B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan has written to B.C. Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald to urge the crown corporation not to finalize any contracts or evict any residents to make way for the Site C dam until a new government is in place.

“I note that the majority of British Columbians who voted in this election voted for parties that want to see the Site C project reviewed or stopped,” Horgan wrote to McDonald.

A co-operation agreement between the B.C. NDP and Green Party released this week indicated that if the NDP forms government, Site C will immediately be sent for an expedited review by the B.C. Utilities Commission.

However, construction will not be paused during the review, which has led to concerns that irreversible harm could be done to the Peace Valley in the coming months. Enter today’s letter to McDonald.

“I write to you today to express my concern regarding impacts on the community of Bear Flat, the West Moberly First Nation, the Prophet River First Nation, and other families and communities impacted by the government’s decision to expropriate lands for the advancement of Site C,” Horgan wrote.

Horgan to Hydro: Don’t Sign New Site C Contracts or Evict Residents https://t.co/b8qEt4mcnj #SiteC #bcpoli @jjhorgan @bchydroceo pic.twitter.com/YRb8dkRO3B

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 2, 2017

B.C. Hydro recently extended the leases for some families in the Peace Valley by one month beyond the original May 31st eviction date.

“While this is a welcome respite, I believe there is no demonstrated short term need to force these families from their homes, and because the status of the next governments of British Columbia are uncertain, the threat of imminent removal of residents from their expropriated homes and property is unreasonable,” Horgan wrote.

“Given what the Premier has characterized as a probable change in government over the coming weeks, we urge BC Hydro to suspend the evictions from these lands and grant a further extension on the timeline so that impacted families can stay in their homes until the future of Site C is firmly determined.”

With a price tag of $9 billion, the Site C dam is the most expensive public infrastructure project in B.C.’s history. The reservoir created by the dam will flood 107 kilometres of the Peace River. Experts have raised questions about the cost of the project and need for the power.

B.C. Hydro has faced several federal orders for failing to comply with environmental conditions, the most recent order being issued this week and coming with the threat of a $400,000 fine.

Horgan also raised concerns about any moves that would increase the liability of B.C. Hydro and ratepayers.

“We urge B.C. Hydro not to finalize any contracts that do not contain a penalty-free cancellation clause until a new government has gained the confidence of the legislature to govern and decide future policy regarding the Site C project."

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.

Fast-tracking Site C dam construction before May’s provincial election is an unusual decision driven more by politics than need, according to a Canadian expert in Crown corporations who suggests the relationship between BC Hydro and the Premier’s office may be “too close for comfort.”

Luc Bernier, the former head of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, said Premier Christy Clark’s vow to push Site C past the “point of no return,” when B.C. has a surplus of electricity and Clark is still searching for a buyer for Site C’s power, leads him to believe that that “there’s too much politics around BC Hydro.”

“What seems unusual to me is the idea of locking up this project before the provincial election,” said Bernier, who holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management at the University of Ottawa.

“If B.C. doesn’t need the electricity for the next decade or so there’s no emergency to build it…The only emergency in this project is the coming election.”

BC Hydro’s Site C spokesperson Dave Conway has said Site C’s power may not be needed for up to 40 years.

Flat Demand Could Make Site C ‘Nightmarish Project’

Demand for electricity has been falling in B.C. since 2008, and the B.C. government now says it wants to sell Site C’s power to Alberta to electrify the oilsands, a move that Harry Swain, chair of the Joint Review Panel that examined Site C for the federal and provincial governments, called an “act of desperation.”

Swain pointed out that BC Hydro never mentioned Alberta as a potential market for Site C’s power in its application for an environmental assessment certificate for the project.

Earlier, high electricity demand from anticipated Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production was one of the reasons the B.C. government gave for building Site C. That demand has never materialized.

Given that B.C. has so much power that BC Hydro is paying independent power producers millions of dollars a year not to produce electricity, Clark is now counting on federal taxpayers to share the cost of a proposed $1 billion transmission line to send Site C’s power to Alberta, although Alberta has not yet committed to buying the electricity.

