All posts by Rafe Mair

About Rafe Mair

Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, was Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. In 1981 he left politics for Talk Radio becoming recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists. An avid fly fisherman, he took a special interest in Atlantic salmon farms and private power projects as environmental calamities and became a powerful voice in opposition to them. Rafe is the co-founder of The Common Sense Canadian and writes a regular blog at rafeonline.com.

Image from TheNextWeb.com

The addiction to growth

Urban & Transport
Share

We humans, especially in the western world, have a commitment to growth
which, if sustained, will have disastrous results.

In fact growth is a
self fulfilling prophecy. For as fast as we expand to the outer limit,
that outer limit is handled by developers demanding and getting more
land to handle the growth, establishing yet another outer limit. That
can’t go on!

We seem to believe the old saw that if you don’t continue growing you
will go backwards into the maw of mediocrity. This mantra of “grow or
perish” spurs municipal politicians – where the real action is – to
attract more and more industry thus requiring more land for residences.
Even when land is kept away from developers, existing apartment space
will be forced to go higher.

Senior governments pitch in by building more highways and bridges which,
when built, will attract more and more vehicles.

We promise that we’ll stop using petroleum for fuel at the same time as
we develop more and more dirty oil and build new pipelines to transport
it.

More and more people, like me, write editorials and make speeches about
all this “progress”, more and more people agree and less and less is
done about it.


The new economic powerhouses in the world, India and China, (the latter
of which virtually owns the United States) will, as North America
increasingly depends upon them for goods, demand and get the US and
Canada to relax immigration laws – which we’ll have no choice but to accept
– and we’ll build more residences and highways to accommodate them.
Areas like the Downtown East Side in Vancouver will become more and more
crowded creating an ever increasing demand for more social housing.

We’re on a runaway train and don’t know how to get off.

The trouble with BC and indeed the country as a whole is that, by
international standards, we have plenty of space for more people to
occupy even considering the weather factor as you get into northern
regions.

How do we deal with this?

There us no magic bullet and people must start thinking – we all must
realize that development has become a Ponzi scheme where we need new
development to bring in new batches of capital with each new arrival
resulting in another new batch able to come in, and on it goes.

It all starts at the municipal level and that’s where we must make
our concerns felt.

Share

Canwest’s avoidance of sea lice and river privatization

WATER, ,
Share

Perhaps I’m a bit optimistic but I see the Canwest writers coming out, just a teeny bit.

If you had just arrived from Mars and looked at old issues of the Vancouver Province and the Vancouver Sun going back a decade you would never, for a moment, know that there have been any environmental issues in BC let alone the disastrous Rivers and Fish Farms catastrophe. In fact you would assume that Premier Gordon (Pinocchio) Campbell is a very popular politician. No doubt you would shake your head when you read the results of published polls and see the depths to which Mr. Campbell’s popularity has fallen.

You would see the odd article in the Sun by Scott Simpson on these two issues but they’re like letters servicemen send from war zones – enough to show concern but nothing specific about what’s really going on.

Mike Smyth in the July 25th edition of The Province goes much further in criticism of the Campbell government than at any time over the past decade. He talks of the cover-up of the BC Lotteries scandal, the screw-up of the HST, the muzzling of the Child Advocate, the privacy scandal, the Freedom of Information mess and the MLA expenses debacle.

Nothing about the government cover-up of sea lice stats, which should, but won’t, bring down the government!

Here we have an ongoing plan to desecrate our rivers so that BC Hydro can pay double what it’s worth to give BC Energy that it can’t use. From Palmer and Smyth, nothing. Zilch.

Here is an issue that presently has run to $40 BILLION! BC Hydro must pay for energy it doesn’t need, something that dwarfs the Glen Clark fast ferries fiasco without a comment from the intrepid Canwest political writers.

Here we have the fish farm issue, international in scope, with Alexandra Morton probably BC’s most tenacious fighter, on an issue she has taken up with the likes of the King of Norway, and it’s as if she weren’t there!

I sense this may have something to do with the fact that I’ve been on these issues – Smyth is mad at me big time. He has reason to be but that doesn’t excuse him avoiding issues because I’m on them.

Mike might answer that that’s not the reason, which puts me in mind of the lawyer in a southern courtroom (where things are a bit laid back) who, to the obvious displeasure of the judge, smoked a big cigar throughout the trial.

After the case was lost, the lawyer said to the judge “I think it’s terrible that you should decide against my client just because I smoked a cigar during the hearing”.

“That wasn’t the reason I found against you”, replied the judge.

“Well”, said the lawyer, “it’s a better reason than any you gave in your judgment”.

C’mon Mike, grow up!

Share
The Sun Tower in Vancouver was at one time the tallest building in the British Empire - and the headquarters for BC's news reporting

BC News – Past and Future

Uncategorized
Share

What has a newspaper chain like Canwest got to do with an environmental website and its quest to save our environment?

A very great deal.

Undoubtedly newspapers have lost much of their onetime influence. Certainly when I was growing up, although our parents would admonish, “don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers”, the three papers in Vancouver, the News-Herald in the morning and the Sun and Province in the afternoon were very powerful influences on public opinion. For solid factual news coverage one listened to the CBC but the issues of the day in British Columbia were fashioned and debated in the print press.

Television, in my case in the early 50s, began to take over the coverage of public affairs. Starting with the brilliant Edward R. Murrow and continuing perhaps until the development of Fox, TV gave the hard edge to stories. Shows like 60 Minutes exposed what needed to be exposed.

