Posts by Ben Parfitt

Ben Parfitt

About Ben Parfitt

Ben joined the CCPA staff team as a resource policy analyst in 2005 after years working as an investigative journalist with numerous magazines, and previous to that as a reporter with The Vancouver Sun. He is author and co-author of two books on forestry issues and currently devotes much of his policy research to natural resources, with special attention paid to energy, water, and forest resources and climate change.

Ben values being part of a great team at the CCPA as well as the opportunities provided to meet regularly with First Nations, community leaders, environmental advocates and the many people who work in the province’s resource industries and who are committed to progressive change.

Ben is an avid cyclist and budding day hiker who likes to take advantage of the many outdoor recreation options open to him and others living in Victoria and south Vancouver Island. He is the proud father of a super-talented daughter, Charlotte Priest, who is wise beyond her years and has taught him much. He also loves to listen to music—the good old fashion way—on vinyl. Follow Ben on Twitter

Political leadership needed to revitalize BC’s forestry industry

Oct 4, 2016
During the last provincial election not a day seemed to go by that Premier Christy Clark wasn’t donning a hardhat and promising us a brighter economic future built around a new Liquefied Natural Gas industry. Thousands of new jobs, steadily increasing royalty payments and taxes, and a resurging rural, resource-based economy all awaited us, the… View Article

Food security in BC? Don’t count on it.

May 19, 2016
If California’s farmers ever run out of the water needed to irrigate their crops, we’ll be in for a rude awakening. With 70 per cent of British Columbia’s imported fruits and vegetables coming from the sunny US state, any climatic disaster there would almost certainly result in dramatic run-ups in food prices here. Our elected leaders… View Article

The unintended consequences of massive hydro rate increases

Mar 22, 2016
The Province newspaper recently published an op-ed of mine that looked at one of the unintended consequences of our provincial government’s fixation on building the exceedingly expensive Site C hydroelectric dam. Even though actual construction of the dam has yet to begin, BC Hydro customers are already paying far more for electricity than they were just a… View Article

Site C’s biggest beneficiary? Natural gas companies, not us.

Feb 5, 2016
This post originally appeared on DeSmog Canada. On January 20, BC Hydro issued a press release singing the praises of a new hydro transmission line not far from where preliminary work has begun to build the $9-billion Site C dam. The release, headlined “New transmission line to power development in the south Peace”, featuring boosterish… View Article

A petro state, a fracking frenzy and one woman’s battle for justice: Andrew Nikiforuk’s latest should be required reading for MLAs

Oct 14, 2015
Andrew Nikiforuk’s new book, Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry, captures like never before how fossil fuel companies must do more and more to coax oil and gas from the ground. And how that each time more effort is made, the social and environmental costs mount…. View Article

LNG’s threat to water sustainability

Feb 27, 2014
By Ben Parfitt and David Hughes One glaring problem with the provincial government’s strategy to turn British Columbia into a liquefied natural gas exporting juggernaut is that it scuttles any chance B.C. has to be a climate change leader. But equally problematic is how our government’s economically dubious fixation with gas exports jeopardizes our irreplaceable… View Article

Does Premier Clark, the great petro pretender, have a Plan B?

Jun 24, 2013
In January, one of the world’s most sophisticated deep-sea drilling vessels, the $540-million Chikyu, left the Japanese Port of Shimizu destined for a distant point in the Phillippine Sea. The voyage marked a milestone in what by then was an 18-year, $700-million research and development effort aimed at one day weaning Japan off of its… View Article