B.C.’s NDP government came to power in 2017 promising to protect the environment. 

“[Former Premier] Christy Clark and the BC Liberals have chosen to pit jobs against the environment,” the party’s election platform said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

From protecting drinking water sources to reducing carbon emissions, the BC NDP’s platform detailed the actions it would take to protect the province’s environment and create jobs. 

“B.C. was an early champion of a price on carbon and other green policies,” Ecojustice Executive Director Devon Page pointed out in a statement following the election call today. 

“Yet the province’s laws and policies haven’t always lived up to its green reputation,” Page said. “Greenhouse gases rose under the NDP-Green coalition, and the government failed to live up to its commitment to introduce endangered species legislation.”

What environmental promises did the NDP make? And, once in power, how many pledges did the party keep? 

The Narwhal dove in. Here’s what we found.

Stopping the Trans Mountain pipeline

The NDP pledged to use “every tool in the toolbox” to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline from going ahead, saying the project was not in B.C.’s interest and would result in a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic. 

“It doesn’t, and won’t, meet the necessary conditions of providing benefits to British Columbia without putting our environment and our economy at unreasonable risk,” the election platform stated.

In 2018, the government announced its intention to explore restricting the transport of diluted bitumen across the province. (Alberta Premier Rachel Notley responded with a brief boycott of B.C. wine.) 

In January 2020, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the B.C. government does not have jurisdiction to regulate the flow of bitumen through the province.

The NDP government opted not to order a “made in B.C.” environmental assessment of the project. It could have done that following a 2016 Supreme Court decision that found the former BC Liberal government’s decision to hand over responsibility for the project’s environmental assessment to the National Energy Board was not legal and the provincial government has a duty to represent the best interests of British Columbians. 

Protecting endangered species 

B.C. has more species at risk of going extinct than anywhere else in Canada. “Yet, we’re one of the only provinces in the country without stand-alone species at risk legislation,” the NDP noted in its election platform. 

The party promised to enact endangered species legislation, reiterating its pledge in Premier John Horgan’s mandate letter to Environment Minister George Heyman. 

After more than three years in power, the NDP government has failed to keep its election promise.

Almost 1,340 species are now on B.C.’s red and blue lists of species at risk of extinction. Another 1,037 species meet the provincial status requirements for red and blue listings but have not yet been added. 

Scientists like UBC biologist Sally Otto, who sits on the federal species at risk advisory committee, have urged the NDP to take action to protect endangered species.

“The bottom line for caribou and many other wildlife species is crystal clear: without timely and meaningful protection and restoration measures, including a provincial endangered species law, these creatures will be lost forever,” wrote Otto and a dozen other scientists in an opinion piece published in The Narwhal.  

Improving management of old-growth forests

The NDP promised to modernize land-use planning “to effectively and sustainably manage” B.C.’s old-growth forests. 

“We will take an evidence-based scientific approach and use the ecosystem-based management of the Great Bear Rainforest as a model,” the party said in its election platform. 

In 2019, the NDP government commissioned foresters Al Gorley and Garry Merkel to conduct an old-growth strategic review. 

In their report, submitted to the government at the end of April, Gorley and Merkel called for a paradigm shift in the way B.C. manages old-growth. They said old forests should be managed for ecosystem health, not for timber.

The duo provided 14 recommendations for the government and called for an immediate deferral of logging in areas at risk of irreversible biodiversity loss. 

In response, the government said it would defer logging in nine areas and would provide a more fulsome update in the spring of 2021. 

None of the nine areas, which total almost 353,000 hectares, was slated for immediate logging. Some have a notable absence of old-growth, while others have already experienced clear cutting.

It’s business as usual everywhere else in the province, including in the old-growth forests in the central Walbran and Fairy Creek on southern Vancouver Island, in endangered caribou habitat in the Anzac Valley north of Prince George and on the Sunshine Coast.

Judy Thomas surveys clear cut logging in the Anzac Valley with journalist Sarah Cox. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Banning grizzly bear trophy hunting 

The NDP promised to ban the grizzly trophy hunt. “It’s not just wrong, it’s bad for the economy,” the party’s election platform said. “The trophy hunting of grizzly bears delivers fewer jobs than wildlife viewing operations, and is opposed by most hunters.”

The new government moved quickly to fulfill its pledge, and a ban on grizzly bear trophy hunting came into effect on Nov. 30, 2017. 

Taking action on climate change

The NDP pledged to implement a “comprehensive” climate action plan to reduce carbon pollution and get the province back on track to meet its climate targets.

In 2018, the government released the CleanBC plan to encourage the use of more clean and renewable energy. By the end of 2019, the government had spent $3.17 million to promote the plan.

But B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. From 2017 to 2018, carbon emissions in the province rose by 3.5 per cent, to 65.5 million tonnes. 

B.C. missed an emission reduction target to cut greenhouse gases 33 per cent from 2007 figures by 2020. The NDP government revised the target, saying it will slash emissions 40 per cent by 2030. It’s unclear how the new goal will be achieved. 

The NDP’s election platform said the party would phase in the federally mandated $50 a tonne carbon price by 2022 over three years, starting in 2020. On April 1, 2019, B.C.’s carbon tax rose from $35 a tonne to $40 a tonne. Following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the B.C. government announced the carbon tax will remain at $40 a tonne until further notice. 

In 2018, the NDP government approved the LNG Canada export project, which will generate about four megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year in the first of two planned phases. That’s equivalent to putting more than 800,000 cars on the road for a year. 

The four megatonnes will account for 10 per cent of B.C.’s entire carbon budget by 2050, placing massive pressure on other sectors — such as transportation, building and industry — to undergo a rapid decarbonization. 

B.C. Premier John Horgan tours the site of the LNG Canada project in Kitimat, B.C., in January 2020. Photo: Province of B.C. / Flickr

The government says CleanBC will take the province 75 per cent of the way to the 2030 target. But the NDP hasn’t identified how it will close the 25 per cent gap.

Earth scientist David Hughes, who was a scientific researcher for 32 years at the Geological Survey of Canada, examined the B.C. government’s emissions math in a recent report for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

When the LNG Canada project is factored in, Hughes found that emissions from oil and gas production will exceed the province’s 2050 target by 160 per cent, even if all other emissions are reduced to zero by 2035.  

LNG Canada is one of seven liquified natural gas projects in various stages of proposal, planning and construction in B.C. 

Reviewing fracking

The NDP said it would appoint a scientific panel to review the practice of hydraulic fracturing “to ensure that gas is produced safely, and that our environment is protected.” The panel assessment would include impacts on water and the role gas production plays in seismic activity.

The government followed through and appointed a three-member, independent panel. The panel submitted its final report to Michelle Mungall, former minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources, in February 2019. 

But whether or not the government will implement the majority of the panel’s recommendations remains to be seen. And despite the NDP’s commitment to ensure the gas “is produced safely,” the scientific review did not include an examination of the public health implications of fracking, in keeping with the government’s quiet assurance to the industry lobby group Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers that the hot button issue would not be included in the panel’s mandate. 