Now the Internet so threatens TV and the newspapers that advertising revenue has sunk calamitously and even the mighty, like the New York Times, which exposed the disinformation by which the US government kept the war in Vietnam going, and the Washington Post, which exposed Watergate and drove Richard Nixon from power, are in serious financial difficulties.

Vancouver and, by extension British Columbia, has always marched to its own drummer. Until the last decade or so, opinion was driven by hard-hitting columnists and political talk show hosts. Names like Jack Webster, Marjorie Nichols, Pat Burns, Gary Bannerman and dare I add Rafe Mair, in radio and Allan Fotheringham, Jack Wasserman, Denny Boyd, Vaughn Palmer, Les Leyne, Jim Hume, and his two talented sons Mark and Stephen in print, and others consistently held all governments, municipal, provincial, and federal, accountable to the public. As they say, held their feet to the fire. There was a strong feeling of a journalistic obligation to question whatever the government alleged to be true.

Television played an important role as well, especially BCTV, and there are several names that come to mind, but theirs was not so much led by an individual as by the news department – led by the likes of Cameron Bell and the late Keith Bradbury. As a cabinet minister in the Bill Bennett government in the mid seventies I well remember the bashing we took, night after night, from BCTV over scandals real or imagined.

A clear distinction must be made here between columnists who write interesting analyses of the goings on of the times and those who, like a dog with a bone, pursue governments they see as practicing bad unto evil policies and being economical with the truth. Those who used to do the latter have been forced to do the former in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

That tradition of “show me” journalism and the will to see government bullshit exposed have all but left us.

Talk radio is a bad joke and television is little better. The guns of the print journalists have been retired or spiked.

The purchase of Canwest in separate lumps, Global-BCTV to Shaw Cable and the newspapers to a conglomerate of investment bankers and former employees led by Paul Godfrey holds out some promise for change.

Mr. Godfrey, with a minimum of subtlety, has criticized what’s happened in the past and promised changes for the future and here’s where the environment comes in – for unless the Canwest papers are going back to holding governments’ feet to the fire, what meaningful changes can Mr. Godfrey be talking about.

The environmental issues which have emerged as important in the last decade in BC are the fish farms and private power and both issues have been largely ignored by the media. In days of yore, Fotheringham and Nichols in the papers, Jack Webster and Gary Bannerman on radio, and Cameron Bell and Keith Bradbury at BCTV would have been all over the government on both of these issues. Moreover – and here’s the critical point – the Campbell government would never have got away with rank and demonstrable deceit on these two issues had Canwest, TV and print, and talk radio not badly let the public down – badly.

Hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of wild salmon would have been saved. Our rivers and the ecologies they support would be free of private dams on our rivers, roads and transmission lines scarring the countryside forever more. BC Hydro would be free of billions of dollars debt incurred paying for power they don’t need to the profit of the shareholders of General Electric.

This is the legacy of Canwest to the people of British Columbia. Mr. Godfrey can’t undo this but he can direct his papers to a return to the sort of journalism that prevented this sort of governmental abuse in the past.

We have reason, I think, for cautious – very cautious – optimism.

Share
UNESCO biosphere reserve status has done little if anything to protect Clayoquot Sound

Clayoquot under siege: Ecological gem still threatened by logging, mining, fish farms

Energy and Resources, Logging and Forests, Metals and Minerals, Mining, Oceans, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture
Share

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats”. (H.L. Mencken)

Those who fought to save the trees at Clayoquot and the tens of thousands of their fellow citizens – indeed environmental defenders from all over the globe – would, if they knew the truth, be appalled and ashamed and fighting mad at what has happened since 1994 when then Premier Mike Harcourt thought he had protected much of the Clayoquot old growth timber.

The battle known as the “War In The Woods” solved little if anything when all’s said and done. In 1993, the war commenced with almost 1000 protesters winding up in jail. The “war” became international with eco-stars like Robert F. Kennedy getting in the trenches. Clayoquot Sound was named a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. An independent panel of scientists got into the act as did the NDP government of the day – but once the fine print was read, the various agreements and legislative efforts following 1993 did little to change things. Tragically, as too often is the case, destitute First Nations – aided by newer, smaller outside companies only too eager to help them harvest and sell Clayoquot’s forests – wound up doing the logging. And they were no better able to do it in an environmentally sound way than were the large companies which left because they couldn’t make money if the new rules were enforced. The bottom line is that whether the area was clear-cut, helicopter logged, or a combination of methods, they could no longer turn a profit, so they left. But the First Nations need money and the forest suffers accordingly.

“War in the Woods” protests in Clayoquot Sound two decades ago

In the final analysis, Clayoquot Sound is an international symbol of how environmental fights usually end with the environmental groups winning the battle yet losing the war.

In fact, Clayoquot Sound environmentalists resemble a prize fighter who valiantly gets off the canvass only to be knocked down again, for in addition to the forestry battle they thought they had won, they might now be down for the count with several other environmental catastrophes in the ring wielding knockout punches.

Clayoquot Sound is an unbelievable gem in a coast of gems. Famous for its waves which attract thousands of surfers every year, it is, or was, also famous for its salmon fishing. Perhaps most of all, Clayoquot Sound is a place you want to be – a spectacular rain forest close enough to “civilization” to be reachable, yet seemingly remote.

