But Ms. Carter is a dutiful officer of the Legislature, appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor, and paid out of government coffers. As a result, she is unwilling or unable to directly challenge Christy Clark’s addiction to the “professional reliance model”, which lies at the core of the government’s misdemeanours (more on that later).
The question therefore remains: will this change Christy Clark’s plans around the environment? If recent Liberal government behaviour is any indication…..don’t hold your breath.
Ms. Carter’s report was released to the public on April 15.
Two months prior to that and away from the prying eyes of the general public, the document was handed to the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, to allow its minister, Steve Thomson, a chance to create a fulsome-sounding defence of his Ministry’s record – not an easy task when faced with 25 direct criticisms, centred around one blunt condemnation: “The ministry does not currently have a process in place for monitoring the effectiveness of the RAR in protecting riparian areas.” (Page 15)
Who would buy an expensive car, and then never the check the oil or the brakes?
Create an appearance of fairness and concern, then honour it in the breach – it would seem Christy Clark and her Liberal predecessors have learned well from their friends in the federal Conservative Party and the corporate sector.
Steve Thomson’s letter of response, found on Page 112 of the ombudsperson’s report, is a masterful exercise in mellifluous phraseology – undoubtedly pored over by the government’s legal team. It’s crafted to create the impression that the Liberals have always been deeply committed to environmental protection, while quietly conceding, and promising to correct, the multiple flaws in implementation of the RAR.
The most transparently false comment: “We are proud that in British Columbia we have riparian provisions on private land for the protection of fish habitat….”
Translation: “We are annoyed that the Liberal Party is forced to have rules – even pseudo-rules like the RAR – for the protection of wild salmon…..because commercialization of the entire province’s natural resources is our goal.”
How the Riparian Areas Regulation fails – in real time.
I, and a dedicated group of fellow citizens in Salmon Arm, in BC’s Southern Interior, know all about the flaws in the RAR – and the provincial government’s deplorable track record on “the protection of fish habitat”. That’s because for three long years, we battled the provincial government indifference to fish habitat protection with wave after wave of scientific evidence and direct local knowledge. Indifference was replaced by action only when the political cost of resistance became astronomical. Our story is briefly summarized on page 95 of the ombudsperson’s report.
Here it is – with the real names added in.
We formed a non-profit society called WA:TER – Wetland Alliance: The Ecological Response – specifically to protect the wetlands and floodplain of the Salmon River from a massive shopping centre project initiated by SmartCentres, Canada’s largest shopping centre developer, working closely with Walmart, the world’s largest retailer – and actively supported by the municipal government. Our core membership consisted of biologists, an agrologist, habitat consultants, a forester, health professionals, and experts in architecture and landscape design. We had a wealth of expertise and long experience.
And we worked closely with our First Nations friends and neighbours, relying on their unique insights into the site, honed through uncountable generations of empirical observations.
We were also a highly motivated group. We were incredulous at the sheer audacity of the project, and by the folly of building in prime habitat for wild Coho and Chinook salmon stocks, slowly recovering in the Salmon River thanks to two decades of intense volunteer effort. We met every week for two hours, over a period of 3 ½ years, and repeatedly plied the provincial and federal governments with scientific data showing that the project was an environmental disaster.
The Nature Conservancy of Canada, eminent Canadian scientist David Suzuki, and Lauchlan Fraser, Professor and Canada research Chair in Community and Ecosystem Ecology at Thompson Rivers University, were just a few of the many experts who recognized this site as an ecological treasure.
We spent our first year challenging SmartCentre’s deeply flawed report from their hired Qualified Environmental Professionals – usually abbreviated to “QEPs”, which is required under the RAR – hired by the company to justify its development. Not surprisingly, the flaws favoured SmartCentres in every case.
Nothing happened. All our expert commentaries, analysis, scientific data, commissioned studies and aerial photographs were received, but officially ignored by provincial, federal and municipal governments.
Then, out of the blue, on December 1, 2009 came this announcement: “Please be advised that the Ministry of Environment is commissioning an independent assessment of the active flood plain zone in the area of the proposed SmartCentre development in Salmon Arm. The results of this assessment will be assessed and may lead to changes in the SmartCentre RAR assessment report.”
