine CNRL (which posted gross revenues of more than $41 billion last year, according to its 2024 financial statements) because it did not deem it necessary to ensure the company got back into compliance. The regulator added it could still “pursue a contravention and the issuance of an administrative monetary penalty in the event CNRL does not meet its remaining deactivation requirements.” In early March, CNRL still had 865 pipelines to decommission, according to a previous statement from the regulator. 

It is unclear why the company failed to meet the requirements for deactivating its pipelines, including failing to follow its own plan. The company did not respond to multiple requests for comment made via email and over the phone. 

CNRL’s failure to deactivate pipelines is ‘consistent with a pattern’: legal expert 

The documents obtained by The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation provide an inside look at the regulator’s approach to working with companies when they fail to follow the rules.

In March 2024, BC Energy Regulator vice-president Nicole Koosmann wrote to CNRL expressing concern that the company “failed to to complete the deactivation requirements under the initial plan” but said complying with the normal rules was “not reasonably practicable” given the thousands of pipelines that had to be shut down. 

“I am further satisfied that adherence to the targets and commitments set out in the updated plan remains the most effective and efficient way to achieve compliance with regulatory requirements and to minimize the risk associated with the remaining pipelines,” she wrote at the time. 

Koosmann’s letter to CNRL came after government officials discovered the company had “not met the targets for any of the years 2020, 2021 or 2022,” according to an unattributed statement from the regulator.

That led the regulator to invoke a clause in the agreement that rendered it null and void if the company failed to meet its end of the bargain. The regulator then issued a general order, forcing the company to deactivate hundreds of pipelines, and renewed the pipeline exemption. The spokesperson said it struck the second deal with CNRL in part because of the “public interest in having the pipelines brought into compliance more quickly with less land disturbance.”

(Until previous reporting by The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation, exemptions like this were not publicly disclosed — the regulator has since started developing a publicly available database.)

Martin Olszynski, the chair in energy, resources and sustainability at the University of Calgary’s law school, said CNRL has a track record of being slow to clean up and deactivate its assets. As of June 2, the Alberta Energy Regulator reported CNRL holds more than 20,000 inactive wells in that province — or more than 25 per cent of Alberta’s inactive wells. 

“It’s consistent with a pattern that I’ve seen that this is a company that has a really hard time dealing with the backends of its assets,” Olszynski said.

‘What teeth does the regulator have?’

CNRL is now “exceeding their targets for pipeline deactivation” under the new plan, which would see the company shut down all of the pipelines by 2028, according to the regulator.

Olszynski said the BC Energy Regulator’s approach — ordering the company to comply but stopping short of a fine — could be perceived as soft. But he also pointed out it seemed to produce the desired effect of jolting the company into compliance. 

“The regulator has been pushing and pulling. It has used the power that it has to force these guys to do the work,” he said. 

The regulator also has a vested interest in maintaining a good relationship with the company, he added. 

“As a regulator, they’re not about bringing down the man,” Olszynski said. “Capitalism, that’s beyond their wheelhouse.” 

Jeremy Valeriote, the interim leader of the BC Green Party, said the lack of penalties highlights a cultural problem of the province’s regulators being too lenient with oil and gas companies.

“It begs the question, what teeth does the regulator have?” he said. 

The BC Energy Regulator, formerly the BC Oil and Gas Commission, is mostly funded by levies on companies that run oil and gas projects. The sector has been expanding in recent years as B.C. gears up to become a major exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). 

Valeriote said he worries the regulator is unwilling to confront companies that break the rules, and what that means as it takes on additional responsibilities. The B.C. government has been allocating extra powers to the BC Energy Regulator, including responsibility for overseeing renewable energy projects such as wind farms. 

“They need to prove to the public that they can fill the role, especially if they’re going into new areas and new sectors and they’re looking to build public trust,” he said.

Updated on July 7, 2025, at 12:40 p.m. PT: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Nicole Koosmann’s name.

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A controversial decision last year to substantially increase the number of cougars that can be hunted in Alberta was not based on science, according to government documents obtained by The Narwhal.

Instead, expanded cougar hunting was “based on direction from [the] minister last year and input from stakeholders,” according to an internal email between senior staff at the Ministry of Forestry and Parks. Those stakeholders were limited to members of the Alberta Professional Outfitters Society and the Alberta Tree Hounds Association.

Internal emails obtained by The Narwhal through four freedom of information requests show senior staff within the ministry said “social interests, economic effects and departmental mandates” took precedence over “inventory and monitoring” data for a last-minute increase in cougar hunting quotas. “Inventory and monitoring information was not the primary element used to inform the process to trigger [the cougar quota] adjustment,” a senior staffer wrote in an email to colleagues.

That directly contradicts heated denials by Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen, who lashed out at his Opposition critic in the legislature earlier this year when she suggested he was not taking science and data into account. 

“When it comes to wildlife in this province, I would rather manage wildlife with common sense,” he said in response to accusation of political interference from NDP MLA Sarah Elmeligi. “I’d rather use biology than the ideology that they use.”

The internal emails reveal a scramble to change the quotas with little clarity on the process. “The normal process would be for [the Ministry of Environment and Protected Areas] to undertake an updated assessment of a wildlife species population,” then share that information with the Ministry of Forestry and Parks, one senior staff wrote. No new assessment of Alberta’s cougar population has been done since 2019. “I do not believe that we have agreed on a formal process, as of yet, to inform management changes,” the staffer wrote. 

“I look forward to the formalization of process,” another staffer wrote in response.

“Me too……….” was the one-line reply.

They were reacting to a change that appeared suddenly just five days before the end of the 2023-24 cougar hunting season. 

Staff were also directed to open new areas where hounds could be used to hunt cougars. 