As if the logging weren’t bad enough, there is a proposed copper mine on Catface Mountain, which, if it is approved and brought to fruition, will literally lop off a third of the mountain – and mine deep into its core. The good news is that the test drilling thus far shows low grade copper, calling into doubt its viability; the bad news is that if world prices of copper are high, this means huge open pit mining because extracting low grade mineral means much more rock must be taken for the undertaking to work. As I write this, 22 further holes are being drilled and results will be known by year’s end.

Catface Mountain, where Imperial Metals wants to build a mine

Clayoquot Sound has always been known for spectacular fishing, supporting substantial commercial and sports fisheries. Enter the salmon farmers. Much attention has been paid to the ruinous contact of Broughton Archipelago migrating salmon and the clouds of sea lice from fish farms there. More recently, thanks to the vigorous scientific work by Alexandra Morton, the environmentalist hero of the Broughton tragedy, we now know that sockeye from the Fraser are all but certainly facing the same fish farm-induced perils faced by the pinks and chum in the Broughton Archipelago. While the research into the impacts of salmon farms continues at Clayoquot Sound, every indication is that it’s Broughton Archipelago re-visited, and then some. (See my colleague Damien Gillis’ new film on the salmon farm situation in Clayoquot here).

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is on the matter, but how comforting is that? Will it be the same DFO we’ve come to have contempt for? Will it again be like lying sick in hospital and the undertaker comes to visit with a tape measure in his hand? Unhappily, that’s not all. Tofino dumps its raw sewage into the ocean, sewage that increases as tourists arrive. The mayor and council know the harm this does but say, simply, that with the tax base they must work with they simply cannot provide the treatment that’s needed.

Clayoquot Sound salmon smolt with sea lice from nearby fish farms

The mayor and council have done their damndest to protect their beautiful unique sound, as have environmental groups, but as long as the situation I’ve described continues, it will be one pace forward, two paces back.

History tells us that DFO, who is supposed to protect wild fish, is mandated to support fish farms by a government of ignorant cretins which hasn’t a soupçon of care for the environment. We also know that the provincial government can’t wait to have private companies destroy our rivers for power and the profits destined for out-of-province shareholders of large international corporations – indeed one private power dam (the industry prefers we call them weirs) is under construction in Clayoquot, with several more to follow.

Clayoquot Sound, the place everyone thought had been made safe for nature, sits on the edge of the precipice overlooking utter destruction while industry – and it must be said some First Nations – and the two senior governments are fighting to see who will give it the last and fatal push.

If we are to have any hope of truly protecting this magical place, it’s high time we hoisted up that black flag again.

Share

Sustainability and public policy

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, ,
Share

We the people must do more than oppose environmental nightmares encouraged and sometimes committed by government.

Most, if not all, of the projects The Common Sense Canadian has been involved in, stack the deck from the outset. None could better make my point than Fish Lake in the Chilcotin area which got past the BC Environmental Assessment process like a hot knife through butter.
A federal review panel has has found major faults with the project – in terms of impacts on the environment and First Nations who depend upon it – but the final decision will be made by the Prime Minister.

Fish Lake is a good place to start for today’s rant but it could have started at any number of other projects.

Before we even consider environmental catastrophes like Fish Lake we must, as a society, make up our minds on this fundamental question: when decisions are made, do jobs and taxes trump the environment? If that’s so, we should cast off our cloak of hypocrisy and say so, leaving the Ministry of Environment the sole role of determining what rules will govern HOW, not IF the project is to proceed.

As anyone who has attended these public hearings can tell you,
one is only entitled to deal with the “how” not the “if” – unless you’re the company, in which case you are permitted to present for the meeting and for the media glowing descriptions of the benefits of the project with no risk of contradiction.
The companies invariably hold the meetings in out of the way places in halls that would scarcely handle a Sunday School meeting.

All companies committing environmental catastrophes tell us about the employment they will create. In all cases – you can depend on this – the figures are, to put it kindly, fudged. An excellent example comes out of private power producers who talk about the employment prospects from their dams – oops! I mean weirs – where in fact the only employment is for short term construction,
most of the jobs being low-paying and going to people from outside the project area.
After the dam – oops again, I mean weir – the computerized plant has one or two jobs only.

The tax issue is interesting, for when Premier Gordon (Pinocchio) Campbell was asked what was in it for BC with private power projects, he named off HST, corporate income taxes, municipal taxes, and income taxes on employees.
These same benefits would come from building a red light district.

We, the public, must continue to demand proper hearings on environmental issues as a matter of right.
But there is a much larger issue which we’ve all been avoiding: how long can we continue as a society which practices uncontrolled consumption?

For several years I chaired meetings for Metro Vancouver on sustainability issues. These were not hearings in the true sense and weren’t billed as such. They were opportunities to discuss the feasibility of a project or a policy, the object being that the panel of experts and the audience would be able to detail the problems to be overcome for the benefit of the politicians and staff. This was fair enough
because municipalities do provide citizens opportunities to question whether or not to proceed with a project, as any developer can attest!
I only raise this to tell you that at many of the meetings, as I introduced the panel and the subject, I would ask “where does this all end? Do we just continue to grow and grow assuming that there will always be another field to plow up for houses?” The question was never answered.

This is the decision we must make as citizens – and Fish Lake, private power projects, fish farms, logging, and oil pipelines/tankers all in issue now, bring this question into focus.

Rex Weyler, a co-founder of Greenpeace, made this point a few weeks ago at a public meeting. He simply, but provocatively, asked whether or not we can simply go on consuming and expect to have the goods we consume and still retain our environment? And that’s what Fish Lake and other projects I’ve mentioned are all about. For if our philosophy is that failure to “progress” means we must, like a Ponzi* scheme, move on to the next river, the next valley,
the next species still left in the ocean, we will suffer the fate of all Ponzi schemes – we’ll implode.