“If you don’t need the electricity you’re going to have a bill for nine billion dollars for a dam you don’t need,” Bernier said in an interview, pointing out that another large hydroelectricity project, the Muskrat Falls dam in Labrador, has become a financial boondoggle, in part because its power is not required.

“It’s not going to be a profitable project, it’s going to be a nightmarish project,” Bernier said of Muskrat Falls, which will add an average of $1,800 to the annual hydro bill of every customer in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Economist Jim Brander, a professor at UBC’s Sauders School of Business, said BC Hydro’s technical staff, not politicians, should make the decision about the need to push Site C past the point of no return, based on questions such as electricity demand and the dam’s projected rate of return.

A Crown corporation’s senior management should be arms-length from political issues, so that decisions can be made on a technical basis and not for political reasons, Brander said in an interview.

“We think that it leads to better management when the managers are able to be managers and not politicians.”

Like Bernier, Brander has concerns about the connections between BC Hydro and the Premier’s office, saying it is too close for the appearance of good governance and integrity.

Premier’s Office Involvement in BC Hydro Media Relations ‘Very Rare’

While both experts said any government would want oversight of a project as large as Site C, the Premier’s office’s direct involvement in BC Hydro’s media relations is “very rare” and the close connection between BC Hydro and the Premier’s office “makes me uncomfortable,” said Brander, who personally believes Site C’s power will eventually be needed.

“Even if there is nothing wrong, it doesn’t look good if the managers of the Crown corporation are too close to members of the government, just for the sake of appearances. And appearances are important, because it’s very important that people believe that these governance purposes are honest and legitimate.”

Besties? @BCHydro and Premier’s Office Too Close for Comfort, Experts Suggest https://t.co/EE3uNaJwC1 #bcpoli #bcelxn17 #SiteC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 31, 2017

BC Hydro Directors Closely Linked to BC Liberals

Brad Bennett, the Kelowna businessman Clark appointed in September 2015 to chair BC Hydro’s board of directors, was a chief advisor to Clark during her 2013 election campaign and toured the province with the premier.

In September, the BC Hydro board chair nominated Clark to run for the B.C. Liberals in the premier’s riding of West Kelowna. He spoke in Clark’s support as she was acclaimed and posed with the premier behind a “Re-elect Christy Clark” banner.

“We’re going to be heading into a [election] campaign in April,” Bennett told members of the B.C. Liberal Party and the community. “Our biggest enemy when things are feeling good isn’t the NDP necessarily, it’s apathy within our own ranks.”

Bennett is the president of McIntosh Properties Ltd., a real estate investment and private equity investment company that donated more than $30,000 to the B.C. Liberal Party from 2005 to August 2015, according to Elections BC.

He is the son of former B.C. Premier Bill Bennett, whose plans to build Site C in the early 80s were turned down by the quasi-judicial B.C. Utilities Commission, saying that B.C. did not need the power at the time.

It was at the former premier’s funeral last January that Clark made her vow to finish what Bill Bennett had started and hustle Site C past the “point of no return.”

Brad Bennett is also the grandson of W.A.C. Bennett, who built the first dam on the Peace River and named it after himself. W.A.C. Bennett planned the Peace Canyon Dam that, along with his namesake’s larger dam, supplies about one-third of BC Hydro electricity, and he also proposed to build Site C, the third dam on the Peace River, a designated B.C. heritage river.

The connections between BC Hydro and the Premier’s office extend further than the Bennett family.

Six of 10 members of BC Hydro’s board or directors appear as donors to the BC Liberal party in the province’s online political donations database — although it is possible the donations were made by other people with the exact same names.

The name of a seventh Hydro board member is listed as the principal officer for a company that donated to the Liberals. An eighth Hydro board member, Jack Weisgerber, is a former Liberal MLA who was the Minister of Energy and Mines in the Campbell administration and also worked as a BC Hydro consultant on Site C from 2007 to 2014.

BC Hydro’s CEO is Jessica McDonald, who served as deputy minister to former B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell — the person responsible for resurrecting Site C after BC Hydro’s board of directors announced in 1993 that the project would be shelved permanently because it was too expensive, too environmentally destructive and too damaging for First Nations.