Even so, the panel found that fracking entails numerous unknown risks to human health and the environment. Panel members cautioned that the severity of those risks is unknown due to a lack of data, noting they were not aware of any health-related studies being conducted in northeast B.C., which is covered with thousands of fracking wells, including in the middle of communities and on farmland.

A natural gas well pad with numerous wells is readied for fracking north of Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

The panel also found a “profound absence of knowledge” about the presence and migration of fracking fluids — a proprietary mix of chemicals — below the ground.

The panel’s report raised concerns about the thousands of earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing and wastewater disposal wells in northeastern B.C. It found that “the maximum magnitude of an event that could be induced in [northeastern B.C.] is unknown.” 

The government’s response, quietly posted on its website but not sent to media, said new groundwater observation wells near Fort Nelson had been installed, mapping of more than 55 aquifers had been completed and that it would map zones likely to experience greater ground motion from seismic events. It said it had also established a cross-government working group to develop “short-term and long-term action plans” for implementing the panel’s recommendations.

Northeast B.C. is poised for a fracking boom to supply the LNG Canada project. 

Adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The NDP promised to adopt the UN declaration, which outlines global standards for upholding the rights of Indigenous peoples.

The government kept its commitment, passing legislation in November 2019 to enshrine the declaration in B.C. law. The declaration states that large resource projects require the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples on whose territories the projects will be built.

How the declaration is going to be implemented remains an open question and the Wet’suwet’en conflict in early 2020 illustrated the complexity of this commitment. 

Indigenous youth occupy the B.C. legislature in a solidarity action with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs on Feb. 11. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Banning political donations from corporations and unions

Saying it would “take big money out of politics,” the NDP promised to ban corporate and union donations to bring B.C. in line with other Canadian jurisdictions. The party moved quickly once in power, passing a law in November 2017, and donations are now limited to B.C. residents, with a cap of $1,200 a year. 

Prior to the new law, corporations such as Imperial Metals, the owner of the Mount Polley mine, and mining titan Teck Resources Ltd., whose coal operations have polluted a transboundary waterway with selenium, donated more than $1 million to political parties.

Banning fish farming on wild salmon migration routes

The NDP pledged to implement the recommendations of the Cohen Commission, “keeping farm sites out of important salmon migration routes, and supporting research and transparent monitoring to minimize the risk of disease transfer from captive to wild fish.” 

It also promised to provide incentives to help the aquaculture industry transition to closed containment where possible. 

A salmon farm at Sonora Point in the Discovery Islands of B.C. Credit: Tavish Campbell

In December 2018, the government announced that salmon farms in the Broughton archipelago would be closed or moved by 2023, following an agreement among the B.C. and federal governments, First Nations and two fish farm companies, Marine Harvest Canada and Cermaq Canada.

Salmon farms remain along wild salmon migration routes in Clayoquot Sound, the Discovery Islands and elsewhere. 

The NDP does not appear to have made any announcements about supporting research and transparent monitoring to minimize the risk of disease transfer from captive to wild fish. Nor has it provided incentives for a transition to closed containment farming. 

Improving wildlife management

The NDP’s election platform said B.C.’s biodiversity, fish and wildlife populations, and the habitat upon which they depend, were under threat due to lack of funding, government cuts to staff and ineffective policies. 

The party pledged to ensure dedicated funding for wildlife and habitat conservation.

Instead, the government has cut spending on matters related to fish, wildlife and the environment, according to Jesse Zeman, director of the fish and wildlife restoration program for the BC Wildlife Federation. 

“The government has publicly announced it’s increasing investment, but behind the scenes it has clawed back base budgets and it has cut funding from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC,” Zeman told The Narwhal. 

“Given B.C.’s biodiversity, we still [have] the most underfunded fish and wildlife agency in North America.”

The government also did not follow through on its election promise to dedicate all hunting fees to fish and wildlife management, Zeman said. 

A caribou cow stands watch over its two-day old calf. Photo: Ryan Dickie / The Narwhal

Increasing the budget for BC Parks

The NDP said it would restore funding for BC Parks, and hire additional park rangers and conservation officers.

The party’s election platform said it aimed to boost the BC Parks budget by $10 million in each of 2018-19 and 2019-20 to restore parks and hire additional park rangers and conservation officers.

The BC Parks budget has only increased by $416,000 since 2017-18, according to budget documents. It’s now $49.7 million. 

The Narwhal asked the B.C. Environment Ministry for the number of conservation officers and park rangers in 2017, as well as for today’s numbers. The ministry did not respond by press time, more than two business days after we put in the request. 

Updating environmental assessment legislation

The NDP said it would update B.C.’s environment assessment legislation and processes for major resource projects to ensure they respect the legal rights of First Nations and “meet the public’s expectations of a strong, transparent process.” 

The government passed Bill 51, the Environmental Assessment Act, in late 2018. 

Scientists commended the NDP for overhauling the act, calling the bill a “good start” and noting it allows First Nations communities to be involved at the start of assessments.

But an open letter from 180 academic scientists identified three “deficiencies” in the new legislation: a lack of scientific independence, peer-review and transparency.

One of the main deficiencies of the legislation, according to the scientists, is that it still allows project proponents to oversee, collect and present the vast majority of evidence for environmental assessments.

The legislation also has no requirement that all data generated by the project proponent, or gathered by a technical advisory committee, be made public. Nor does it include criteria for how the government’s final assessment decisions will be made. 

Ensuring clean, safe drinking water 

The NDP singled out the former Liberal government for leaving British Columbians in dozens of communities under ongoing boil water advisories. 

The party said it would work with the federal government to improve drinking water quality in B.C. communities and ensure the permitting process prioritizes local drinking water needs. It also said it would review the Water Sustainability Act to ensure drinking water sources are protected. 

In July 2019, B.C. Auditor General Carol Bellringer found the B.C. government is failing to protect drinking water from increased risks that include climate change and industrial activities such as logging, saying accountability measures for safeguarding drinking water are “of grave concern.”

‘You can’t drink money’: Kootenay communities fight logging to protect their drinking water

The health ministry and the Provincial Health Officer are “not sufficiently protecting drinking water for British Columbians,” Bellringer told reporters.

The audit came as communities around B.C. grappled with imminent plans for logging and other industrial activities in watersheds that supply their drinking, irrigation and, in some cases, fire-fighting water. B.C. currently has 200 boil water advisories and five do not consume water advisories, according to the website Water Today. 

Bringing back investment in clean energy

Saying the Liberal government had made B.C. “unfriendly” to investments in wind and solar projects, the NDP pledged to bring investment in wind, solar and other clean energy projects back to B.C. 

Instead, faced with a growing glut of energy in the province — even before the hugely over budget Site C dam comes online at some unknown point in the future — the government indicated it would shut the door on most new wind and solar projects. It introduced Bill 17 to amend the Clean Energy Act, eliminating the requirement that B.C. be self-sufficient in new power and allowing the province to import cheap power from the U.S., potentially including coal and gas-fired power. 