We don’t have to rip our environment apart in order
to have a prosperous society, as many world societies – Holland, Belgium and Switzerland come to mind – demonstrate. We are a resource-based economy because we can be not because we must. Fish Lake, private power companies, logging companies, fish farms and piplelines/tankers teach us that the resources we can now exploit
are no longer far away, thus safely out of mind – but still just around the corner.

Unfortunately, 200 years or so of ever-increasing exploitation of resources have created a society that doesn’t want to change. It’s like the fishermen in Newfoundland when their fishery was closed – they demanded the right to do what past generations had always done even though there were no fish left.
Our society wants to fish where there are no fish left, just as we demand the right to mine no matter where the ore is, or the environmental cost of so doing;
we want to log because that’s what we’ve always done; we want to destroy farmland for new neighborhoods and shopping centres just as always has happened; we want the right to fish and destroy habitat at the same time and we want to risk serious and permanent damage where pipelines and tankers go.

The case is irrefutable – we cannot continue this way.

Instead of saying “let’s find new ways to live and earn the money to do so; let’s really learn how to conserve; let’s stop our imbedded habit of built-in obsolescence so that we can use products longer”, we are in denial.
Instead of meeting a very obvious problem head-on and looking for solutions we will carry on until the last fish is killed.

Fish Lake is a message, a symbol that we do have to stop somewhere, re-group and look for ways to re-cast our society so we can live well without destroying our precious environment.

* A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors.

Share
Vancouver office of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans

Cohen Commission off to Lousy Start

Uncategorized
Share

John Cummins, Conservative MP for Delta-Richmond East, has raised a number of concerns about the Bruce Cohen Commission of Inquiry into Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River – which Commissioner Cohen must answer if he and the commission are going to have any credibility.

Will the scientific advisors to this commission, many with ties to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), be put under oath for examination – and if so, who will conduct it? And if they are to take the witness stand under oath, will lawyers for environmental groups be permitted to cross examine them?

And how does Commissioner Cohen justify the funding formula whereby the David Suzuki Foundation, a well-funded ENGO full of its own staff, gets over twice as much funding for legal counsel as does Alexandra Morton?

When I heard of Mr. Justice Cohen’s appointment I thought this was good news. Now I’m not so sure. It’s looking more and more as if the fix is in.

I am not, I hasten to say, suggesting illegal acts – not at all. Rather it looks like it’s all nice and legal-like so that Prime Minister Harper and his toadies can claim that they did all they could to get at the truth. In fact, if the Commission proceeds as it appears to be, the DFO, who were responsible for the Fraser River Sockeye collapse, will, in essence, be investigating themselves. So let me state this flat out: no one associated with the DFO during the period of time covered by this investigation should be advising the Commissioner. PERIOD. They are all important witnesses.

Yes, I am cynical of fisheries commissions. The pacific salmon has been a gigantic political pain in the ass for the federal government since BC entered confederation. There is never any good news and this time will be no exception. There are only a handful of ridings directly affected – not enough to spend a lot of money on. Mr. Harper is interested in only one result – that it takes the issue out of play during the next federal campaign.

I can tell you why this commission will be like all the others.

The Harper government is committed to fish farms, as demonstrated by the hapless minister Gail Shea over and over again. Ms. Shea attended the fish farm industry’s big convention in Norway last year, telling all who would listen how supportive the government was of this ghastly industry. Ms. Shea has not, it would seem, appeared at any conventions or meetings held by those opposed to fish farms in our oceans. Fish Farmers are generous donors to politicians both federal and provincial. Politicians avoid offending generous donors.

One has to assume that Prime Minister Harper will have followed the golden rule of investigations – never appoint a commission unless you know how it’s going to turn out – or don’t care. That can be accomplished in two ways: have a commissioner you trust not to do anything too drastic, or set terms of reference which, by the confinement of issues procedures mandated, shield those you don’t want to hurt – or both.

Mr. Cohen is not a judge while chairing this procedure and can’t hide behind a robe. He must deal with these questions satisfactorily or else it will look to the public that the results are pre-ordained. Appearances are, as Mr. Cohen knows, critical – justice must not only be done but manifestly be seen to be done.

Commissioner Cohen is off to a lousy start.

Share
Seeing green: Normally clear Narrows Inlet estuary turned a murky green by a silt dump from a private power project on nearby Tyson Lake

Down the Drain: Massive Silt Dump from Private Power Project Threatens Fish

WATER
Share

Who knows where Tyson Lake is, or cares? And who gives a damn about Tyson Creek, the Tzoonie River, and Narrows Inlet?

Clearly the Federal and Provincial Governments couldn’t care less.
And maybe they don’t have to because at 9 Megawatts the company messing up the area doesn’t have to go through any environmental assessment process. In BC, if a project is under 50 MW, no process is required and, as you will see, the environmental impact of smaller projects can be lethal. (Incidentally, California doesn’t consider any hydro project over 30 MW as green!)
That’s why the “size” rule is not just stupid but hugely injurious to our environment.

Let’s look at what happened with that “little” project, above Narrows Inlet on the Sunshine Coast, which operates by draining Tyson Lake then sending it into Tyson Creek, thence into the Tzoonie River and Tzoonie Estuary. Imagine the lake as a giant bathtub, with a man-made hole and drain in the bottom.