“This is a 97.6 per cent increase in area where cougars can be hunted with hounds,” a briefing note obtained by The Narwhal says. The report made it clear that the change was not because any data had shown an increase in the cougar population.

“Cougar density in these new areas is unknown but thought to be low.”

Then, in late 2024, new quotas were set for the 2024-25 season, based on the last-minute increases in March. Those changes represented an almost 40 per cent increase in the total number of cougars that could be hunted across the province as compared to the start of the previous season. At the same time, the province also quietly opened hunting in some protected areas, including Cypress Hills Provincial Park.

The changes also allowed outfitters to expand into new areas — specifically around Canmore, Alta. — with separate and specific licences for guided hunting trips. The move increased the number of cougars that could be killed in those areas, over and above the official quota. 

The government referred to that change as the “Alberta Professional Outfitters Society extension.”

“Several” outfitters with that association, along with the Alberta Tree Hounds Association, are the only stakeholders mentioned as being consulted about the changes.

But even within that limited group, there was pushback on the government’s plans. 

In the documents, the Alberta Tree Hounds Association expressed concerns the new quotas were “not based on science or the [cougar] management plans at hand,” and were made at the last minute. 

The heavily redacted documents do not provide clarity on what the group’s specific concerns were or if any changes came from its objections. 

The association’s president, Jason Martyn, did not respond to an interview request. 

Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen has faced accusations of conflict of interest over hunting

Minister Loewen has been travelling through the U.S. and Europe to promote hunting in Alberta and sell expanded special licences for hunting a range of animals. 

Earlier this year, he lashed out at Elmeligi in the legislature for suggesting his ties to the hunting industry constituted a conflict of interest. The Opposition critic was forced to apologize for suggesting the minister was engaging in corruption. 

Loewen previously ran Todd Loewen Outfitting Ltd., which changed its name to Red Willow Outfitters. Registry documents show it is now run by family members, including his wife, Teena Loewen. 

Todd Loewen’s November 2024 public conflict of interest disclosure did not specify a financial interest in the business, saying only the company was “in a management arrangement approved by the Ethics Commissioner of Alberta.” A month later, following reporting by The Narwhal highlighting the company ownership, it was updated to list Red Willow as an asset of his wife. 

Loewen’s office did not respond to an interview request or a set of emailed questions, but he has repeatedly pointed to a review by the provincial ethics commissioner clearing him of any conflicts. 

A transcript from a June 2024 meeting of a committee reviewing the Conflicts of Interest Act shows the minister wanted clarity around what constitutes a conflict and that he engaged with the ethics commissioner on his specific portfolio and interests. 

It also shows the situation was complex and that Loewen was initially barred from making some unspecified decisions and said he had to “try three times” to remove those restrictions. 

Cougar hunt changes were made after consulting with hunting groups, not conservationists

The documents obtained by The Narwhal make it clear the ministry was actively seeking input from hunting groups. “The minister asked that you hold an online meeting of some houndsmen [he] is aware of (as soon as possible),” a senior staffer wrote to another in November 2024. “Please reach out to those folks and set up a meeting within a week’s time (or whatever is convenient for those guys during hunting season).”

The push to consult with hunting organizations contrasts with how another stakeholder whose emails to the government appeared in the documents says they were treated. 

The Narwhal showed the documents to John Marriott, a wildlife photographer and advocate against cougar hunting. He said his emails were included in the correspondence with his name redacted. 

“I didn’t get any responses from anybody,” he said. 

Marriott says the documents make it clear the government was not following the science, or its own cougar management plan. 

“These make it very clear that the quota increases for cougar harvest were not from the cougar biologists and the biologists that normally would be making this decision; this was a directive from above,” he said. 

Ruiping Luo, a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association who also reviewed the documents, echoed Marriott.

“They didn’t have any new scientific reasoning for changing the quotas and that is something that we suspected: that these quotas were not based on science and there were other factors, like economics, interfering,” she said. 

“The other thing — that I think was, again, expected — was there didn’t seem to be a ton of consultation, or even consideration of consultation for other groups, for naturalists and recreation users and for Indigenous groups too. This does affect their Treaty Rights to hunt and trap.”

‘Who cares about the science?’: ecologists concerned about government’s wildlife approach

The increase in cougar quotas is just one of many changes to hunting regulations introduced by the current government. It has opened hunting of “problem” grizzly bears after a 20-year ban. It has also lifted quotas on trapping wolverines — citing the need to collect data on how many wolverines are left — and other species. 

Marco Festa-Bianchet, a retired professor of animal ecology at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, said the decision to increase quotas on cougars without a good idea of the population numbers is troublesome.

“To me, as a scientist, what’s really bad about it is just, well, let’s just ignore years and years of research and wildlife biology and just say, ‘Potentially cougars are bad, let’s shoot some more,’ ” he said.

More broadly, Festa-Bianchet said the government is making decisions on what appears to be a whim. 

“It’s just the whole approach,” he said. “It’s the same with mountain goats and grizzly bears: just, like, who cares about the science?”

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This investigation is a collaboration between The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation.

Fewer than two dozen BC Energy Regulator inspectors are responsible for monitoring nearly 200 fossil fuel companies operating 6,594 — and counting — active oil and gas wells, pipelines, processing plants and other related infrastructure in British Columbia. 

During inspections conducted between 2017 and 2023, regulator inspectors quietly noted thousands of potential violations of laws and regulations, according to records released through freedom of information legislation. 