Campbell’s government changed the law to exempt Site C from review by the watchdog B.C. Utilities Commission, which traditionally has examined power projects to ensure they are in the public interest.

While McDonald had no experience in the energy sector, she previously headed B.C.’s public service, managing 36,000 employees and overseeing an annual budget of $40 billion.

McDonald’s ex-husband Mike McDonald is Clark’s former chief of staff. He is heading the B.C. Liberal’s re-election campaign this spring, after leading their 2013 election campaign and Clark’s bid for leadership of the B.C. Liberal Party.

Mike McDonald is a senior associate at Kirk & Co., one of B.C.’s top communications firms, which received a six-year Site C contract for communications, consultation and community relations. (The contract ended in 2013, the same year that Mike McDonald joined the firm after working closely with them for the previous decade, according to the Kirk & Co. website, and prior to Jessica McDonald’s 2014 appointment as head of BC Hydro).

“I’m not sure if it’s not too close for comfort,” said Bernier, who directs the Centre for Research on Governance at Quebec’s National School of Public Administration.

“If we were talking about Prince Edward Island with 240,000 people living there, everyone is related to everyone. Is it necessary in 2017 in B.C. to be that close?”

In the absence of a demonstrated need for Site C’s power, Clark’s team talks mainly about the jobs that will be created by the $8.8 billion dam, which as the largest publicly funded project in B.C.’s history will be paid for with money out of British Columbians’ own pockets.

Clark’s Jobs Promises Coming Up Empty

Job creation has become an issue of paramount importance heading into the B.C. election campaign. Virtually none of the 100,000 jobs Clark promised in the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry have materialized and the premier’s much-touted jobs plan has failed to produce employment gains outside the Lower Mainland and Capital Regional District.

When Clark announced provincial Cabinet approval of Site C in December 2014, she promised, to little scrutiny, that the project would create 10,000 direct construction jobs.

By the end of November, according to BC Hydro, Site C employed close to 1,800 people, including in service jobs such as housing and kitchen work at the $470 million Site C workers accommodation facility in Fort St. John. About 650 of the workers were from the Peace River area.

Site C’s November employment tally includes more than 400 jobs in engineering and on Site C’s Project Team, including at BC Hydro’s head office in Vancouver, and more than 50 contract professional and office managers and supervisors.

BC Hydro said Site C will create “many more jobs” in the coming months and years, but how many of those will be construction jobs remains to be seen.

Clark has repeatedly said Site C will be delivered on budget, a statement questioned by former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen, who called the project a “white elephant” and said it could have disastrous consequences for B.C. hydro rates, already in the middle of a scheduled 28 per cent increase over five years.

BC Hydro points out that B.C.’s electricity rates are still among the lowest in North America, saying that the planned rate increases are needed to replace aging infrastructure and invest in new projects to meet what the Crown corporation calls a “growing demand for power” in its communications materials.

The Joint Review Panel that examined Site C concluded that BC Hydro had not demonstrated the need for the dam’s power in the timeframe it presented, and recommended the project be referred to the B.C. Utilities Commission for an independent review of the need for Site C’s electricity and the project’s cost.

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.

BC Hydro officials and members of Premier Christy Clark and Energy Minister Bill Bennett’s offices were all involved in a coordinated attempt to discredit DeSmog Canada’s reporting on the $8.8 billion Site C hydroelectric dam, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

The documents detail a flurry of e-mails following a DeSmog Canada story that quoted former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen saying that Site C was proceeding without due diligence, would lead to escalating hydro rate increases and was “scheduled to become a big white elephant,” a story later referenced by the New York Times.

BC Hydro officials were concerned that major B.C. media would pick up on the DeSmog Canada story, based largely on a BC Hydro progress report to the B.C. Utilities Commission. That report noted that Site C had fallen behind on four out of seven key milestones and outlined project risks and reasons why Site C had spent more money than anticipated by the end of last March, while saying that the project’s overall forecast still remained on track.