The NDP government also said it would not renew contracts with independent power producers, leaving family-run, green and clean power projects facing bankruptcy after supplying power to the grid and remote communities for decades. 

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

On Monday, the British Columbia government introduced new legislation that proposes to ban corporate, union and foreign donations in a move that will dramatically change B.C.’s political landscape and bring the province in line with other Canadian jurisdictions.

“This legislation will make sure 2017 was the last big-money election in our province,” said Attorney General David Eby. “The days of limitless donations, a lack of transparency and foreign and corporate influence over our elections are history.”

Here are your Top 5 questions on the ban answered:

1) What will be different now?

Everything. This is probably the most game-changing moment in B.C. politics in living memory. Up until now, corporations and unions could donate as much money as they wanted to B.C. political parties, even though such donations are banned federally and in most provinces.

Individuals anywhere in the world were also allowed to give unlimited amounts of dough to B.C. politicians, but not any more. Now donations will be limited to B.C. residents, with a limit of $1,200 a year —  the second-lowest limit in Canada behind Quebec.

“Any time you change a system that places no limitations on donations to a system that does, you’re going to see big, big changes,” University of British Columbia political scientists Max Cameron told DeSmog Canada.

“I think this is going to change how parties work, how campaigns work and change our system to make it more attentive to the preference of ordinary voters.”

Political parties will also have to publicly report all fundraisers attended by party leaders, cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries. And those fancy-pants dinners can no longer come at a ticket price of $10,000 (a la Christy Clark). Fundraisers at private residences are still allowed, but tickets can be sold for a max of $100.

2) When will the changes apply?

Well, first the bill needs to pass, but that’s very likely because it’s the product of the agreement between the Green Party and the NDP and together they have enough seats to win a vote in the legislature.

The changes will then apply retroactively to the date of the last election, which means parties won't be able to spend any donations they’ve received from corporations and unions since May 9 during the next election. That’s going to come as a big blow to the BC Liberals who deposited $1 million in donations just three days after the last election.

Seven of the 10 largest donations came from developers. Other donors included Chevron Canada, Encana and Enbridge. Once this bill is passed, those donations will not be allowed to be used in future elections.

3) Why is this such a big deal?

Basically, up until now anyone with deep pockets has been able to buy access to B.C. politicians. The latest example is how a bunch of oil and gas companies re-wrote B.C.’s so-called climate plan in a Calgary boardroom.

Before that there was the case of Imperial Metals, the company responsible for the Mount Polley mine disaster. Imperial was a major donor to the BC Liberal party and was never charged or fined for the disaster.

Many British Columbians have also been concerned that the NDP is too beholden to unions because of large donations to the party. Now that’s all about to come to a stop.

4) So how will political parties fund election campaigns?

Well, first of all, campaign spending limits have been decreased by about 25 per cent, so less money will be spent overall in elections. For instance, candidates used to be able to spend about $78,000 per riding, but that limit is now reduced to $58,000.

Still, elections cost money, so where will that come from? The bill introduced a plan for a per-vote subsidy intended to assist in transitioning to the new rules. The move mirrors a similar temporary transition plan at the federal level but was not expected to form a part of the NDP’s electoral reform plan.

The subsidies are expected to cost B.C. taxpayers an estimated $27.5 million over the next four years.

According to the bill, a special legislative committee will evaluate the annual allowances to parties and determine if changes should be made. If no amendments are made to the bill once it is put into place, it means an expiration of allowances will take place in 2022.

Some reimbursements for election expenses will remain in place permanently.

While the BC Liberals have already stated publicly they will vote against the bill, saying the public should not pay parties directly, UBC political scientist Max Cameron says money for elections has to come from somewhere.

“We’re already publicly funding parties, but because it’s not visible, you don’t hear people being upset about it,” Cameron said. “Tax returns for political donations — that’s coming from the taxpayer, it’s a form of publicly subsidizing political parties.”

“Parties have to be funded from somewhere and I actually think political parties are providing a vital public service,” he said.

5 Things You Need to Know About BC's Ban on Big Money https://t.co/X750XZPxOU @bcndp #banbigmoney @bcliberals @bcgreens #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 20, 2017

5) What about loopholes?

Goooooood question.

The government tried to get out ahead of the game by applying the restrictions to third-party election advertisers, who've taken advantage of campaign finance rules in other jurisdictions. The restrictions aim to prevent external organizations from becoming fundraising proxies, like Super PACS have in the U.S. However, just what constitutes a third-party advertiser has been the subject of some debate and a lack of clarity on this issue remains a controversy at the federal level.

Election fundraising rules are only ever as good as their watchdogs. In the last few decades, politicians have been caught spending beyond campaign limits, misreporting financials and violating conflict of interest rules.

Some people have raised concerns about the $1,200 limit, saying businesses and unions can funnel donations through executives, employees and their relatives.

In September 2016, it was discovered that between 2004 and 2011, executives of SNC Lavalin Group Inc. funnelled $118,000 in donations to the federal Liberals and Conservatives— $110,000 and $8,000, respectively — disguised as donations from individuals who worked at SNC or their family members.

Cameron said the $1,200 limit provides a good protective measure against circumventing the rules.

“With the cap as it is, I think it gets a lot harder to see the bundling of donations that we’ve seen elsewhere.”

Image: Green party leader Andrew Weaver and Premier John Horgan annouce campaign finance reform. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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.

Documents released on Monday reveal that B.C.’s climate plan under the previous Liberal government was drafted by the oil and gas industry in a Calgary boardroom, just as the province’s new NDP government moves to ban corporate and union donations to B.C. political parties.

The documents speak to long-standing concerns over the influence of political donations in B.C.’s political process. B.C. has long been considered the ‘wild west’ of political cash for placing no limits on corporate, union or foreign donations.

“I think this is deeply corrosive to our democracy and it encourages cynicism about politics,” Max Cameron, political science professor and director of the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia, told DeSmog Canada.

The documents, released to Shannon Daub of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as part of her research with the Corporate Mapping Project, reveal that while the B.C. government under former premier Christy Clark hired a celebrated Climate Leadership Team and conducted public consultations, a parallel industry consultation process occurred behind closed doors in a boardroom of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

The BC Liberals have raked in cash from the fossil fuel industry, including more than $3.7 million from just the top 10 industry donors between 2008 and 2015.

Cameron said the documents, which include slides outlining industry working groups tasked with addressing carbon pricing and methane emissions, provide a much-needed glimpse into what exactly industry is paying for when making large donations to political parties.

“Reading these documents gives us some real insight into how it is that these kinds of donations can buy not just access to government but access to actually writing policy,” he said.

Clark’s Secret Consultations with Oil and Gas Donors Revealed As BC Introduces Big Money Ban #bcpoli @CCPA_BC https://t.co/nFjm9W8Vqx

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 18, 2017

Climate Leadership Team Unaware of Parallel Industry Consultations

B.C. handpicked a blue-ribbon team of 17 academic, business, environmental and First Nations stakeholders to form the Climate Leadership Team. That team made 32 official recommendations to the B.C. government, none of which were implemented in the province’s eventual Climate Action Plan.

Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, was a member of the team and said the fact that not a single recommendation was adopted “really says it all.”

Christy Clark’s government “allowed the oil and gas sector to write the climate plan for B.C. that is mostly status quo and has very little impact on B.C.’s growing climate pollution,” Smith told DeSmog Canada.

She added once the team made its recommendations to the government, their involvement in the crafting of the Climate Action Plan tapered off quickly.

“We had very few meetings with the B.C. government once the recommendations were created. It was clear that they actually had very little interest in doing anything with recommendations.”

Meanwhile, Christy Clark pointed to the recommendations at the UN Climate Summit in Paris as evidence of B.C.’s climate leadership.

Tzeporah Berman, a prominent environmental advocate in B.C. and member of the Climate Leadership Team said she had no idea B.C. was conducting parallel consultations with industry.

“I was shocked when I saw these documents,” Berman told DeSmog Canada.

“Consultation should be a transparent process and should be done with multiple stakeholders. These were secret meetings in Calgary where the oil and gas industry was rewriting B.C. policy. That's not consultation, it's corruption.”

Berman said the documents reveal an “unacceptable level of access and influence with the Liberal government.”

“They also help those of us from the leadership team understand how the climate plan that the Liberals put together really had no similarity to what the Liberals’ own climate team recommended,” she said.

The team worked hard for months to deliver a plan within a short timeframe and offered to meet with stakeholders to “problem solve any concerns” if that would help B.C. “ensure implementation” of the recommendations, Berman said.

But that offer was never taken up.

“From our end it was a bizarre process,” Berman said.

Fossil Fuel Companies Regularly ‘Craft’ Climate Plans

Laurie Adkin, professor of political science at the University of Alberta, said when it comes to government consultations with corporations, “secrecy is routine” and “transparency is the exception.”

“Even when governments reveal that they have met with representatives of private corporations, reporting on these meetings typically does not reveal which corporate representatives were in the room, or what their positions were,” Adkin told DeSmog Canada.

Adkin, who is a member of the Corporate Mapping Project, specializes in documenting corporate influence in politics and on university campuses.

Government consultation with industry is the status quo, Adkin said, while public consultation is meant to merely survey public opinion and “give the appearance that government has created meaningful opportunities for citizen input into policy decisions.”

“I do not believe that any climate change plan has been written, to date, in which the major fossil fuel corporations have not ‘directly crafted’ the plan,” Adkin said.

Adkin and Cameron agree the documents are reflective of “institutional corruption.”

“Corruption isn’t just quid pro quo of privately benefitting from your public office, it’s also a corruption of the institution, when the public purpose of the institution is undermined by private actors in a way that diminishes our trust in those institutions,” Cameron said.

“The goal of public policy is to serve the public’s interest, not to serve particular private interests.”

Leadership Team Hopeful Under New NDP Government

Berman said the oil and gas industry has too much political influence in Canada, but said she is hopeful the new B.C. government will “design policy to benefit the people and not just polluters.”

“I was very glad to see the carbon tax increase in the last budget,” Berman said.

“I think the next step is removing all the subsidies that the Liberal government handed out to the gas industry. We shouldn't be spending taxpayers dollars to help the fossil fuel industry expand in the climate era”

Berman said she also looks forward to the new government moving forward on the zero emissions vehicles targets and strengthening the clean fuel standard.

Smith said she is pleased the Climate Leadership Team had the opportunity to craft the recommendations when it did.

“The silver lining is that we still have a good, solid set of climate action recommendations sitting there, and we now have a Premier and government who is interested in taking climate action and building a clean growth economy for the twenty-first century.”

Image: Former premier Christy Clark at a Woodfibre LNG announcement. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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

This is a guest post by Lisa Sammartino, the democracy campaigner for B.C.'s largest democracy group Dogwood. It originally ran on The Tyee.

Christy Clark rounded out her final days in office with a parting gift — not to British Columbians but to a loyal BC Liberal donor, Taseko Mines. The company donated more than $130,000 to the BC Liberals, and now they’ve scooped up Clark’s prize.

While members of the Tsilhqot'in First Nation were being chased from their homes by an aggressive wildfire, Clark’s outgoing government approved exploratory permits for the company to dig up their traditional, and constitutionally protected, lands — an area so culturally and environmentally important that Harper’s Conservatives rejected federal permits twice.

But then again, the federal Conservative party can’t accept corporate donations. Over here in the “Wild West,” Clark’s BC Liberals can, and did.

With a new government in the legislature and a new face in the premier’s office, laws to ban Big Money are finally on the way. The NDP has promised to bring in campaign finance reform as their first order of business and the B.C. Greens are planning to hold them to it.

But after decades of unchecked political power, fuelled by unlimited amounts of money from all over the world, still too many unanswered questions remain. British Columbians suspect the impact Big Money can have on the laws in B.C. That’s why we’ve fought so hard to rein in donation laws in the first place.

Political decisions should reflect the needs of the people who live and work in this province — not foreign corporations with large bank accounts. But it’s too late to close the door once the horse is already out of the barn.

Why B.C. Needs a Corruption Inquiry https://t.co/27QKNYJ5kV @DogwoodBC @BCLiberals #bcpoli #PoliticalDonations #MountPolley #HousingCrisis pic.twitter.com/6dsJ7gtL2r

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 26, 2017

Follow the money

Too many decisions — potentially made under the influence of Big Money — will still stand, even after we ban Big Money.

Remember Mount Polley? The mining company whose tailing pond breach became the biggest environmental disaster in B.C.’s history? Imperial Metals has given more than $213,760 to the BC Liberals, $54,220 of which came from its subsidiary Mount Polley Mining.

B.C.’s Ministry of Environment knew about risks the tailing pond posed and issued five warnings to the company, but took no punitive action when warnings were ignored. Meanwhile, Christy Clark and BC Liberals ministers were flying to Calgary for a $1-million fundraiser hosted by Imperial Metals’ controlling shareholder Murray Edwards.

The mine was allowed to reopen two years after the disaster with no fines or criminal charges, and taxpayers are on the hook for cleanup costs.

To top it all off, the company is now allowed to dump waste directly into Quesnel Lake, where residents of Likely B.C. get their drinking water.

Ministry of Health researcher and PhD student Roderick MacIsaac committed suicide in 2012 after being fired from the ministry, along with seven other researchers. MacIsaac had been evaluating a smoking cessation drug called Champix, which was covered by B.C.’s pharmacare program. The drug, produced by international pharmaceutical powerhouse Pfizer, had previously been taken out of the pharmacare program in France because of concerns that it was causing serious mental health side effects, including suicide.

In 2012, the year of the firings, Pfizer lobbyists met with public officials twice and gave more than $3,000 to the BC Liberals. To date, the company has given the BC Liberals more than $45,000 and Champix remains in B.C.’s pharmacare program — side effects untested by provincial researchers.

