Matt Price from BCFacts.org just sent out the following (excellent) summary of the BC provincial government’s environmental record in 2003. I don’t see this summary article on the BCFacts site (yet, hint hint) but there is much more background information about each issue on the BCFacts site. WILL 2004 BE ANOTHER YEAR OF ENVIRONMENTAL ROLLBACKS IN BC? Matt Price, BCFacts.Org Coordinator

Wherever BC environment Minister Joyce Murray spends her New Year’s Eve, I hope that she will be making a New Year’s resolution to be a stronger advocate for the environment at the cabinet table, if indeed she manages to hold onto the post.

Two things came out of her Ministry just in time for Christmas: an approval in principle for a fossil fuel fired power plant in Nanaimo, and an opinion piece patting her government on the back for its “good year” of environmental accomplishments. Unfortunately, this juxtaposition of bad decisions with positive spin sums up the BC Liberals’ approach to environmental management.

In the spirit of the season, let’s give credit where it is due. The BC environmental community came together to create BCFacts.Org, a web-based tracking of all the government’s environmental decisions. In 2003 we gave the government credit for its offer to purchase Burns Bog, its initiative to clean up electronic waste, its purchase of green power, and more.

But, vastly outweighing these positive decisions are a host of negative decisions that make the government’s overall environmental record one of the worst in recent history.

On energy, despite BC Hydro’s voluntary green power purchase target, the government’s overall energy plan is a massive give-away to the fossil fuel industry. The government has given multiple subsidies and royalty breaks to the oil and gas industry in its efforts to double drilling by 2008. It has not only approved in principle the Nanaimo gas fired power plant, but it is positioning itself to allow industry to build coal fired power plants, which are even worse, so that power can be exported to the US.

On parks, the government approved a road to be built through Graham-Laurier park in order to get at oil and gas, and is working towards a process of repeated approvals of industry roads through parks. It also moved to commercialize parks, allowing resorts to be built inside their boundaries instead of on their edges. It indicated that it will be open to logging in parks to go after mountain pine beetles, when there is no evidence that logging is a solution to beetle outbreaks.

On forestry, it came to light that the government is allowing record raw log exports – the equivalent of 3,700 milling jobs worth. It approved the logging of spotted owl habitat when this species is down to less than 25 breeding pairs. It passed the “working forest” enabling legislation, a kind of anti-park initiative to give corporations more certainty over the public landbase. It weakened private forest land protections, taking private forest lands out of forestry designation and then providing tax incentives to opt back in. Much of these lands are in urban sprawl zones and are more profitably sold for development.

On salmon farming, the government passed legislation to limit by-laws by local governments regarding salmon farming operations, centralizing control in Victoria. It also secretly approved the farming of new species like halibut and sablefish, all with no scientific evidence that farming these species does not add to the already proven negative environmental impacts of salmon farming.

The government’s “modernizing” of environmental protections over pesticides and pollution amount to deregulation, allowing industry more freedom to use pesticides and to pollute and to self-monitor. The government needed to do this because it has fired many of its staff that used to oversee permitting and enforcement.

Finally, perhaps the great granddaddy of all the government’s anti-environmental legislation in 2003 was the Significant Projects Streamlining Act. This Bill would see the rule of law in BC undermined, giving cabinet the right to over-rule any laws getting in the way of projects it deems “provincially significant.” Local governments around BC are rightly up in arms about this initiative, as it will effectively shut them out. Anyone concerned about the environment should be similarly alarmed.

So, there we have it, a year of extensive environmental rollbacks by a government desperate to promote business at any cost. As the Liberals go into 2004, however, they face a pre-election year and a drop in the polls. The voters of BC do not want to see a decade of environmental protections rolled back. This should be the message Minister Murray takes to the cabinet table.