Here’s how Scott Simpson put it last May in the Vancouver Sun:

Within a few weeks of beginning operations, the facility began releasing cloudy water into Tyson Creek – suggesting that a disturbance had taken place under the ice-covered surface of Tyson Lake and caused a large release of silt into the lake. It appears that drawing down the lake for power generation caused the surface ice to scour a delta situated at one end of the lake.

The cloudy, or turbid, water was observed in the Tzoonie River and all the way out to the river’s estuary in Narrows Inlet. (From Pollution worries halt Sechelt power project)

Here’s what Bob Price – a local resident who has closely documented the situation and submitted his findings to the authorities, with little response – has to say:

Over this past year, with constant dawn to dusk float plane, water taxi industrial noise…no mountain goats on the Tzoonie Narrows cliffs. No marbled murrelets spotted. No osprey in the inlet. No Trumpeter swans wintering in the estuary. No bears on the shoreline. No beaver seen in the Tzoonie Estuary. No owls heard at night.

And the environmental impact of bottom draining an alpine lake?

How are two massive silt dumps, into the Tzoonie watershed right when fragile and defenceless alevins are migrating from their gravel beds to the sea? The magnificent Tzoonie is home to Coho, Chum, Sockeye, Steelhead, Cutthroat and Dolly Varden. Oh yeah…Coho fry spend a year in their home river.

And when friends pulled up their crab trap, in the normally crystal clear estuary June 6, 2010… containing a freshly fillet and bloody Red Snapper as bait…12 hours later, the trap was recovered – the snapper fillet was blanketed in glacial silt…a first in 20 years also. No crabs.

Here’s how the project works (or doesn’t work!), from Daniel Bouman, Executive Director of the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association:

About the Tyson Creek IPP: This project uses Tyson Lake as a head pond. A tunnel, carrying the penstock pipe, was bored under the lake and a hole was blasted through the lake bottom to allow water to flow into the penstock and down to the generating station, after which the water is allowed to return to Tyson Creek, which has a fish bearing reach below the generating station. A re-watering pipe carries water from the tunnel back up to the creek’s natural outlet on Tyson Lake. This allows minimum flow requirements (5% of the mean annual flow) to be met.

While the project has been shut down for five months now, since the silt dump incident, the damage to fish has been done. And owner Renewable Power Corp. is seeking relief from the Fisheries Act, fearing they may go bankrupt if they are forced to stick to pollution laws and keep the siltation down to allowable levels – which could kill their project for good.

Bob Price has been onto both the Federal and Provincial governments going back some 18 months – beginning long before this disaster ever happened, which would be the optimal time for DFO and the Province to do their jobs. The province, as noted, doesn’t care because the project is under 50 MW/h. When Mr. Price first warned DFO of what had happened, the C.O. “…had no boat available.” And a DFO officer came after the worst was over and stated that he had seen no environmental damage!

In order to understand how egregious DFO’s actions have been, here are the two sections of the Fisheries Act that apply.

The federal Fisheries Act protects fish and fish habitat. Section 35 of the Act states:
“No person shall do any work that results in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fisheries habitat” [unless authorized].

Section 36 of the Act protects fish habitat from pollution: “No person shall deposit or permit the deposit of a deleterious substance of any type in water frequented by fish or in any place … [where it] … may enter such water…”

And the worst is yet to come, for other private power projects on lakes in the area draining into Narrows Inlet are planned to come on stream (literally!).

Tyson Lake is only the beginning. On the way are clusters of lakes including Ramona Lake and Phantom Lake, which are presently under construction. All the projects in these clusters will drain lakes and flow into Tzoonie River – except Phantom, which will drain into Salmon Inlet. These two inlets, as noted, are a hugely important source of fish of many descriptions. This added development will magnify the impact on the Tzoonie River.

It must thus be noted that these IPPs are different than many we’ve seen because – unlike river diversions – they use lake water by draining the lake, up to 20 meters annually, into penstocks, which then go through the generator and into transmission lines.

The problem with all these projects is that there is no meaningful public process. Meetings are indeed held – usually at a place inconvenient to the interested public – and are meaningless. For by the time the meetings are held licenses have already been granted and the public has no power to do anything but make suggestions as to environmental assessment rules – which, of course, will be ignored.

It’s critical that the public understand that since the Campbell government took away the right of municipal bodies to zone these private power projects, through Bill 30, the meetings are pointless frustrations.

Here’s how Bob Price sums up:

After observing a huge siltation dump in Narrows Inlet, on March 21, 2010, and through subsequent inquiry, I discovered that an IPP worker on the shore of Narrows Inlet estuary – at the mouth of the Tzoonie River – stated that the cause of this was “a massive silt stumpage directly caused by this IPP presently bottom-draining Tyson Lake.”

This giant glob of debris rushed down Tyson Creek and has dumped a huge silt sediment glob down the Tzoonie River and an extensive residue remains in Narrows Inlet turning every bit of water light green. That silt can’t be too good for cutthroat trout and other indigenous species – coho, chum, sockeye, oysters, clams, starfish, cod, ling cod, snapper etc.

Is this impact to be expected to happen to the IPP proponent bottom-draining Ramona Lake as well? Phantom Lake, and other such high alpine lakes? The bottom part of Ramona Creek is a “blue listed” cutthroat trout stream.

Spring is the time for fish eggs to hatch and fry to work their way to the sea in the inlet. In the midst of this destructively sad, so-called “green” project and it’s massive “green” silt, the alevin are destroyed as they make their way from their gravel beds to the sea at this time of the year.

