Environment, resources & sustainability

Government must do more than shuffle chairs to solve BC’s water woes

Dec 20, 2023

British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests was always a poor choice to manage the province’s water resources—and it showed. So it was fitting in October that the government decided after years of being urged to do so to transfer that power to the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. But shunting public servants between ministries… View Article

Stack of papers with a magnifying glass resting on them

Time to end information hide-and-seek games: Public deserves more prompt government disclosure of basic data

Nov 16, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

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…. View Article

What would it take to meet Canada’s 2030 climate targets?

Oct 5, 2023

By Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood and Marc Lee

Adapted from the CCPA’s fall 2023 submission to Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body by Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood & Marc Lee When Canada first signed the Paris Agreement way back in 2015, the commitment to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 seemed far away. So far away, in fact, that in… View Article

Failure to act means failing dikes

Sep 13, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

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,… View Article

The Energy Action Framework and BC’s carbon crossroads revisited

Jul 25, 2023

By Marc Lee

Since first starting down the pathway of climate action in 2007, the BC government has both developed policies to reduce carbon emissions domestically while simultaneously promoting a growing oil and gas export industry. These contradictions are evident in the March 2023 announcement of a new Energy Action Framework, which tries to balance the interests of… View Article

BC First Nation logs almost all of its treaty lands, leaving behind lots of stumps and questions

Jul 10, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

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… View Article

Protest sign reading "THERE IS NO PLANET B"

Budget 2023: a risky bet on cleaner capitalism

Jun 1, 2023

By Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, Marc Lee and Caroline Brouillette

With roughly $62 billion in new climate-related spending over the next decade, the federal government’s 2023 budget doubled down on climate action with a focus on investment in the clean economy. However, the budget locks in a particular approach to climate action—one where incentives to the private sector do the heavy lifting of growing green… View Article

Aerial photo of Smithers mill surrounded by piles of logs

Promises of cleaner air up in smoke

Apr 28, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

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… View Article

The extra-long logging haul

Apr 12, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

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… View Article

Raising emissions while pledging to lower them — British Columbia’s Orwellian LNG gambit

Mar 23, 2023

By J David Hughes

In 2007, then-BC premier Gordon Campbell passed the “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act” committing BC to a 33 per cent reduction in emissions from 2007 levels by 2020. Despite premier Campbell’s good intentions, emissions in 2020 were down just 1.6 per cent. In 2016, in lieu of increasing the carbon tax implemented in Campbell’s greenhouse… View Article

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A progressive take on BC issues

A progressive take on BC issues

Environment, resources & sustainability

Government must do more than shuffle chairs to solve BC’s water woes

Time to end information hide-and-seek games: Public deserves more prompt government disclosure of basic data

What would it take to meet Canada’s 2030 climate targets?

Failure to act means failing dikes

The Energy Action Framework and BC’s carbon crossroads revisited

BC First Nation logs almost all of its treaty lands, leaving behind lots of stumps and questions

Budget 2023: a risky bet on cleaner capitalism

Promises of cleaner air up in smoke

The extra-long logging haul

Raising emissions while pledging to lower them — British Columbia’s Orwellian LNG gambit