B.C.’s real estate market is still out-of-control, and policy fixes have been tepid at best. In 2016, eight out of the 10 top donors to the BC Liberals were from the real estate sector, collectively giving over $1.5 million. But BC Liberal politicians were not only filling their campaign coffers; key ministers are actually personally profiting as young families were forced out of the city.

When he left politics, former Minister of Finance Kevin Falcon became a high level executive at Anthem Properties; his successor, Mike De Jong, personally owns eight properties; our previous minister of justice, Suzanne Anton, owns four. High level members of government have made millions from policies that make it easier to funnel dark money into Vancouver’s overinflated housing market.

Kinder Morgan, Trophy Hunting, LNG

These are only a few examples. When you start to see all of the political decisions that have been made to the benefit of Big Money donors and the detriment of British Columbians, it is really alarming. Texas-based Kinder Morgan’s unpopular pipeline approval in B.C., U.S. trophy hunting Super PACs’ pressure to influence over wildlife management, a Malaysian and Chinese state-owned LNG terminal proposed on top of a salmon spawning ground, a lobbyist turned government-appointed chair turned board member of a Las Vegas casino that landed a prime location next to B.C. Place, even the unresolved BC Rail sale… every corner of this province, every sector of industry, has an example to look at.

Like the Charbonneau Commission in Quebec and the federal Gomery Inquiry, B.C.’s own Corruption Inquiry is the only way we can get independent, unbiased answers to our questions and concerns, because it would have the power to subpoena witnesses and examine real evidence.

The Charbonneau Commission was a live courtroom drama; the characters being grilled were real mobsters, construction bosses, party fundraisers and powerful politicians. Putting whistleblowers and witnesses on the stand might be the only way to get real answers from decision-makers that triple-delete emails and had 10 weeks to cart out boxes of documents and clear out their computers.

British Columbians deserve to know whether, and how, donations actually impacted decisions made by politicians. And if they did, those approvals, permits and contracts must be sent back to the drawing board for real assessments.

If we truly want to shake off B.C.’s moniker as the “Wild West” of dirty politics, we need do more than bring in a new sheriff. Because, right now, British Columbians are still tied to the railway tracks.

Image: In the spring of 2014, Premier Christy Clark visited the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia and met with CEO & chairman Tan Sri Dato’ Sahmsul Azhar Abbas. Credit: Province of British Columbia.

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.

Eighty-seven per cent of known, human-caused grizzly bear deaths in B.C. are attributable to trophy hunters, who have killed 12,026 grizzly bears since the government began keeping records in 1975, according to data obtained by David Suzuki Foundation.*

In 2016, 274 grizzlies were killed by humans — the vast majority of which (235) were killed by trophy hunters.

B.C. currently sanctions a legal trophy hunt by both resident and foreign hunters. Non-resident hunters killed almost 30 per cent of the grizzlies in the 2016 hunt.

The trophy hunt has become a hot election issue with the NDP and Green Party vowing to end the hunt if elected. An Insights West survey conducted in the fall of 2016 found 91 percent of British Columbians are opposed to trophy hunting.

Meantime, the B.C. Liberals are the party of choice for international trophy hunters — who donated $60,000 to the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C. to help prevent an NDP win.

The Canadian chapter of Safari Club International posted to Facebook: “NDP have vowed to end the Grizzly hunt in BC if elected. SCI chapters from CANADA and the USA banded together donating $60000.00 [sic]."

The Guide Outfitters lobby to continue trophy hunting, which attracts wealthy customers from around the world who pay as much as $20,000 for a hunt. The annual spring bear hunt began April 1.

Source: David Suzuki Foundation

B.C. Premier Christy Clark is a vocal supporter of the trophy hunting industry and a past winner of the Guide Outfitter association’s President’s Award.

B.C. has some of the weakest political donations rules in Canada, which allows anyone (including foreign corporations) to donate unlimited amounts of cash.

The New York Times recently called B.C. the ‘wild west’ of political cash and a Globe and Mail investigation revealed that lobbyists are routinely making political donations under their own names while being reimbursed by corporations — something that is illegal.

The B.C. NDP and B.C. Green Party have vowed to ban corporate and union donations if elected while the B.C. Liberals have promised to appoint a panel to review campaign finance rules if re-elected.

* Article updated to clarify data is based on known, human-caused grizzly bear deaths and does not include natural mortality (most of which is unknown).

Image source: Dogwood 

87% of B.C. Grizzly Deaths Due to Trophy Hunting, Records Reveal https://t.co/rJwE9VgcS3 #bcpoli #bcelxn17 #BanBigMoney @bcliberals pic.twitter.com/GOnF9HyCYm

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 12, 2017

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

This piece originally appeared on the West Coast Environmental Law Alert Blog.

Revelations about the amount of corporate money coming to the B.C. Liberals — not to mention RCMP investigations — have many people asking: what are these companies getting in return?

It’s a good question. After all, corporations are not supposed to spend their shareholders’ money without a reasonable expectation of a return. The different political parties are increasingly aware that voters have these questions.*

At a general level, it does seem that B.C. Liberal donors have done well in terms of government contracts.

And there have been specific calls to set aside the approval of the Woodfibre LNG project in Squamish (based on donations from Woodfibre that seem to have been illegally funneled through individuals), to re-examine logging in endangered caribou habitat by B.C. Liberal donor, Canfor, and calls on the B.C. Liberals to return funds received from Kinder Morgan and its allies (given the controversial decision to approve its pipeline and tankers project).

Corporate Donations and the Culture of (Environmental) Law Enforcement

But corporate benefits received in return for donations do not have to be about a particular government approval or a contract. Companies can also believe that their donations will result not in a particular decision, but in a more favourable regulatory culture — one that doesn’t ask hard questions or impose harsh consequences.

Over the years we have devoted many of our Environmental Law Alerts to looking at a major drop in the Province’s enforcement of environmental laws, with convictions under environmental statutes at a fraction of what they were prior to 2003.**

We have applauded the government for rolling out some new enforcement tools, but we remain very concerned that polluters in B.C. believe there are few consequences for failing to comply with our province’s environmental laws.

Arguably, one major beneficiary of that lax environmental enforcement is the number one B.C. Liberal donor: Teck Resources Ltd. Since 2008 the company has donated more than $1.5 million to the B.C. Liberals (and $60,000 to the B.C. NDP), thanks to B.C.’s loose laws on corporate donations.

Premier Christy Clark and Lt. Gov. Steve Point award Norm Keevil (centre), chair of Teck Resources, with the Order of B.C. Since 2010 Keevil has personally donated $65,585 to the B.C. Liberals. Photo: Government of B.C.

Teck Resources Compliance Issues

At first blush, it may seem surprising to suggest that Teck Resources is benefiting from a decline in environmental enforcement. After all, in early February 2016, Teck Metals Ltd. pled guilty to a number of charges related to polluting fish bearing waters, and was fined $3 million for Fisheries Act offences and a further $400,000 for Environmental Management Act offences.

However, this is just the tip of the company’s environmental non-compliance iceberg. Recently the B.C. Ministry of Environment released data on its 2015 efforts to monitor compliance under the Environmental Management Act (B.C.’s main law dealing with pollution). Two Teck-affiliated companies feature prominently.