In more than 1,000 instances, inspectors documented apparent environmental infractions, such as emissions leaks, fuel and chemical spills and more, yet the sites were marked as compliant. In many cases, the inspectors noted multiple apparent infractions during one inspection. Thousands of additional inspections were similarly given a pass, despite potential violations of regulations, ranging from inaccurate record-keeping to outdated equipment to illegible and missing signage at sites. In some instances, inspectors noted longstanding issues, such as companies failing to fix problems government officials had flagged years earlier. In total, inspectors flagged more than 9,000 potential violations. 

The following table contains all records of inspections that were provided through freedom of information legislation. Not all companies included in the table have had apparent infractions that were given a pass during inspection.

(The original records released through freedom of information legislation are also available here.)

The Narwhal and Investigative Journalism Foundation requested comments from 146 companies, sharing inspection reports associated with each company’s implicated infrastructure. An additional 13 companies in the records are either bankrupt or in receivership and therefore could not comment, according to publicly available information, and a further 11 were unreachable or unidentifiable from the regulator records.

Only 14 companies responded. They described having a working or “collaborative” relationship with the provincial regulator.

“AltaGas works closely with the BC Energy Regulator (BCER) across its B.C. operations.” 

“At Pacific Canbriam Energy, we are committed to responsible energy development and continuous improvement in our operations. We maintain a collaborative relationship with the BC Energy Regulator (BCER), working closely to uphold the highest standards of safety, environmental stewardship and regulatory compliance.”

“… Trans Mountain welcomed regulator inspections to ensure it was meeting standards expected by regulators and [the] public. We took immediate corrective action for any deficiencies noted by our regulators to ensure the project remained in compliance.”

This table contains all company responses received by publication time.

The BC Energy Regulator — largely funded by the oil and gas industry — is a provincial agency mandated to protect public safety and the environment from infractions by energy industry stakeholders in a range of activities, including pipelines and major projects in oil, gas, fracking, liquefied natural gas, geothermal and hydrogen.

Some companies said apparent violations in inspector notes that were not marked in the regulator’s records as violations had since been corrected. One company, Catapult Environmental Inc., stressed the apparent issues were all “addressed immediately” and it did not receive any official non-compliances “due to our commitment to address this issue in a timely manner.”

The BC Energy Regulator declined an interview request and did not directly answer many questions about the apparent infractions. In an emailed response, the regulator said compliance and enforcement officers use a “graduated enforcement model” to address situations where a company is failing to meet government regulations.

The email said the regulator’s role is to provide “sound regulatory oversight” of industry and to “ensure companies comply” with provincial laws and their permit conditions.

“We do not advocate for industry or solicit economic development.”  

— With files from Kate Schneider

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If the Alberta government built a nuclear reactor near your home, would you want to know the facts informing that decision? If Alberta gives millions, or billions, to private industry, would you want to know why? What risks and rewards did the government consider when choosing the ground beneath your home as an ideal place to store carbon dioxide?

Under new legislation, you might never have the tools to find out. 

As the fall sitting of the legislature wrapped up, and the day after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government announced Bill 34, which lays out new rules for freedom of information in the province. Once passed, the government will be able to censor factual information used to make decisions and restrict the power of the commissioner who can challenge its censorship.

The move, in some ways, would simply legalize the years-long practice of suppressing information in violation of the existing freedom of information act. But it would also make it easier to suppress more information, more often. 

The changes would make it all but impossible to learn why the premier and her ministers make important public-interest decisions and would shield an undefined class of “political staff” from any oversight. 

It all amounts to “an erosion of access rights,” Alberta’s information and privacy commissioner Diane McLeod told The Narwhal. McLeod said in an interview access to information is “a cornerstone of our ability to exercise our democratic rights” that is under threat, adding she believes there are “many grounds for concern” about the government’s proposed changes.

The proposed freedom of information changes are part and parcel of a larger shift. 

Alberta is becoming a place where freedom is defined narrowly as freedom from — freedom from the rights of others, freedom from vaccines, freedom from regulation and, with proposed changes under Bill 34, freedom from factual information. It is a kind of freedom that pits individual rights against collective rights, inevitably eroding each. 

It could be seen as a deviation from the current government’s ideological underpinnings and its rhetoric of being “laser focused” on rights and freedoms. But in reality it is consistent with the broader populist jerk of the wheel underway in Alberta, where power is consolidated at the top as the government itself works to chisel away at its bureaucratic base and weakens the very institutions that protect citizens.

“Populists see institutions like courts, legislatures and independent bodies as barriers to the will of the people and work to weaken them, all while consolidating power,” Jared Wesley, a political scientist at the University of Alberta, wrote in an essay on the current moment in Alberta. 

“Over time, this approach doesn’t just create a less fair and open society — it risks destroying democracy altogether, leaving behind a system that looks democratic in name only.”

Alberta’s Bill 34 is a ‘horrible mess’: legal expert

In the past three months, The Narwhal has filed eight separate freedom of information requests regarding both the Banff-Airport rail plan and the related Green Line transit project in Calgary — the largest infrastructure project in the city’s history and a significant public policy issue for the provincial government, which all-but-quashed the project without warning in September.

Any and all useful information was redacted.

Stretching the bounds of credulity, one freedom of information coordinator said there were no records found for communication about the project in the premier’s office, between advisors or within the office of the minister of transportation and economic corridors.

The freedom of information system has long had problems, but the current government has applied exceptions built into the law which allows it to withhold information so broadly as to make the act almost useless. 

In another example, The Narwhal requested information regarding a port near Churchill, Man., something Smith has publicly supported alongside other premiers. 

There were almost no records released and a full 18 pages were completely withheld under the argument it was “advice from officials.”

After a review process, the government was compelled by the office of the information and privacy commissioner to release those 18 pages. It turns out they were the text of a speech given by Smith, in public, at a Calgary Chamber of Commerce event that was attended by media. There was no reason to withhold the documents, and the speech was of no consequence or use. The back-and-forth ate the time and resources of public servants (not to mention journalists) — and showed the government is eager to expand the definition of what can be hidden from view.