It’s bad enough that these IPPs are not only an eyesore, but they are proving to be environmentally destructive to boot. To insects, for fish food. They don’t breed in fast moving water in steel pipe. Fish don’t survive when they inhale copious amounts of fine silt. Each draw down of the lake will result in the same silt dump.

Do our stewards of the environment, federal and provincial, keep records? Communicate? Assess? Investigate? What on earth do these officials do as part of their assessment? What is the mitigation plan for such an eventuality? An immediate response is required as this sediment dump is a violation of the Fisheries Act that governs these species.

Here is where Mr. Price makes the point that we all must understand. The governments cannot be forced to be the proper stewards of our environment by the public they are supposed to serve.

You will hear Gordon (Pinocchio) Campbell say, ad nauseum, that these environmental assessments are the most stringent in the world, blah, blah, blah.

Well, folks, the old Soviet Union Bill of Rights was the greatest protection of citizens in the world. It matters not what the environmental rules and tests are if no one is allowed to examine the results, cross-examine the people responsible, and impose appropriate penalties.

Who cares for environmental rules and regulations when, as here with the Tyson Lake disaster, there are no consequences? Where else in the world can one destroy an environment and be protected against responsibility by the very people mandated to protect it?

All the above points out conclusively that the two governments cannot, in any way, be held accountable by the public. The only public hearings held are after the project is a done deal and those public hearings can’t affect the outcome any way.

The desecration of our environment continues and the public have no say whatsoever; that, dear friends, is Gordon Campbell’s energy policy.

Share

Cummins Raises Potential Conflicts of Interest in Cohen Sockeye Commission

Canada, Politics, Western Canada,
Share

John Cummins. MP, Delta-Richmond East (Conservative), a former commercial fisherman, has called into question the appointment of four men to the Cohen Inquiry into the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye with the mandate to inquire into, amongst other things, the actions or non-actions of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

These men are Carl Walters, a fisheries professor at UBC, Brian Riddell, a former long-time DFO senior manager, Thomas Quinn, a fisheries advisor to DFO over the years, and Paul LeBlond, a long-time advisor to the federal fisheries minister of the day. All men are acknowledged as experts in the field and it is this which I will show, as Cummins has shown, that is the root of the problem.

There are two things to bear in mind here – first, Cummins is not calling the credentials of any of these men into question, and nor do I; second, the Commission directs Justice Cohen to develop recommendations “for any changes to policies, practices and procedures of the Department [DFO] in relation to the management of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery and included in this mandate is a complete review of aquaculture and its impact on pacific salmon. The review is to include government involvement.”

I am shocked into disbelief that Cohen would appoint these men as advisors because they are in fact witnesses, and important ones. Here’s what Cummins has to say:

Cohen ought instinctively to know that a full-fledged judicial inquiry into the department’s management of the salmon fishery should not, indeed must not employ people who had in any way advised the Department or those who had relied on departmental funding for their work. This is akin to asking them to investigate themselves and rule as to whether their advice was appropriate and whether it was properly implemented or disregarded by the Department.

The notion of a conflict of interest always seems to confound most those who ought best be able to spot one. One cannot begin to look at any aspect of the Pacific Coast Salmon fishery without immediately looking at the DFO over the years. This requires the closest look not only at the decisions they made but the advice they had, and from whom, when making them.

It is no more complicated than this: an investigation of DFO and its decisions requires that the actions of all who participated in the decision making process be carefully investigated. To have those who participated be advisors not witnesses is intolerable and I’m surprised these men haven’t declined on that account for one cannot be an advisor if one is a witness and each of these men are prime witnesses.

Is it fair to conclude that these advisors are being paid a healthy per diem which they wouldn’t get if they were advisors? I’m not suggesting that these fine scientists would put personal welfare ahead of duty but it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what would ordinary people think because as I will demonstrate in a moment, it’s appearances that matter so much in proceedings like these.

There is absolutely no way this can be avoided being said: Mr. Justice Cohen has, from the outset, disqualified his commission’s ability to carry out its mandate and must resign or re-constitute his advisors.

Many British Columbians were delighted to learn of this commission. Now, we were told, we would get out all of the evidence. We assumed that this was a “non political” exercise and dedicated to getting to the bottom of decisions made by DFO over the years.

Now, what do they find?

That the very witnesses who should be examined and cross examined Judge Cohen has sheltered from this by being made advisors!

It’s a matter of the commission seeming to be fair. The underlying principle by which our courts or tribunals operate can be stated, as it was long ago, thusly “Justice must not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done”. Be seen to be done…It must not only be fair it must be seen as fair. These advisors are precisely the people I would want to see examined and cross-examined were I the commissioner. What’s happened to Mr. Justice Cohen’s sense of fair play puzzles me greatly as it must all interested British Columbians.

I do not say that “the fix” is in, but given the way the commissioner has arranged to have witnesses made into advisors one might be tempted to ponder that notion.

For while the Commissioner, Bruce Cohen, may not be political, his boss, Stephen Harper – a man whose only demonstrated interest in the environment has been to let corporate friends destroy it – sure as hell is.

Commissioner Cohen must terminate these advisors and hand them subpoenas or forfeit his and the commission’s right to have the confidence of the public.

Read Conservative MP John Cummins’ press releases on the subject at www.johncummins.ca

Share

Successful HST initiative: What now?