This bland statement might have meant nothing to a casual observer, unacquainted with the turmoil underlying it. But in actual fact it was an astonishing breakthrough. It represented “the first time in the history of the RAR [that the Ministry] hired an outside consultant to review the QEP’s work.” (Page 95 of the ombudsperson’s Report)
The RAR was implemented in 2005. So why did it take four years, and a ferociously dedicated group of unpaid volunteer citizens loaded with technical and environmental science expertise, to bring about this momentous precedent?
It took this long because the BC government didn’t – and still doesn’t – want to hear the input of its citizens if they conflict with plans for commercial development projects. This ideological stance was directly built into the way the RAR was run.
Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse
Our actions fell on deaf ears because of the deeply prejudicial “professional reliance model” (PRM), the core principle behind the RAR.
Remember the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
The PRM, it is widely acknowledged, was the principle that allowed this disaster to happen.
The PRM is a way of cutting costs to government by off-loading responsibility for environmental protection onto the people who have the least interest in it – developers and businesses who want to build. The developer has to hire a “qualified environmental professional” to analyze the project to say if it’s okay to go ahead.
It’s based on the ridiculous assumption that all professionals in a given field are equally well-trained, have a completely neutral and scientific attitude towards the work they do, and, given the same professional task, will always carry it out in exactly the same way – no matter what conflict of interest they are facing. In other words, all professionals are robots, without emotions, vulnerabilities, or any awareness of which side their bread is buttered on.
Who would you trust to operate on your child? A brain surgeon who works for the public medical system? Or a brain surgeon hired by a company that makes, and heavily promotes, one particular form of treatment for your child’s problem?
Christy Clark believes the two situations are identical, and both brain surgeons will behave exactly the same.
She obviously hasn’t read the medical literature lately (I’m a family doctor, by the way, when I’m not trying to protect ecological treasures). If she had, she’d realize that her belief is pie-in-the-sky. Study after study over the last 15 years have shown that “he who pays the piper calls the tune”. Starting with Stelfox et al in 1998 the pernicious influence of conflict of interest has been spelled out in all aspects of medical care. Simply put, it skews the results of every study that is bought and paid for by a proponent – and does so in favour of the proponent.
So the fact that the QEP reports for SmartCentres were dead wrong –and that they favoured the developer – is no surprise.
If the Premier of the province, and her cabinet colleagues, are madly in love with the PRM, it suggests that A) they don’t care about science, and B) they are entirely happy with the influence of conflict of interest because it favours their corporate-sponsored political agenda.
A litany of bad behaviour
The Ombudsperson’s report is a litany of the effects of the government’s neglect of the RAR over and over, in restrained and measured language.
“This report illustrates how a gap between commitment and action can lead to administrative unfairness.” (Page 9)
“The RAR is one of many environmental protection and resource management programs in British Columbia that use the professional reliance model. Our investigation highlights the challenges of implementing this model in the RAR context.” (Page 9)
“In the course of our investigation, it became clear that in order to ensure that the ministry is able to effectively carry out its oversight role, regulatory change in the RAR was necessary.” (Page 10)
“The ministry has not updated the Riparian Areas Regulation Implementation Guidebook…” (Page 11)
“… The ministry has not taken reasonable steps to amend the RAR to allow it to postpone notification to local governments until its reviews of assessment reports are complete…” (Page 11)
“The ministry… has not taken adequate steps to confirm that all persons acting as QEPs… are registered and in good standing with an appropriate professional association.” (Page 12)
“The ministry has not taken steps to ensure that individuals who are eligible to conduct assessments under the RAR have successfully completed the RAR training course.” (Page 12)
“The assessment methods set out in the RAR provide insufficient guidance on conducting assessments and do not hold individuals who are authorized to conduct assessments to an enforceable standard of professional conduct.” (Page 12)
“The ministry has not ensured that each region meets the ministry’s goal of reviewing 20 per cent of the RAR assessment reports submitted each year. The ministry has also failed to establish that even if complied with, this goal would reliably identify an acceptable level of compliance by QEPs” (p. 13)