But it also represented a rare victory. The review was expedited and settled in one year from the time of the complaint. Most reviews take years.

Drew Yewchuk, a public-interest lawyer who specializes in freedom of information, told The Narwhal the Alberta government has a misguided view of why freedom of information exists. 

“Instead of thinking of the type of requests that you file and that most people file as being a legitimate use of freedom of information, they think of those requests as being harassment of the privacy that should be afforded to the executive branch.”

Bill 34, he said, “is just a horrible mess.”

Information commissioner says Bill 34 changes could mean an ‘inability to obtain the evidence that we need’ 

There is an argument to be made for withholding information — no government can function effectively with complete transparency. Sharing sensitive military data or the latest tactic for trade negotiations can indeed be a problem. There’s even a counter-intuitive argument to be made that too much official transparency results in more secrecy and back-room decision making outside of official channels.

But the changes in Alberta and their implications are significant and almost too numerous to note. Take one that would prevent any information being released that passes through “political staff.” The legislation has no definition of who constitutes political staff — ministers’ chiefs of staff? Summer interns? Everyone in-between? It will eventually be clarified — by cabinet and without debate in the legislature. 

The impact of this undefined protected class could trickle down throughout the government and its agencies to prevent the release of vast swaths of previously accessible documents. It could bar access to any and all communication between this staff and all levels of government. 

The new law would also bar the release of factual background information that was provided to the government to make decisions and assess the need for change.

“[That] means you won’t get information on what the situation currently is,” Yewchuk, who has written about the new restrictions, said in an interview.

He also noted the increased restrictions on information revolve mostly around the executive branch — the actual decision-makers and their deliberations — rather than the bureaucrats doing the work. This leaves those lower down the chain more open to scrutiny while protecting the top of the chain. 

McLeod, the current commissioner, is concerned about the broad exemptions for the executive branch and political staff and the ability of public bodies to deny and delay requests on their own. She said she made her concerns clear to the government — and released her concerns publicly as well. 

“Whether or not they took it to heart, I don’t know,” she said. “But what we have is what’s in the bill.”

By changing the law, the government changes the role of the information and privacy commissioner, who doesn’t have the authority to create law, only to interpret it. 

Under the new act, not only are there more restrictions on access to information, there is less power for the commissioner, including the ability to review documents to ensure the decision to withhold them is legal. 

McLeod expects more work for her already stretched office — she said she asked for a 30 per cent budget increase and received a six per cent bump — and more information being shielded from view.

“I guess a challenge for us will be what we expect to be increased reviews, increased exceptions due to the cabinet confidence carveouts in the legislation and our inability to obtain the evidence that we need to actually evaluate the records that are being used to refuse that information,” she said. 

If her office can’t even see the information that’s redacted, she said, “we really are at a disadvantage in terms of providing positive and proper interpretations.”

Reporting on government’s inner workings is in jeopardy with Bill 34

Wesley, in his essay on the state of democracy in Alberta, said populist parties like the United Conservatives have views on democracy and freedom that are at odds with what we’re used to. 

“Instead of protecting individual liberties and group rights, and ensuring diverse voices are heard, populists push a version of democracy that focuses only on the will of the majority — often at the expense of minorities and dissenters,” he wrote. 

Populists often invoke freedom, Wesley wrote, “but their concept of it is tied to loyalty to the dominant group rather than universal liberties.”

Once in power, he added, a populist party like the United Conservatives will attack institutions that challenge their mindset, remove the authority of those who can challenge them and stack boards and independent agencies with cronies. 

All of that can leave a paper trail (or its digital equivalents) that can embarrass a government still under the watchful eye of journalists and others. That paper trail is often only accessible through freedom of information laws.

Take Alberta’s electricity grid — a sprawling, complicated private system with some governmental oversight in the form of independent agencies and regulators —and its ongoing transformation under the United Conservatives. 

Documents obtained by The Narhwal showed the government under Smith put pressure on the independent grid operator to get in line with its controversial decision to halt new renewable energy development. It also showed the head of that operator, Mike Law, was deeply uncomfortable with the move and his staff felt pressure to “lie” on behalf of the government. 

The content of the documents weren’t the only revelations, however. The records obtained through freedom of information were from the grid operator, not the ministry of affordability and utilities, which withheld significant information from release. 

The documents painted a picture the government did not want painted. 

It was just one example of a restructuring taking place across Alberta as part of the government’s consolidation of power — think replacing university boards all at once, overriding municipalities, the Green Line fiasco, firing the board of the provincial pension agency and appointing Stephen Harper, changes to the bill of rights, the dissolution of Alberta Health Services and more.

Two months after revelations about the head of the grid operator pushing back against the government were published, Law was out of a job. His replacement was a board member appointed by the United Conservative government. 

He will oversee market reforms that will impact electricity prices, the ability to keep the lights on, the potential deployment of nuclear reactors and more.

With changes to Alberta’s freedom of information laws, those kinds of stories might not be told in Alberta again. 

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At least 16 fossil fuel companies operating in Canada’s oilsands allegedly broke rules requiring them to pay for environmental monitoring by independent scientists, according to newly released data from the Alberta government.

Alberta’s Environment and Protected Areas Ministry released the data to The Narwhal in November, about a month after the government lost a three-year battle to keep the names of 16 oilsands companies secret.

The companies paid financial penalties for allegedly flouting rules surrounding a joint Canada-Alberta scientific monitoring program, according to the newly released data. Federal and provincial officials introduced the program in 2012 to measure the cumulative effects of oilsands development on air, water, land and biodiversity.