Canada, Politics, Western Canada, ,
Share

It appears that the anti-HST signatures may approach 1,000,000 before the final count is presented on July 5. It’s interesting to note that the Liberal party only got 750,000 votes in the 2009 General Election. Because it’s certain that the anti-HST committee will reach its statutory requirements, two interesting questions arise: first what the government will do; and second, if they don’t call a referendum, what will the “anti’s” do then?
The long and the short of it is that the government doesn’t have to do a damned thing. For the record, the petition is referred to a select standing committee of the legislature which has 4 months to sit on it and if they recommend that the draft bill proceeded the government need only introduce the bill in the Legislature where it can languish forever.

For all practical purposes we can assume that the referendum will never be called. This notwithstanding the solemn promise of Gordon Campbell to make the process easier. Since we all know what his word is worth we had to expect he would lie about this too.

What position does this put the Campbell government in politically?

Rotten. To be candid, compared to stonewalling, he would be better to let the referendum go ahead, take the position that because he loves democracy so much, he will abide the wishes of the public blah, blah, blah. This is a terrible option but the others are worse. He will have this bag of political stones to carry right into the next election as an issue and that he doesn’t need.

I don’t expect Campbell will do this and probably he’ll advise the select committee to move quickly to send the bill back to the legislature where he can table it, never call it for a vote and hope that the public will not see it as a big deal in May of 2013.

What then do the anti HST folks do then?

Their obvious weapon is recall and here the requirements are even tougher than the referendum rules.

Here is what the Act says:

Requirements for recall petition

23 (1) A recall petition must comply with the following requirements:

(a) the petition must be submitted to the chief electoral officer within 60 days after the date on which the petition was issued under section 20;

(b) the petition must be signed by more than 40% of the total number of individuals who are entitled to sign the recall petition under section 21.

The last subsection means 40% of the voters’ list as of May 2009, a formidable obstacle.

There is one thing I must make clear. No one in this province would like to see the back of this Campbell lot more than me but the fact is recall wasn’t intended to be used to bring down a government or a cabinet minister but to recall a MLA for not doing his job of representing his constituents properly. I agree that one can stretch that to say “Premier Campbell is not doing a proper job of representing his constituents because he won’t oppose the HST” but it is a stretch and will form a major part of any government opposition to recall.

The opponents have no choice in the matter because that is the logical next step unless they want to holler “uncle” and fade away. Having chosen to go the recall route they will have to take on the Premier – and remember they must get 40% of the 2009 voters list to sign the petition before a by-election must be held in a riding the Premier carried comfortably in ’09.

Here’s what they’ll do if they’re smart. They will form that famous “new third party” and combine recall efforts with a membership drive. That won’t hurt their Recall efforts and may enhance them but even if they fail in the recall they’ll walk away with a hell of a lot of support for the new party.

The new party idea is not an easy one to make happen. I’ll get more into that in a later column but let me close with this point: the very last thing a new party needs is to be led by Bill Vander Zalm, Chris Delaney, Gordon Wilson or Wilf Hanni. These are the ghosts of failures past.

It will be difficult to find a way to build a party from scratch but, in my judgment, attracting the public requires one thing – a solemn commitment to the public right to be heard. People understand that no government can do all things for all people but government can and must get public involvement, in a real way, in the decision making process when basic change is proposed.

I’ve seen the phony baloney Environmental Assessment hearings of the past couple of years where the people weren’t allowed to deal with the merits of the proposal in question. The anger at the sham was white hot.

We’ve all seen the energy policy of this government which gives away our rivers, our environment, our power and, yes, our money to foreign companies take place in secret without any public involvement permitted.

British Columbians, in the main, are neither right wing nor left wing but ordinary, decent people who want fair play with the government as well as the private sector playing a role. They liked owning BC Ferries and BC Rail before the Campbell government got rid of them and want to keep BC Hydro. That doesn’t make them socialists any more than their support for a healthy, vibrant private sector makes them right wingers. They see matters issue by issue, not in terms of dogma.

A party that can offer people the right to be heard has a great future if it can find a way to overcome inertia and the pangs of birth.

As always, the devil is in the details.

Share

Morton’s Telling Memo: Years of Government and Industry Secrecy on Salmon Farm Problems

Canada, Politics, Western Canada, ,
Share

The memorandum from Alexandra Morton which I circulated last Wednesday demands a deeper look into what the Campbell government knew when, in September 2002, they lifted the moratorium on fish farms. (For convenience I have pasted the Morton article below).

These documents arose in 1995 when the NDP were in power when they placed a moratorium on new fish farms.
This moratorium was lifted by the Campbell government and here is what then minister John Van Dongen had to say:

“… B.C. now has the most comprehensive regulatory framework in the world, including science-based standards to protect the environment.” (Emphasis added)

“… We’ve worked very hard on these regulations to ensure that they do a proper job of protecting the environment in British Columbia… we are confident the regulations will do that and we are confident we have a regulation in place that is leading edge in the world.“(Emphasis added.)

We must take Mr. Van Dongen at his word that “careful consideration” was given this decision and examine what even casual consideration would have disclosed.

Leaving aside questions of waste, drugged fish, coloured fish, the escape of farmed fish into the wild, and disease, what was the evidence the minister possessed on the question of sea lice?

There were, of course, the documents raised by Alexandra Morton in her memo. One would have thought that they alone would have convinced a careful minister that rather than permitting more fish farms, he should get rid of the ones that existed and at the very least force them to go to closed containment.

But, not only did Van Dongen have these remarkable memos to alert him of the sea lice issue, the facts available at that time show that the issue of sea lice from farmed fish cages destroying migrating smolts was a huge one in Norway, Scotland, Ireland and even New Brunswick. (It is important to remember that juvenile pink and chum salmon weighing less than half a gram are more than 10 times smaller than Atlantic salmon smolts, and thus much more susceptible to louse parasitism.)