Teck Coal Ltd. was inspected 58 times, and was found to be acting illegally in 46 of those inspections (i.e. 79 per cent of the time). Unfortunately, the data released does not tell us much about what type of non-compliance was occurring (although most of the inspections were considered “medium” or “high” priority, and we know from the Auditor General report discussed below that Teck’s non-compliance is a major concern for Ministry of Environment staff). Since we only have the data for 2015, we cannot say much about trends over time.

Of the identified non-compliance, the Ministry of Environment staff responded with an “advisory” (essentially a note to file) 67 per cent of the time, and provided a more detailed written warning 22 per cent of the time.

The remaining 11 per cent (5 incidents) were referred for further action, but at time of writing the government’s environmental violations database gives no information about what happened as a result. We know that between 2006 and the beginning of 2016 Teck Coal Ltd. has had just four tickets for $575 each issued against it (totaling just $2300).

Teck Metals Ltd. was inspected 12 times, and was out of compliance with its permits on seven, or 58 of those inspections. Five inspections resulted in advisories, and two in written warnings. In the past (and since 2006), Teck Metals has had previous convictions under the Fisheries Act and Environmental Management Act (2013) and avoided a third conviction (under the Environmental Management Act) in 2011 by participating in a restorative justice process through which it agreed to pay $325,000. It also had a single ticket issued against it in 2006 for $575.

Not all Teck companies had such a poor track record in the inspections. Teck Highland Valley Copper Corporation was inspected four times in 2015 and was in compliance at all four inspections. Teck’s Galore Creek Partnership also had four inspections, all of them clean.

Teck Resources is a huge operation, of course, so it’s not surprising that it has far more inspections than any other company in the government’s 2015 data. But Teck Coal’s non-compliance rates are well above average (on average the Ministry inspections found 60 per cent non-compliance). Indeed, it appears that the number of inspections carried out of Teck Coal reflects Ministry concern about this fact.

Auditor General Concerns

In 2016 B.C.’s Auditor General issued a damning report on enforcement of environmental requirements related to mines by the Ministries of Environment and of Energy and Mines. She wrote about the enforcement culture of the Ministries (which assumes voluntary compliance by mining companies) and the underfunding of compliance efforts:

We understand that [the Ministry of Energy and Mines’] collaborative strategy is viable in some circumstances, but it assumes that the majority of mining companies are willing to comply voluntarily. As we found for most of the mines we reviewed for this report, this is not the case. For the inspections reports we reviewed, there were incidences of non-compliance in most cases.

Based on her figures and our own research, we estimated that from 1990-1994, almost 10 per cent of pollution permits issued under what was then the Waste Management Act had some kind of compliance and enforcement action each year. From 2010-2014 that figure, for permits under the Environmental Management Act, was just above 2 per cent.

Auditor General Bellringer*** also provides an example of the clout that Teck Resources seems to have with the current B.C. government. The report used Teck Coal Ltd.’s permit to expand its Line Creek Mine in the Elk Valley as a case study.

After Ministry of Environment staff noted that the expansion would exacerbate a serious selenium contamination issue in the region, and refused to authorize the permit, Cabinet stepped in:

Subsequently, a decision was made by government to approve the permit under section 137 of EMA. This clause, which allows Cabinet to approve a permit where it is in the public interest to do so, had never been used before…

We also found that the Line Creek Expansion Permit has a site performance objective for selenium that allows five times the amount set in B.C.’s water quality guidelines for aquatic fish.

We concluded that government, in granting the permit, did not publicly disclose the implications these permit levels will have in this area where the expansion will extend the life of this mine for an additional 18 years and produce an additional 3.5 million tonnes of coal annually.

As well, we expected MoE’s permits to reflect the polluter-pays principle. We found, however, that under the Line Creek Expansion Permit, the mine company is charged only about $5,000 a year for emitting selenium pollution. This is not reflective of the known environmental impact of selenium. [emphasis added]

What Teck Resources Gets

Clearly, Teck Resources does not get a “get out of jail free” card (metaphorically speaking, since environmental offenders almost never actually go to jail). Teck Metals has been convicted and has paid fines. Teck Coal has been subjected to a high level of scrutiny by Ministry of Environment inspectors (but no major penalties as yet).

However, the evidence suggests that non-compliance with environmental regulations is business as usual for Teck Resources, and that is troubling. And on one occasion the government used an unprecedented power to override its own staff and allow the company to expand its operations dramatically, despite an ongoing pollution problem.

It’s important not to suggest that this is corruption. Donations in this case were given to the B.C. Liberal Party, not to individual politicians, and not in return for any particular decision. I believe that B.C.’s elected politicians, of whatever party and including the B.C. Liberals, want to do what they think is the right thing and do not believe themselves to be influenced by the fact that their party received a generous donation from Teck Resources.

However, the careers and campaigns of B.C. Liberal politicians have benefited from the powerful companies that the government is responsible for regulating. They have personal relationships with officials from those companies, formed through personal access at expensive fundraisers.

It is a fundamental legal principle of fairness that a government decision-maker should be unbiased, having no interest in the decision before him or her. Indeed, this requirement is so fundamental to the law, that a decision-maker must avoid even a credible appearance of bias. The fact that a large resource company with a poor environmental compliance record has made significant donations (i.e. more than $1.5 million since 2008) to the political party currently forming the government invites questions.

The courts have not generally applied the principle of bias to elected officials, instead accepting political donations as a legal part of the electoral system. In the U.S., where some judges are elected, a judge who has received campaign contributions may need to step down (or “recuse” his- or herself) from hearing a case involving that donor. However, that is because of the nature of judges — that they are supposed to apply the law without favour — and politicians have not been held to the same standard.

But I don’t think there’s any doubt that these types of large corporate donations do give rise to an appearance that some corporate interests have more influence over cabinet Ministers and the resulting government regulatory culture than individual voters. That’s a big problem — raising fundamental questions about our basic democratic institutions and our notion of equality before the law.  Are decisions about our lands, air and water, about the sustainability of our communities, being made in the interests of the public, or of large corporate donors?

In the end, the fact that many of us are asking these questions — and that there are no ready answers — is probably a good enough reason to get rid of corporate donations.

*  The B.C. Greens are ahead of the curve on this one, having pledged to go without corporate or union donations. The B.C. NDP has pledged to ban corporate and union donations if elected. And the B.C. Liberals are playing catch-up, with a panel appointed to investigate possible legal changes, but no specific promises.

**  The Ministry of Environment disputes our figures for convictions (but not tickets, so far as we understand), but has not provided alternative figures. 

***  As an aside — isn’t that a great name for an Auditor-General?  Very Dickensian (but more subtle than “Whistleblower”).

Image: Christy Clark during a tour of the Copper Mountain Mine. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canfor did not respond to a request for comment.