The names of companies with late or unpaid fees include firms that wound up under bankruptcy protection or had their operations shut down for serious environmental infractions, such as Everest Canadian Resources and Sunshine Oilsands. They also include some larger multinational companies, including Koch, Imperial Oil, ConocoPhillips and MEG Energy, which faced fines for paying fees late.

For some critics, the late and unpaid fees cast doubt on how seriously Premier Danielle Smith’s government is taking its responsibility to manage the monitoring program.

Shannon Phillips was the environment minister in the former NDP government during a period when some of the fees went unpaid. She said she asked public servants to use all the tools of the government to collect the money after they informed her about the problem.

But she noted there was an internal government culture to cut the industry some slack.

“The default setting was to lay down and die in the face of corporate whining and tantrums,” she said. “But the public service knew that might not be the response if they brought me a problem to solve.”

Oilsands companies ‘rip us off’: former Alberta environment minister

The government has written off debts owed by companies like Everest, which went into bankruptcy protection. Sunshine Oilsands, Koch, ConocoPhillips and MEG Energy did not respond to requests for comment.

Alberta’s Environment Ministry also did not respond to a request for comment.

Environment and Climate Change Canada, which is a partner in the program, told The Narwhal in a statement that it was not engaged in the collection of fees since Alberta is responsible for enforcing its regulations. The federal department also noted that while Alberta had failed to release annual reports for the program for five years, the province had just published the missing reports on Dec. 6, 2024, with support from its federal counterparts. 

Imperial Oil confirmed in an email to The Narwhal that it made a 2018 payment that “was delayed briefly due to a system problem,” but the company denied being assessed a penalty. According to the government data, the company was late making a $2.15-million payment that year and faced a $64,567 penalty.

Phillips said she believes the current provincial government is cowering in the face of pressure from oil and gas companies and failing to ensure they follow the rules like everyone else.

“If I don’t pay my mortgage, which is the condition of the approval of me living in my house, the bank takes away my house,” she said in an interview. “If oil companies don’t pay their monitoring fees, which are a condition of their approval to extract the resources that belong to Albertans, nothing happens.” 

“Alberta allows oil and gas companies to rip us off on our fair share of the revenues while leaving us holding the bag on the costs,” Phillips said.

While there were more than 30 companies operating in the oilsands 10 years ago, the data released by the government indicates there are now only 24 that collectively pay for the monitoring program’s $50-million annual budget. Koch is reportedly among the companies that sold or abandoned oilsands leases.

Government’s refusal to release data triggered inquiry

The federal and provincial governments launched the program in response to international criticism and environmental campaigns accusing fossil fuel companies of producing “dirty oil” in the region. A panel appointed by the federal government recommended the framework for the program in a report released in 2010, proposing a “scientifically rigorous” approach to monitoring that is also “transparent and accessible.”

The Narwhal previously reported in 2021 on a redacted version of the data, released in response to a freedom of information request. At the time, the numbers confirmed some oilsands monitoring bills were going unpaid, but lacked specifics.

Subsequently, The Narwhal complained about the redactions, triggering an inquiry by the office of Alberta’s information watchdog. Although the government argued it would have more trouble enforcing the regulations if it released the data, an adjudicator rejected those arguments and ordered the ministry to release its spreadsheets tracking invoices and bill payments between 2015 and 2021 for the monitoring program.

The provincial government has refused to release additional numbers it tracked from 2021 to 2024, but a staffer responsible for responding to freedom of information requests told The Narwhal it is considering whether to release them, in light of the inquiry.

Critics see a ‘pattern’ of lenient rule enforcement in the oilsands

Jeff Brook, a former Environment and Climate Change Canada scientist who has been involved with research as part of the program, said the program is essential to ensure the best regulations are in place to mitigate harm caused by industry.

“Regulations will tell you to look under the light post,” Brook, a faculty member at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, said in an interview. “But there’s a lot that’s not underneath the light post.”

But the apparent secrecy surrounding the fees contrasts with Alberta regulations requiring all the information it gathers in relation to the monitoring program to be public.

Some researchers say they believe the industry is sometimes playing games to block progress in improving the monitoring system.

David Spink, an environmental consultant whose work includes air quality monitoring near Fort McKay First Nation in northern Alberta, accuses industry stakeholders of trying to block some proposed research with claims that there is not enough money available to proceed.

“Overall, there’s no doubt industry wants to keep the costs of this program down so that there’s not pressure on them to increase their contributions to the fund,” Spink said in an interview.

The other companies fined for late or unpaid fees were Pengrowth Energy Corporation, Value Creation, Southern Pacific Resource Corp., Surmont Energy, Birchwood Resources, Connacher Oil and Gas Limited, Ivanhoe Energy, Grizzly Oil Sands, Greenfire Resources and Prosper Petroleum. Some of the companies no longer appear to be operating or active. In a few cases, their assets were sold following insolvency.

Aliénor Rougeot, senior program manager for climate and energy at Toronto-based Environmental Defence Canada, said she believes it’s part of a pattern of behaviour when it comes to enforcing rules for Canada’s oil and gas industry.

“Of course, one-off mistakes happen, and you wouldn’t want to be drawing a conclusion if there was a one-off administrative mistake,” she told The Narwhal. “The reality though is when it comes to the oilsands, we see a pattern of either a lack of enforcement of rules or very lenient enforcement, which is what we’re seeing here.”

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As construction of the Woodfibre LNG project gets underway in Squamish, B.C., locals are worried about potential air pollution and health impacts from flaring — the process of burning off excess gas, mostly in the form of methane. 

Woodfibre has estimated flaring will occur during about three per cent of the plant’s operations, or on about 11 days per year. Tracy Saxby, co-founder of the local environmental group My Sea to Sky, says that’s too many. 