“Since few assessment reports are being reviewed in most regions, the ministry is missing opportunities to identify and respond to non-compliance. The ministry has not ensured that processes are in place across all its regions to identify and address non-compliance by QEPs.” (Page 14)
“The ministry does not record or track, in a centralized and accessible way, the information that it does collect through compliance monitoring, including information on whether non-compliance is referred to another public agency and, if it was, how the other agency responded.” (Page 14)
“The ministry is not conducting the minimum number of site visits required by its monitoring framework…” (Page 14)
“The ministry has not established adequate and consistent requirements for monitoring proponent compliance with the RAR after an assessment report has been accepted by the ministry.” (Page 15)
“The ministry… has not ensured the public information about the RAR is up-to-date.” (Page 16)
“The ministry has not reported on the implementation or administration of the RAR since it became responsible for administering the RAR in October 2010, and is not made any reports public since that date.” (Page 16)
“As part of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Agreement, the ministry also committed to making assessment reports publicly available, searchable and accessible. While the ministry has considered making its electronic notification system acceptable to the public it has not yet done so. Currently, the notification system is accessible only to QEPs…” (Page 17)
But to repeat, the most devastating criticism of all, that starkly reveals why the RAR has been a toothless tiger, is this: “The ministry does not currently have a process in place for monitoring the effectiveness of the RAR in protecting riparian areas.” (Page 15)
Oh, and just to make sure that you and I won’t rock the boat, Kim Carter states that: “The ministry has not taken steps to develop a clearly documented and accessible process that allows people to raise concerns or make complaints about the operation of the RAR.” (Page 17)
Will the ombudsperson’s report cause a change?
How well we understood this defect in RAR’s implementation. For several years we ran back and forth between provincial, federal and municipal governments, trapped by the irresponsibility of the provincial Ministry, which served as a model for equally unhelpful responses from the other levels of government.
Caught in the cross hairs of the ombudsperson’s detailed analysis, Minister Thomson has been forced to capitulate. He has agreed to all 25 of Ms. Carter’s recommendations, undoubtedly dismayed that years of environmental neglect under the RAR has finally been brought into the light of day.
Unfortunately, the provincial government has conceded its failings in administering the RAR, but in other areas under its jurisdiction, has ramped up a program of wholesale habitat destruction.
Drastically weakening the Agricultural Land Reserve, opening up provincial parks to mining, fracking and other development, trying to avoid environmental assessments, and working closely behind the scenes with Stephen Harper to push for pipeline expansion, Christy Clark’s Liberals are demonstrating that environmental destruction and their love affair with the corporate sector is still front and centre on their political trajectory.
But now, in this one small area – the administration of the Riparian Areas Regulation – a small step forward has been taken, thanks to the BC Ombudsperson. The RAR is still porous and weak, but its weaknesses are finally part of the public record.
This report did not come out in time to stop the building of a Walmart-anchored SmartCentres shopping center in the wetlands of the Salmon River. But in the end the development, thanks to sustained citizen pressure, occupied only about 30 per cent of the original planned footprint, and was kept out of most (but not all) of sensitive wetland habitat.
Given the behaviour of Christy Clark’s government in the last year or two, the remark in the letter from Minister Thomson that “riparian protection is a worthwhile priority for the province” rings as hollow as ever.
But this report offers one tiny glimmer of hope -- to us and to every other person or group to whom the Ombudsperson spoke, and who has had to struggle with the government's misuse of the RAR.
If the minister adopts, in a meaningful way, the Ombudsperson’s recommendation to “establish a clearly documented and accessible process that allows people to raise concerns or make complaints about the operation of the Riparian Areas Regulation”, then at least the citizens of British Columbia will be able to call government and developers to account. And they’ll have to respond.
If that happens, then we may take one faltering step towards genuine, science-based protection of the rich ecosystems of British Columbia.
Original Article
Source: vancouverobserver.com/
Author: Warren Bell
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