Image: Trevor Goward and Jason Hollinger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 3, 2017

Caribou’s True Culprit: Habitat Destruction

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Trevor Goward and Jason Hollinger

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

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

Christy Clark’s Caribou Numbers Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caribou in the Timber Sacrifice Zone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

B.C. Liberals Walked Away from Local Use Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Problem Widespread in B.C.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mountain Caribou. Photo: David Moskowitz/Mountain Caribou Initiative

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

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

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

Political donations made to the BC Liberals under the name of a prominent Teck Resources lobbyist were actually made by the company and were registered in error, according to the company.

A joint investigation between DeSmog Canada and University of Victoria researcher Nick Graham of the Corporate Mapping Project uncovered seven Teck Resources registered lobbyists who have also donated to the BC Liberals.

According to the Elections BC database, Carleigh Whitman, manager of government relations for Teck Resources, made personal contributions totaling $4,275 to the BC Liberals.

Political donations by lobbyists are in the spotlight after a Globe and Mail investigation revealed some lobbyists are being reimbursed for their contributions, a practice that is illegal in B.C., a province with some of the weakest political donation laws in the country.

Last week Elections BC launched an investigation into the matter and, after receiving additional complaints regarding personal donations, it has now referred the investigation to the RCMP.

When asked if Teck Resources reimbursed Whitman for her donation to the BC Liberals, Chris Stannell, senior communications specialist for Teck, said the contributions “were listed in error as being made by an individual.”

“They were donations made by Teck and paid using a Teck corporate credit card,” Stannell wrote to DeSmog Canada in an e-mail.

“Our practice is to report all such administrative errors and request a correction as soon as we are made aware of them,” he said.

Stannell said the company does not make donations through individuals.

The BC Liberals previously admitted “there has been confusion” about how donations from individuals are registered in the party’s system because some donations made on the behalf of a company or special interest are not categorized as such.

Donations made on the BC Liberal website through a personal credit card are automatically registered as a personal contribution, even though the donation may have been intended to be made on a corporation’s behalf.

A spokesperson for the BC Liberals did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to Whitman, six other Teck Resources lobbyists have also made personal donations to the BC Liberals.

Mark Edwards (donations: $4,500)

James Fraser (donations: $1,186)

Mark Reder (donations: $3,465)

Marcia Smith (donations: $2,975)

Tom Syer (donations: $730)

Alexa Young (donations: $1,900)

Teck Resources declined to comment further on donations made by these six other individuals. The company also did not respond to questions regarding when Teck became aware of the donations being “listed in error” or when Teck reported such inaccuracies to the BC Liberals.

Teck Resources is the largest donor to the BC Liberals. Since 2008 Teck has donated $1,502,444 to the BC Liberals and $60,090 to the BC NDP. Since 2010, Norman Keevil, chair of the board for Teck, has personally donated $65,585 to the BC Liberals.

The company reported $8.3 billion in revenue in 2015 and operates five metallurgical mines in B.C. as well as an oilsands mine in Alberta.

Thirty Additional Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Contributed to BC Liberals

In total, 37 fossil fuel lobbyists from the 10 most prolific lobbying firms have donated to the BC Liberals since 2010.

Donations from these lobbyists total more than $116,000 with some individuals donating more than $11,000 through multiple small contributions.

The top 10 most active lobbying firms in the fossil fuel sector include the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Chevron Canada, Enbridge, Encana, FortisBC, Spectra Energy, Teck Resources and TransCanada.

Several of the lobbyists work under the employment of government relations firms including National Public Relations and Earnscliffe. Both firms did not respond to requests for comment on their policy regarding reimbursement for political donations.

DeSmog Canada also reached out to several of the top donors for comment, but those requests went unanswered.

BC Liberal Political Donations from Top Fossil Fuel Lobbyists April 2010 – March 2017 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Image: Teck Resources via Facebook

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Elections BC will refer its ongoing investigation into potentially illegal political donations made to the BC Liberals to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, British Columbia’s Chief Electoral Officer, Keith Archer announced Friday.

“This investigation has been referred to ensure that it will in no way impede Elections BC’s administration of the provincial general election scheduled for May 9,” an Elections BC bulletin states.

“This referral will also ensure that there is no perception that Elections BC’s ability to administer the general election in a fair, neutral and impartial manner is in any way compromised. The potential scope and timing of this matter make the RCMP the most appropriate agency to continue this investigation.”

Donations by lobbyists have come under scrutiny after a recent Globe and Mail investigation revealed that lobbyists are often being illegally reimbursed by corporations or special interests for donations made under their own names. B.C. has some of the weakest political donation rules in all of Canada. Individuals, corporations, unions and foreigners can donate unlimited amounts to political parties, yet it is illegal to contribute on another's behalf or conceal the true source of a donation.

Elections B.C. launched an investigation into the BC Liberals last week, stating there “appears to be a systemic problem that needs to be addressed.” That investigation will now be carried forward by the RCMP.

As DeSmog Canada recently reported, the democracy advocacy organization Dogwood, registered a formal complaint with Elections BC this week regarding personal donations to the BC Liberals from high-ranking Kinder Morgan staff.

Kai Nagata, Dogwood’s communications director, said recent revelations of indirect political donations, or ‘straw donors,’ is “just the tip of a very filthy iceberg.”

“What we’re seeing this week is the early chapter of what is going to become a massive exercise in piecing together the money train in B.C. politics,” Nagata told DeSmog Canada.

A report released this week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and the Corporate Mapping Project found the fossil fuel industry donated $5.2 million to political parties in B.C. since 2008 — 92 per cent of which went to the BC Liberals. The BC Liberals fundraised an incredible $12 million in the last year alone.

The CCPA report found "a remarkable and disturbingly close relationship between industry and the provincial government — one that not only contradicts the province’s stated aim to fight climate change but also undermines democracy and the public interest."

Nagata said with the influx of corporate cash in B.C. it's difficult to identify if government is making major decisions — from the granting of road construction contracts to pipeline approvals — in the public's interest.

"Only way to stop that freight train is to conduct an investigation," Nagata said.

.@BCLiberal Political $$$ Scandal Investigated by RCMP https://t.co/ZOnlCGp6qd @dogwoodbc @DemocracyWatchr @E4Dca @ClimateVoters #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/ctt6iVn9lv

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 13, 2017

The problem of uninhibited political donations in B.C. "is very dangerous to democracy," he added. "This kind of activity leads to the detachment of people from the political process that results in perverse political outcomes we don’t want to see in B.C."

"This is an issue that underlies every other issue in B.C. and has shaped the province and the lives of the people who live here. We’re not going to be satisfied until there is an inquiry or investigation to uncover the root of this problem."

Image: Christy Clark. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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Elections B.C. has been asked to investigate political contributions made to the BC Liberals by high-ranking Kinder Morgan staff, including president Ian Anderson.

The democracy advocacy group Dogwood submitted a formal complaint to Elections B.C. this week after discovering a series of political donations from individuals connected to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project that received provincial approval in January 2017.

The complaint comes on the heels of a bombshell investigation by the Globe and Mail that revealed corporate lobbyists were illegally reimbursed for contributions made to the B.C. Liberals.