“That exceeds the definition of a high amount of flaring, based on this new research that shows that being exposed to flaring at fossil fuel facilities for more than 10 days a year can have significant impacts for human health,” Saxby told The Narwhal. She said chronic exposure to flaring can increase rates of asthma, heart disease, lung disease, premature death and mortality.

After hearing Squamish-area residents’ Woodfibre-related worries, University of Victoria researcher Laura Minet decided to launch the first Canadian study on the potential health impacts of flaring from the Woodfibre liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility. 

Minet agreed studies indicate oil and gas development can impact the health of local communities, but said it’s difficult to draw comparisons with LNG export facilities “because it’s [a] different context.” 

“I think it’s all a question of magnitude and how much flaring is happening,” she said. “What we can for sure say is … there are very high chances that it’s going to have impacts on the health of the community.”

But according to Minet, an assistant professor in civil engineering, her attempts to get modelling data for Woodfibre flaring have hit a wall.

In October 2023, Minet filed a freedom of information request with the B.C. Ministry of Environment and the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office, hoping to get access to details about how Woodfibre LNG modelled the potential impacts of any flaring for its environmental assessment. 

Two significant concerns are Woodfibre’s proximity to residential areas in Squamish, with a population of 24,000, and local geography. Howe Sound is a long, narrow ocean inlet. Its steep sides, formed by glaciers, make the inlet susceptible to inversions, where a layer of warm air traps cooler air in the space below.

“That means that if there’s excess air pollution, air pollution could be also trapped close to the ground under certain meteorological conditions,” such as during heat waves, Minet, who heads the university’s clean air lab, said in an interview.

Minet requested a copy of emission dispersion modelling files referenced in a 2015 memo from Golder Associates, the consulting firm that compiled Woodfibre’s environmental impact assessment submissions. In the memo, a Golder employee promises to provide the files to the Ministry of Environment on an external hard drive.

“The response I got from them was that they couldn’t find a hard drive and they couldn’t actually find any proof that they had received it from Golder Associates,” Minet said. 

The Narwhal also filed a freedom of information request seeking the modelling files referenced in the Golder memo. In response, the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office said the files were publicly posted on its website. But after reviewing the data cited by the office, Minet disagreed.

“These memos are responses to [questions] asked by the Ministry of Environment on the modelling done by Golder Associates, and provide some information on the modelling assumptions, but they are not modelling files.”

Woodfibre LNG is majority owned by Indonesian billionaire Sukanto Tanoto’s Pacific Energy Corporation. The gas export project is under construction on the site of an old pulp and paper mill on the shore of Howe Sound. It’s one of three approved LNG projects in B.C. including the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat, B.C., which will be Canada’s first LNG facility to ship compressed gas overseas. Four other LNG projects are proposed in the province.

In an emailed response to questions from The Narwhal, Woodfibre spokesperson Sean Beardow did not directly answer a question about the amount of flaring that will take place. “There will be flaring associated with initial start up and we’re exploring different avenues on how to reduce it as much as possible,” he said.

Woodfibre aims to minimize flaring by redirecting gas that evaporates from LNG storage tanks to the liquefaction facility instead of flaring it, according to Beardow. He said Woodfibre LNG — unlike the larger LNG Canada project — will use electric compressors, which can help reduce flaring because they require maintenance less frequently than gas-powered compressors and don’t need to flare gas when restarting after maintenance.

When Woodfibre LNG plans to flare gas, it is required to notify the District of Squamish, Squamish Nation, Musqueam Indian Band and Tsleil-Waututh Nation at least 24 hours in advance, Beardow said. In the event of unplanned flaring, the company is required to advise local governments within 24 hours of the start of flaring if the quantity of gas exceeds a specific volume — 10,000 cubic metres per event — or flaring occurs for more than four hours in a row.

Beardow did not directly answer a question about the impact flaring may have on air quality and human health, saying only that B.C. has “a world-class regulatory framework that protects both the environment and human health alike.”

“Woodfibre LNG trusts in the province’s regulatory system and will operate within its established limits in all aspects of its operations, including flaring,” Beardow added in an email.

Environmental assessments often rely on vague and optimistic flaring estimates provided by project proponents: Minet

The missing modelling files aren’t the only data issues observed by Minet and her team. Tim Takaro, a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Health Sciences who is involved in the Woodfibre LNG study, said there are “many, many problems” with flaring estimates for the project. 

“One of the big obvious ones is that the largest release period is during the startup — generally one to two years, sometimes longer — and during maintenance. But in the environmental assessment, they leave out that they start their calculations during the running phase where the emissions are the lowest.”

The Narwhal asked the B.C. environment ministry if ​​flaring during the plant’s startup was included in Woodfibre’s environmental assessment, but did not receive a direct answer. Instead, the ministry cited a supplemental report that states “flaring will occur under controlled conditions during introduction of hydrocarbons” while the plant is starting up and systems are tested. Woodfibre anticipates flaring will occur less than three per cent of the time, the report says.

Woodfibre also estimates the project’s start-up and system testing will last one month and involve “intermittent flaring periods lasting up to three or four days at any one time,” according to the supplemental report.

In Kitimat, residents have been advised the LNG Canada gas liquefaction facility could be flaring continuously for up to three months as the facility tests equipment in preparation to launch its first shipments to Asia next year.

Minet said potential human health impacts of flaring haven’t been extensively researched, partly due to the relatively small number of LNG export facilities — which cool and compress natural gas for easier transport — around the world. Currently, about 40 plants are operating worldwide and about half of them have opened in the past 15 years.

The Woodfibre study, which involves a team of scientists from University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, University of Toronto and Texas A&M University, as well as officials from Vancouver Coastal Health and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, will add to a growing body of research about the burgeoning industry.

