Posts by 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
Nov 16, 2023
No one should be told to file a Freedom of Information request simply to learn who works for them. Government must give members of the public access to up-to-date and useful information on who is there to serve them and quit obfuscating and abusing access to information laws, Ben Parfitt writes….
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Sep 13, 2023
Province must take responsibility for flood protection infrastructure Provincial and municipal officials were warned repeatedly that the dikes in one of the cities hit hardest by the floods that paralyzed southern British Columbia in 2021 were structurally unsound and could fail should water levels in local rivers rise quickly. For years preceding the disaster,…
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Jul 10, 2023
In just three years, much of the McLeod Lake Indian Band’s treaty lands were stripped of their bountiful and exceedingly valuable trees in a surge of logging that included one massive clear-cut that is almost 3,000 hectares in size, or 7.5 times larger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park. The extensive logging by the band of…
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Apr 28, 2023
Calls for BC environment minister to suspend pellet mill permit Every year, the air in the Bulkley Valley community of Smithers becomes hazardous to human health as thousands of fires known as slash burns are deliberately set at logging sites. The contaminated air can stay trapped in the valley’s airshed for extended periods as the…
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Apr 12, 2023
As forests shrink, drivers work 16-hour days to deliver single loads of logs to BC sawmills When Eugene Wilson started driving a logging truck 24 years ago, he worked out of the Bulkley valley community of Houston three hours west of Prince George. He recalls the trips as if they were yesterday. He’d begin the…
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Mar 2, 2023
When the world’s biggest sawmill opened its doors, then-premier Gordon Campbell enthused that it could shoot out enough lumber to build all of British Columbia’s new annual housing stock, which was then averaging 26,000 units per year. After the ribbon was cut and the first logs passed through its computerized scanners and whirring sawblades on…
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Feb 13, 2023
Agreement with BC aside, 1000s of gas wells await Blueberry River First Nations When the Blueberry River First Nations took the provincial government to court in March 2015, arguing that cumulative industrial developments had robbed them of their ability to hunt and fish, oil and gas companies could see trouble lay ahead. So what did…
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Jan 18, 2023
Closure of Prince George pulp mill all about running out of forest The pending closure of a pulp mill in Prince George and the loss of 300 high-paying jobs in the community is just the beginning of what promises to be a new and painful chapter in the province’s beleaguered forest industry, which has already…
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Nov 30, 2022
Caroline and Paul Mosterman have seen their share of unusual weather in four-plus decades of farming. But nothing comes remotely close to what they experienced in November 2021 when their Sumas Prairie farm was inundated by floodwater. Because the couple farmed on a floodplain, they had no flood insurance. So, when their farm buildings, blueberry…
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Nov 16, 2022
Trove of FOI documents sheds new light on lax regulation of troubled Site C dam It was the bureaucratic equivalent of waiting for a box of Timbits and a Double-Double at the Tim Hortons’ drive thru. In the space of just hours on a single day in June 2020, the provincial government office in charge…
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