“This is expected to generate media interest,” Craig Fitzsimmons, BC Hydro’s manager of communications and issues management for Site C, flagged in e-mails to the Premier’s office and Bennett’s office, informing them that numbers in the article came from the Crown corporation’s own report.

The Premier’s office directed BC Hydro to respond to the article immediately even though it was the start of the Canada Day long weekend, a sign of the top priority Clark’s team has placed on controlling the story line on the Site C dam, the most expensive publicly funded project in B.C.’s history.

Two days later, internal Hydro e-mails show, BC Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald took aim at an opinion editorial that had been published more than one month earlier in the print and online editions of The Province newspaper.

The opinion piece was based entirely on a DeSmog Canada story published the previous day about BC Hydro’s ongoing civil law suit against some of the Peace Valley farmers and First Nations members involved in the Rocky Mountain Fort winter camp, which delayed Site C clear-cutting of a B.C. heritage site for two months. The piece quoted the head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association who called the lawsuit, which seeks financial damages for BC Hydro from individuals, a matter of “grave concern” because of its potential to curtail freedom of expression.  

McDonald, saying erroneously that the opinion piece had changed a month after publication and now contained “commentary that is even more misleading than before” asked top staff if it were possible to “dust off” a one-month-old unpublished BC Hydro letter to the editor of The Province and “create a new piece that hits back.”

“I feel this is really important as we head into the Paddle for the Peace which is focused on the Boon’s property next weekend and will be very focused on stopping the federal authorizations based on our supposed unfairness,” wrote McDonald.

McDonald was referring to Ken and Arlene Boon, two of the Peace Valley farmers named in Hydro’s civil law suit, whose third-generation farmland and home were expropriated by BC Hydro in December for a Site C highway relocation. At the time the e-mail was written, BC Hydro was waiting for federal authorizations for Site C that were subsequently granted by the Trudeau government, even though First Nations leaders had requested that the permits be withheld.

According to the internal Hydro e-mails, McDonald said she wanted a statement drafted to say that information in the opinion piece was “inaccurate.” She also wanted her staff to make sure BC Hydro was “closely monitoring” some DeSmog Canada articles and to flag when there were updates.

McDonald wanted it to be made clear that BC Hydro supports freedom of expression and is taking legal action only to prevent people from physically blockading work on the project. But the documents also suggest that BC Hydro wanted to do more.

“I talked to Jessica and she would like to hit Sarah Cox hard for never contacting us for an interview on the issue, continuing to ignore our input, and then ramping up the rhetoric,” said an e-mail written by Danielle Van Huizen, a senior business advisor in McDonald’s office.

That prompted a quick reply from BC Hydro’s Site C spokesperson Dave Conway, who informed colleagues that Hydro had indeed been contacted for comment three times over a five-day period, by e-mail and phone.

Screenshots of documents obtained through Freedom of Information legislation indicating BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald would like to hit DeSmog Canada contributor Sarah Cox "hard" for her writing on Site C. 

“We will have to be careful what we write and be sure legal has a look at it,” advised Van Huizen in another email.

Two days later, BC Hydro issued a news release, approved by Bennett’s office and including text from a letter to the editor approved by the Premier’s office, saying there were “inaccuracies” in the five-week old Province opinion piece, and also saying that the piece had been “posted” more than one month later than its actual publication date.

That followed closely on the heels of a BC Hydro news release, approved by both the Premier’s office and Bennett’s office, which attempted to discredit DeSmog Canada’s story about Hydro’s progress report to the utilities commission, saying it contained “inaccurate statements.” 

BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald would like to hit DeSmog contributor Sarah Cox “hard” for her writing on #SiteC https://t.co/4GNzCYzNyG

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 17, 2017

At that point, DeSmog Canada sent a registered letter to Simi Heer, Hydro’s manager of media relations and issues management, asking BC Hydro to identify any factual inaccuracies so that they could be corrected. Heer, who later left BC Hydro, did not respond to the letter, or to e-mails and a phone call. BC Hydro has never contacted DeSmog Canada directly to request any story corrections.