“My hope is to be able to provide information on what is happening around the world at LNG export facilities,” Minet said. “This information could be a good basis for future environmental impact assessments. We can rely partly on what the proponents are saying and how much flaring is going to occur in those facilities, but it’s good to compare this with what has been observed at other facilities and also build worst-case scenarios.” 

Most environmental impact assessment documents compiled by LNG proponents are “based on best case scenarios,” according to Minet. 

“They never model a case when they’re going to have to flare a lot because there are maintenance issues or because the facility has to close for a certain period of time,” she said, adding estimates about flaring frequency are often quite vague.

“Looking at environmental impact assessments from other LNG export facilities around the world, the information that’s communicated to the public is always very generic — ‘We’re expecting to flare a bit, but not too much’ — and we have no idea what this is based on.” 

“There’s been a lot of flaring happening at some energy export facilities in the U.S. and notably in Australia — and some reports of journalists saying that the communities around them have been affected and have reported potential health issues associated with this excess flaring,” Minet said.

Government agencies, including B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, use estimates provided by project proponents when deciding whether to approve projects like Woodfibre LNG. 

In the U.S., Saxby pointed out, some liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities have underestimated the frequency and duration of flaring. “Those frontline communities disproportionately shoulder the burden of pollution and there are significant health risks.”

She said if flaring is underestimated, “it means that the local air quality impacts and the associated health impacts are also being underestimated — and that’s a really big problem.” 

B.C. government can’t locate files mentioned in Woodfibre LNG environmental assessment 

The Narwhal’s freedom of information request for the emissions modelling files was closed by the government, which said there were “no records.” Minet is still waiting for her request to be fulfilled.

“They said, ‘We have other files that we can provide you, other documents,’ which I assume would be the emails between Golder and the [ministry] just to understand the assumptions. But we’re a year later, and I haven’t received them yet.”

The environment ministry has not responded to questions The Narwhal emailed in August, asking if the hard drive and modelling files have been located and if any efforts have been made to obtain them.

When The Narwhal asked Woodfibre about the files, Beardow directed us to the assessment office website.

Saxby is deeply concerned that Woodfibre LNG may have received its environmental assessment certificate without providing the data on which its estimates about flaring and potential health impacts are based.

“From our perspective, that completely invalidates Woodfibre LNG’s environmental assessment certificate,” she said. “There’s a lot of concerns about this project and the fact that it hasn’t been properly assessed … Everybody that lives in the community and in Howe Sound are being put at risk. Our health is being put at risk.”

Takaro shares Saxby’s concern that Woodfibre LNG’s environmental assessment certificate may have been issued despite a lack of modelling data about flaring from the project.

“How is it possible that a company … can operate in a space that protects them from scrutiny of people who know about the health effects of those emissions?”

Minet hopes study findings will help challenge environmental impact assessment standards

Without the modelling for Woodfibre’s flaring emissions, Minet and her colleagues have turned to other data sources to assess in the study.

“What we’re doing now is reviewing data that is publicly available on all LNG export facilities that are open around the world already, [and] that includes looking at satellite data,” she said. 

Understanding how often other LNG plants are flaring and how local conditions, like weather and geography, influence the dispersal of those emissions will enable Minet’s team to assemble a range of projections for flaring at Woodfibre, from best-case to worst-case scenarios.

Once the study is published, Minet hopes it will be a resource for the other LNG projects making their way through the environmental assessment process. Those include the Ksi Lisims LNG project, which would be the province’s second-largest LNG export project if approved. The proposed projects could collectively produce 30 million tonnes of LNG per year on top of about 19 million tonnes per year from Woodfibre, LNG Canada and Cedar LNG.

“My hope is to question those environmental impact assessments … and see if we could better define them to include more worst-case scenarios, to have a better picture of what could happen to the community, rather than relying on best-case scenarios.”

Woodfibre LNG was approved by the B.C. government in 2015 and the Squamish Nation in 2018. The company expects to ship about 2.1 million tonnes of LNG overseas each year, starting in 2027.

Updated Dec. 2, 2024, at TK:TK p.m. MT. This story has been updated to remove a reference to Howe Sound being the world’s most southerly fjord.Updated Dec. 2, 2024, at 9:40 a.m. PT. This story has been updated to remove a reference to Howe Sound being the world’s most southerly fjord.

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The B.C. government is considering listing more than three dozen plants and animals as species at risk in a move that could allow officials to better protect critical habitat from clearcut logging, according to records The Narwhal obtained through a freedom of information request.

Under the Forest and Range Practices Act, the B.C. government can set aside wildlife habitat areas where logging is limited or banned or establish wildlife conservation objectives forestry companies must consider in their operations. However, these tools can only be used to protect plants and animals listed as at-risk species under the act — a list that hasn’t been updated since 2006.

“The significance of this is actually monumental,” biologist Jared Hobbs told The Narwhal in an interview.

If a species isn’t on that list, it isn’t afforded any protections under the act and “we can do nothing for it,” he said.

“It’s good to see the government recognize that the list needs to be updated,” Sarah Korpan, a legislative affairs specialist with the environmental law charity Ecojustice, said in an interview. 

The key is what happens next, she said.

“If you go to the doctor and you just get a diagnosis, but you don’t get a treatment, then it doesn’t really feel like you’re getting the medical care that you need,” she said. “It’s the same thing with a list like this.”

Currently about 85 plants, animals and ecological communities are listed under the Forest and Range Practices Act. That’s far fewer than the roughly 1,950 species and ecological communities the B.C. government’s conservation data centre considers to be at some risk of extinction or even the 330 species in B.C. considered to be endangered, threatened or of special concern by the scientific committee that advises the federal government on at-risk species. While not all of those species may be affected by logging or range activities, internal government records acknowledge the list under the Forest and Range Practices Act “has become out of alignment” with the federal list.