What did the Campbell government know about the other jurisdictions concerning sea lice?

It can be said without fear of contradiction that even the most superficial look at the industry in Norway, Scotland and Ireland would have disclosed that the impact of sea lice from farmed fish on migrating salmonid smolts was a huge problem.

Norway had long recognized and attempted to minimize the sea lice threat enacting the Norwegian Action Plan Against Salmon Lice in 1997. Ireland and Scotland adopted similar sea lice reporting and control measures.

Ah, you say, but this is Norway, Scotland and Ireland, not BC!

Fair enough – let’s look at BC, though I don’t think that this would be Premier Campbell’s first choice!

In 2001, Alexandra Morton, then associated with The Raincoast Conservation Foundation (not to be confused with the Raincoast Research Society with whom Ms, Morton is now associated), identified the first epidemic of this lice species on juvenile wild Pacific salmon. Over 850 juvenile pink salmon, as well as chum, coho, and chinook salmon and adult local sea run cutthroat trout were examined in the summer of 2001. 77% of these fish were infected at or above the lethal level as defined by Norwegian scientists to be 1.6 lice/gram of fish. The epidemic’s epicentre was in the midst of active salmon farms, with very few to no lice where there were no farms. Far from showing the alarm one might have expected, the DFO wanted to charge Ms. Morton with “illegal testing”!

The fact is, that by September 2002, when the Campbell government lifted the moratorium on fish farms, Alexander Morton had clear evidence that sea lice were slaughtering wild salmon smolts as they migrated out to sea and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Federal) and the provincial Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Fisheries knew of Ms. Morton’s findings and the Minister and the Campbell Cabinet ignored this clear evidence of the horrendous impact of sea lice on wild salmon and lifted the moratorium anyway!

It’s this that takes the Campbell government’s decision out of the possibility of error and firmly into the realm of deceit.

What has happened since the Van Dongen announcement should give us all further cause for extreme concern.

When Alexandra Morton made public her findings re: sea lice and migrating smolts in the Broughton Archipelago in 2002 she was mocked, derided, and threatened with arrest. Scientific study after scientific study, all peer reviewed, supported her findings yet time after time the Campbell government ignored these findings and declared that science was on their side.

Clearly, not only did the Campbell government know the truth about the impact of sea lice from fish farms on migrating salmon smolts from the outset and chose to ignore it, they have compounded their deception by ignoring scientific study after scientific study ever since.

I suppose it would be ridiculous to think that Premier Campbell would at least now have the decency and honour to admit the truth and do everything he can to redeem his government’s disgraceful behaviour and make every possible effort to restore the fisheries it’s done so much to destroy.

Morton memo

A series of government memos reveal a heated debate in 1995 over a sea louse outbreak on a farm salmon on the Fraser sockeye migration route (Okisollo Channel). In 1995, a salmon farm requested permission to use hydrogen peroxide to treat an extremely heavy outbreak of sea lice on their fish. When the Ministry of Environment, Parks and Lands (MELP) informed the company that their drug application would have to be released to the public, the fish farmer withdrew the request. When environmental groups found out about the sea lice outbreak, the BC Salmon Farmers Association called for an investigation of MELP and a guarantee that fish farmers had a right to secrecy in the future.

September 6, 1995 Don Peterson of MELP writes, “The company has withdrawn their application (for hydrogen peroxide) because they heard there was a requirement to advertise if a pesticide was going to be applied. I guess they were either afraid of the shareholders…or the public finding out… the company has asked that this request be kept strictly confidential and that all correspondence on the subject be destroyed.”

September 28, 1995 the BC Salmon Farmers Association criticized Minister Moe Sihota (MELP): “…government has an obligation to maintain confidentiality… Government is further prevented from unauthorized collection, use or disclosure of information…. puts at risk … capital investment of private citizens and individual companies…”

However, salmon farms operate in Canada’s public waters and impact a Canadian resource – wild fish.

On October 23 Earl Warnock of MELP writes, “I find it unconscionable that they (fish farmers) are only prepared to undertake measures appropriate to protect their stock health and the environment unless they can do it in a clandestine manner…. and for them and MAFF to ask us to operate with them in this way says something about the people we are dealing with.”

“MAFF” = Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, now Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL).

Either the sea lice remained on the farm fish on the Fraser sockeye migration route or they were treated without permission from MELP.

November 03, 1995, Bryan Ludwig, MELP writes: “…we are in the difficult position of being concerned about use of pesticides for treatment of sea lice, but also wanting to ensure we avoid a severe outbreak for fear of transfer to wild stocks.”

These documents reveal heroes among our MELP bureaucrats who tried to protect our wild salmon from salmon farms. Gordon Campbell disbanded MELP as soon as he took office in 2001, and he renamed MAFF, MAL and gave them control of allocation of Crown Land. The fish farm industry did not develop a sea lice action plan, the public lost their government biologist advocates, sea lice outbreaks continue with lethal infection underway today rates on wild juvenile salmon on the Fraser migration route (Okisollo Channel) (photos available) and Fraser sockeye stocks migrating through Okisollo Channel are in steep decline.

October 23, 1995 Earl Warnock MELP: “If the truth harms their integrity perhaps they need to look at themselves…”

If we cannot save wild salmon in British Columbia, we do not live in a democracy.

All documents available at www.salmonaresacred.org, “Breaking News”

Share