Dozens of pages were redacted from BC Hydro’s 1,600-page FOI response on the grounds that they “were penned for the purpose of seeking or providing legal advice.” Other pages, including parts of e-mails written by McDonald about the opinion piece, were redacted on the grounds that releasing the full e-mails would constitute an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy.

The FOI documents also reveal how top officials in the Premier’s office and Bennet’s office control other media relations regarding the Site C dam, as reported by the Vancouver Sun last week based on a DeSmog Canada FOI to the Premier’s office that is now publicly available.

Construction of the Site C Dam on the Peace River. Photo: Garth Lenz/DeSmog Canada

The Premier’s office and Bennett’s office directed the timing of various Site C announcements, including an announcement about the completion of a temporary bridge across the Peace River, which Bennett did not want BC Hydro to make too close to an April increase in hydro rates.

Both offices were also involved in the timing for an announcement about the completion of the $470 million lodge for Site C construction workers, which cost BC Hydro customers almost as much as Clark’s pre-election pledge to spend $500 million on affordable housing projects to help alleviate the Lower Mainland’s housing crisis.

The offices also vetted a BC Hydro press release, which included quotes from Clark and Bennett, announcing that a $470 million contract had been awarded to Voith Hydro Inc. to supply turbines and generators for the Site C dam.

According to Luc Bernier, a Canadian expert in Crown corporations, BC Hydro should have more independence from the government to ensure that sound decisions are being made.

Bernier said it is not unusual for governments to be kept apprised of developments on large publicly funded projects like Site C, and to control and to supervise these projects to a certain extent, because they are highly visible.

But directing day-to-day communications can lead to decisions being made for political reasons and not because they are in the best interests of the Crown corporation, said Bernier, who holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management at the University of Ottawa and is the former head of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. 

“For the proper functioning of Crown corporations it should be more independent. We do put these organizations further away from politics to make sure the main reason to exist — in this case to produce electricity — is not done for political reasons.”

Public sector management expert David Zussman said the question of how independent Crown corporations should be from governments is a contentious issue right across the country.

“In recent years in particular there’s been a distancing of the Crowns from the government,” said Zussman, a former dean of the University of Ottawa’s School of Management and previous commissioner of the Public Service Commission of Canada.

“The trends today I would say are for greater independence of Crown corporations.” Hydro Quebec, for instance, is a far more independent entity than it was 30 years ago and Zussman said to the best of his knowledge it has “almost nothing to do with the government” today.

To achieve good governance, Zussman said Crown corporations “should operate independently from government on a day to day basis,” adding that what exactly that means is open to interpretation.

The FOI request to the Premier’s office also asked for e-mails and documents related to Site C’s most recent budget and timeline, but that information was not forthcoming. Fourteen pages of the response were redacted.

Screenshot of a consent order compelling BC Hydro to release documents requested by DeSmog Canada via Freedom of Information legislation.

One internal Hydro e-mail from Michael Savidant, BC Hydro’s Site C commercial manager, addressed Site C project risks outlined in Hydro’s progress report and referenced in DeSmog Canada’s story. But Savidant’s points were not included in Hydro’s news release about the story or in BC Hydro’s list of key messages, vetted by Bennett’s office, for any other media inquiries about the report.

“On the potential for cost overruns — yes if those things happen there will be cost increases,” Savidant wrote to Fitzsimmons and Chris Sandve, Bennett’s former chief of staff who is now BC Hydro’s director of policy and reporting.

“Those risks exist on any project. We disclosed them in the Business Case and at the JRP [Joint Review Panel hearings on Site C]. The key is to highlight that we have contingency to cover most items, and a project reserve to cover the rest.”

The internal e-mails also detail BC Hydro’s concerted efforts to craft messaging for any members of the media who expressed interest in following several DeSmog Canada stories about Site C, including a story about Hydro’s $175 million plan to truck at-risk bull trout upstream past the dam for 100 years when up to 40 percent of the fish are expected to perish in the dam’s turbines while migrating back downstream.