To help address this, provincial officials have proposed listing an additional 42 species under the provincial act, including bison, mountain goats, wandering salamanders, yellow rails, Interior Fraser steelhead and hoary bats, according to the internal records. Another seven fish species have been proposed for listing in a subsequent update.

“There is some urgency to update the species lists so that wildlife habitat provisions under [the Forest and Range Practices Act] and [Energy Resource Activities Act] are enabled for these species, many of which are experiencing declines or are at risk,” officials wrote in an October 2023 briefing document.

Despite this urgency, the list won’t be updated before the Oct. 19 provincial election.

In a statement to The Narwhal, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship said the ministry has engaged with First Nations, industry associations representing forest, range and oil and gas sectors and other stakeholders about the proposed updates.

After the election, ministry officials will provide an update to the minister on the work completed to date.

‘A wickedly powerful piece of legislation that is grossly under implemented’ 

While observers say listing species under the Forest and Range Practices Act is a positive step, some warn it may not be enough to recover declining wildlife populations.

“Very few species under that list have seen a lot of effective measures put in place to protect and restore their populations,” Korpan said. “The stark example here is the fact that the spotted owl is on this list.”

Northern spotted owl populations plummeted as the old-growth forests they relied on in southwest B.C. were systematically cut down. Despite these declines, logging has continued in what little habitat the owls have left, even as the province invested several million dollars in a captive breeding program it says will help recover the population.

“This is a wickedly powerful piece of legislation that is grossly under implemented,” Hobbs said.

He said two major challenges have limited the effective use of the wildlife provisions under the Forest and Range Practices Act for some species, the first being a lack of resources. The second was a clause in the act’s regulations that constrained the government from “unduly reducing the supply of timber from British Columbia’s forests” in its efforts to protect at-risk species.

In some cases, that clause meant some of the wildlife habitat areas biologists proposed to protect at-risk species such as the spotted owl and marbled murrelets were not established and instead left open to logging, Hobbs explained.

But the unduly clause has now been revoked. That “opens up the gates for us to propose protection of habitat for these species at risk,” he said.

Hobbs was contracted by the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship to identify potential wildlife habitat areas for the species that could be added to the at-risk list. 

For just 33 of the species under consideration, Hobbs identified more than 735,000 hectares that could be protected as wildlife habitat areas under the Forest and Range Practices Act if those species are listed. And, he’s confident he could identify more potential habitat to protect.

“It would be a huge advance and step forward in their protection and recovery. And it’s one that can’t be overestimated. It is massive,” he said.

While Hobbs said wildlife habitat areas have been criticized for being “a bit of a postage stamp approach, if you look at the landscape, 2,000 postage stamps add up.”

‘Missed that boat’ on conserving some endangered fish habitat

In some cases, though, any protections the Forest and Range Practices Act may offer newly listed species could be too little, too late, Jesse Zeman, executive director of the B.C. Wildlife Federation, said in an interview.

Provincial officials have, for instance, proposed listing the upper Fraser River, Nechako River, Upper Columbia River and Kootenay River populations of endangered white sturgeon under the Forest and Range Practices Act. 

Logging can harm fish habitat by reducing shade or increasing the sediment that can flow into streams. But Zeman noted there’s already been salvage logging across large stretches of forest affected by pine beetle infestations around the Upper Fraser and Nechako. “So, we missed that boat decades ago,” he said.

“Is it going to hurt? No. Is it going to make a substantive difference for these fish? No,” he said. 

At the same time, the tools available under the Forest and Range Practices Act won’t do much to address other, sometimes more pressing, threats, Zeman added. He pointed to hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River as a major barrier for white sturgeon, as one example.

“Getting rid of some dams would really help, like our neighbours to the south have been doing,” he said, referring to major dam removal projects underway in the U.S. to restore fish populations.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship acknowledged that in some cases the tools available under the Forest and Range Practices Act may not address the major threats to some species. But the spokesperson said they can be part of broader recovery strategies, pointing to the potential benefits of reduced logging on fish habitat as an example.

The spokesperson added that the provisions under [the Forest and Range Practices Act] and [Energy Resource Activities Act] are part of “a suite of laws,” including the Parks Act and the Wildlife Act, the government uses to manage at-risk species and their habitat.

It’s an approach, though, that’s been described as piecemeal and criticized for legal gaps that leave species vulnerable.

‘We need a stand-alone law’ to protect at-risk species: advocate

For years, conservation groups and First Nations have raised concerns B.C. has prioritized the needs of natural resource industries over fish and wildlife, leading to the dramatic declines of several species. But over the past several years, the provincial government has been working to modernize its forestry policies, including through updates to the Forest and Range Practices Act and associated regulations.

Two potentially significant shifts include an increase in regional forest planning, which will identify where and how forestry activities can take place in different areas, and the removal of the “unduly” clause from regulations. 

Korpan is interested to see whether the removal of that clause leads to stronger protections for species listed under the act — but noted there’s still more to do.

“We need a stand-alone law that specifically prioritizes the protection and better stewardship of biodiversity and ecosystems — and prioritizes that protection and stewardship over natural resource activity,” she said.

Last year, the province released a draft biodiversity and ecosystem health framework for public consultation, committing to prioritizing the needs of nature and eventually enshrining that commitment in provincial law. But with an election in the offing, it remains unclear when the framework will be finalized or when British Columbians can expect to see a new law. When asked by The Narwhal about the timeline, the ministry provided only a summary of what has been done to date.

At-risk species being considered for listing under the Forest and Range Practices Act

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