Donations from Kinder Morgan staff to the BC Liberals include:

• Ian Anderson, President, Kinder Morgan Canada: $7,300
• Gavin Dew, Stakeholder Engagement Specialist: $13,120
• Lexa Hobenshield, External Relations Manager: $3,725
• Stephanie Snider, consulting lobbyist: $1,000

“If Kinder Morgan reimbursed any of its staff or lobbyists for event tickets, tables at fundraisers or other political contributions, they broke the law,” Kai Nagata, communications director for Dogwood, said in a press release.

B.C. has long been criticized for having some of the weakest political donation rules in Canada. There are no restrictions on corporate, union or foreign donations and there are no limits on what individuals can contribute.

It is explicitly illegal, however, to donate on behalf of or conceal the identity of another individual or entity.

“I think the people that have been tuned into what’s going on have looked at the B.C. political donation system with horror for many years but it does appear that current government has really elevated this style of fundraising to an art form,” Nagata told DeSmog Canada.

“The big difference we’ve seen in the last week is the realization that in their greed these players have found a way to break one of the few rules we do have which is around “straw donors.’ ”

The B.C. Liberals raised $12 million in 2016, more than any other ruling provincial party in Canada and two-thirds as much as the federal Liberal Party, according to the Globe investigation.

Nagata said the massive amounts of corporate and foreign cash flowing into B.C. raise significant concerns about decision-making in the province.

“The fundamental question is whether politicians are governing in the public’s interest and the scale of infiltration of foreign and corporate money raises serious questions about whether that is the case.”

Dogwood calculates that prior to the approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project, the BC Liberals received $771,168 in donations from project supporters including Kinder Morgan, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and oilsands producers. The same group donated $51,210 to the BC NDP.

Political Donations By Top #KinderMorgan Staff Draw Call for ElectionsBC Investigation https://t.co/EKxy6xJvkR @dogwoodbc @kainagata #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/zMINcctiqp

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 10, 2017

A recent report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Corporate Mapping Project found the B.C. government has been lobbied more than 22,000 times by the fossil fuel industry since 2010 and received $5.2 million in industry political donations between 2008 and 2015, 92 per cent of which went to the BC Liberals.

“Each of these examples highlights how politicians have turned this lack of laws and regulations to their advantage politically,” Nagata said.

Despite numerous calls to modernize B.C.’s political donation system, no changes have been made under the BC Liberals.

“People are starting to wake up and realize every decision this government has made, and contracts they’ve given out and billions in tax breaks they’ve awarded to donor companies — all of that is now in question.”

Andrew Weaver, leader of the BC Green party, said B.C. is running a “pay to play” system that prioritizes big donors.

“The fact that we have so much money going from so few fossil fuel companies to both parties — mostly the BC Liberals but also to the BC NDP — is part of the reason we have lost so many opportunities in B.C.,” Weaver told DeSmog Canada.

“I was the only MLA who took the time to be an intervenor in the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain hearings,” Weaver said. “The BC Liberals put out their five conditions for the project but never even outlined what it would take to meet those conditions.”

“B.C. politics is sick to the core because of this pay to play, because of lobbyists and corporate influence. People are being left behind.”

The BC Green party does not accept union and corporate donations.

“The ballot question this election is about trust: who do you elect to represent the people?”

“That’s a question for people who can vote: unions don’t vote and corporations don’t vote.”

Elections B.C. did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Image: Christy Clark annouces B.C.'s approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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The gas industry has donated more than $1 million to the BC Liberals since the last provincial election, according to a new analysis done by the Wilderness Committee.

The companies and industry groups are involved in extracting B.C.’s gas (via fracking) and building gas pipeline and liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations.

“This industry receives billions of dollars in provincial tax breaks and subsidies from the very government they’re paying to elect,” Peter McCartney, climate campaigner at the Wilderness Committee, said in a press release.

Gas industry donations since 2013 total $1,007,456.

Totals were tallied from the Elections BC contributions database and the BC Liberal disclosure site.

The largest donor is Encana, a natural gas company with extensive fracking operations in B.C.’s northeast, which gave $338,041 to the BC Liberal party in the past four years.

Chevron, which owns a 50 per cent stake in the Kitimat LNG project and the affiliated Pacific Trails gas pipeline, donated $114,540. Woodfibre LNG, which recently received federal approval to export LNG from a facility in Squamish, B.C., donated $63,500.

Other industry donors include the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., FortisBC, TransCanada, Pacific Northwest LNG, AltaGas, Steelhead LNG and Imperial.

A Globe and Mail investigation published on the weekend revealed that lobbyists are illegally funneling money to the party on behalf of corporate and special interests. This practice conceals the true source of the money from the public and is now under investigation by Elections BC.

What is illegal in other provinces is considered standard political donation practice in BC https://t.co/WmKKMtotZO #BCLNG #bcpoli #bcelxn17 pic.twitter.com/ZlkyD3d4YX

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 8, 2017

Corporations Can Donate Unlimited Amounts in B.C.

B.C., recently called the “wild west” of political donations by the New York Times, has long been criticized for its lax rules, which allow unlimited donations from corporations, unions, the wealthy elite and foreign interests.

Most other provinces and the federal government have caps on how much donors can give. The federal government limits individual donations to $1,525 and has an outright ban on donations by corporations, unions and foreigners.

The province of Quebec limits political donations to individuals and has a strict cap of $100.

Due to the fact B.C. has virtually no rules, the BC Liberal party is flush with corporate and foreign cash. Last year alone the party raised $12 million, more money than any other provincial party in power and two-thirds of what the federal Liberals collected from supporters across the country, according to the Globe article.

A recent New York Times feature said B.C. “stands out for the unabashedly cozy relationship between private interests and government officials in the province.”

The piece noted what is considered standard political donation practice in B.C. is illegal in other provinces.

“When anyone anywhere in the world can donate as much as they want to the system, you have an even bigger threat to the system,” Dermod Travis, executive director for IntegrityBC, told the New York Times.

“What it says to people is money talks and votes don’t.”

Travis, who has spent years documenting political donations and government contracts in B.C. recently wrote the B.C. government has turned the practice of returning favours to political donors into a refined art form.

Since 2013, Chevron’s Pacific Trails gas pipeline, TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink pipeline, TransCanada’s Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line, Woodfibre LNG’s export terminal, Pacific Northwest LNG’s export terminal and LNG Canada’s export terminal have received full or partial permitting.

In the lead up to the last provincial election, the BC Liberals campaigned on a LNG promise that pledged $1 trillion in economic activity, 100,000 high-paying jobs and the creation of a $100 billion B.C. Prosperity Fund.

The promise to have at least three LNG facilities online by 2020 was central to the party’s BC Jobs Plan and debt-reduction plan. Although both Pacific Northwest LNG and Woodfibre LNG have received permits, final and full investment decisions are still pending.

The companies behind the donations were poised to help the government deliver on the BC Liberal’s LNG promises. But those promises are looking harder and harder for the government to keep.

Image: Christy Clark announcing investment in the Woodfibre LNG terminal. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr cc

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