One internal Hydro document with a weekly Site C public affairs summary listed Freedom of Information requests as one of the “on-going risks” to the project. “The Project continues to get a lot of Freedom-of-Information Requests related to various issues. The FOIs can be expected to end up in the public realm, usually through media reports,” the document noted.

BC Hydro only responded to the FOI request, made last August, after a complaint was filed with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) when the Crown Corporation missed a legal deadline for delivering the documents.

The commissioner issued a consent order, compelling BC Hydro to release the information.

Image: Premier Christy Clark, flanked by BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald and Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, at a Site C contract announcement. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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

The moment I caught wind that the B.C. government’s decision on the Site C dam was coming down, my mind gravitated to Ken and Arlene Boon’s farm in the Peace River valley.

It was there that under the hot July sun, the Boons showed me around their 640-acre property that’s hosted five generations of their family.

If the Site C dam is built, as the B.C. government announced Tuesday it will be, much of the Boon’s farm will be underwater as part of the 55 square kilometres of river valley that will be flooded.

“It’s impossible to replace when you have this kind of history,” Arlene said. “I don’t want to be a millionaire. I just want to be happy on this land.”

You wouldn’t think dozens of farmers and ranchers are going to lose their livelihoods based on the tone of Tuesday’s press conference. The event to announce the go-ahead for the most expensive project in B.C. history was a BC Hydro love-in, full of pats on the back for the leaders of the project.

“This is a decision that is going to make a real difference for 100 years,” Premier Christy Clark said.

Jessica McDonald, BC Hydro CEO, chimed in with: “This is a day of exciting new beginnings for BC Hydro.”

“You don’t get to a day like today without literally hundreds of dedicated people working toward how to engineer something like this,” Bill Bennett, Minister of Energy and Mines, added.

Four questions were asked by the press, then there was a jubliant photo op and everyone moved along.

Meanwhile, people like the Boons watched from their computer screens in the Peace Valley.

“It’s sad, eh?” Ken said. “I watched Christy giving her talk there and I’m just struck by the way it’s like she hasn’t been listening to all these groups that have all stepped up.”

Those groups include not just local landowners and First Nations, but Clean Energy BC and the Canadian Geothermal Association, who’ve proposed alternatives they say would be cheaper and less environmentally damaging than building a third mega dam on the Peace River.

The total price tag for the Site C dam jumped from $7.9 billion to $8.775 billion in the past week. The premier said construction will start in the summer of 2015 and the project will be completed in 2024.

“All economic development projects have impacts of some kind,” Clark said. “First Nations are going to be impacted. Communities are going to be impacted. We need to be conscious of that and we need to do everything we can to mitigate it.”

But before mitigation begins, the project will have to navigate six different lawsuits from the Peace Valley Landowners’ Association and First Nations.

“It’s pretty clean cut now,” Ken said. “We know what our battle is. It’s far from a done deal. We’re having a meeting tonight with our lawyer.”

The landowners’ provincial challenge is scheduled to go to court on April 20.

The decision to proceed with the Site C dam ignores the recommendations of the Joint Review Panel, which said it couldn’t verify the cost estimates for the project or the long-term energy demand forecasts and recommended that the independent B.C. Utilities Commission should assess these factors.

“Approving Site C is the worst financial decision the province has ever made. It will leave us with a legacy of debt and destruction,” said Andrea Morison of the Peace Valley Environment Association.

Wendy Francis, the acting president of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, called the decision to move ahead with the project “foolish.”

“Dams elsewhere are being dismantled because of their devastating environmental and social impacts,” Francis said. “The pace of industrial development in B.C.’s Peace region exceeds the pace of development in Alberta’s oilsands. We urge the B.C. government to conduct an immediate cumulative impacts assessment for the Peace region, as recommended by the Joint Review Panel.”

Back in the Peace Valley, instead of contemplating having to leave his farm, Ken is focused on fundraising for the landowners’ legal action. So far the group has raised $55,000 toward a $200,000 goal via an online crowdfunding campaign.

“This is kind of like David vs. Goliath,” he said. “But we all know how that story ended. I can’t wait to see this project fail.”

Read more: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Plight of the Peace Valley and the Site C Dam

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.