A6 Friday, July 12, 2019
Mission City Record
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OPINION
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Freedom of information When the BC Liberals were in power in British Columbia, transparency and access to information left a lot to be desired. Then came the “triple-delete” scandal, a practice by government officials – both staff and politicians – to permanently get rid of emails. The practice was defended by then Premier Christy Clark, despite promises back in 2011 that the province would have one of the most open and transparent governments in Canada. With the election of the NDP in 2017, those on the front lines of accessing information had high hopes. From the NDP’s 2017 platform: “We’ll protect whistleblowers, strengthen conflict-of-interest legislation and improve access-to-information rules.” So how’s it going so far? Not good. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) was designed to create openness and transparency, but critics say privacy rights continue to be breached and in-
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formation is hard to get. For a year, the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) has tried to work with government to improve FIPPA, but so far the association says there has been no action. “The NDP government has limited time left to make the changes that they promised,” FIPA’s executive director Sara Neuert says. “And if we don’t see movement on these legislative changes soon, I’m not optimistic that they’ll be able to follow through on that promise.” Premier John Horgan promised to do better but he continues to deflect. FIPA is now asking the public to sign its petition to join the call for greater information and privacy rights for British Columbians. We encourage all readers to search for “BC FIPA petition” online and urge the government to make the necessary legislative changes to protect this fundamental democratic right.
Higher fines for aggressive dogs Any dog that kills another dog or attacks another dog unprovoked need to be assessed. The owner should not be allowed to own another dog after that. John Fones Not every owner is responsible for the dog becoming aggressive. Especially if it was a rescue. Nichole Clement Anyone/everyone who owns a dog must be held accountable for their dog’s behaviour and actions! There are times when the dog that is the victim of an attack, provoked the attack. Doesn’t matter. As an owner, you must have control of your pet at all times. Anne R Rutz Binkle And euthanize any dog that maims a person? How about a large fine plus vet fees to repair a dog that is injured/maimed by another dog? Darrell Krahn
– Black Press Media
Killing B.C. industries won’t save the caribou Tom Fletcher
B.C. Views The B.C. NDP government has imposed a two-year moratorium on new mining and forest work in large areas of forest land in northern B.C., after a bumbling effort to shut down existing industry and comply with a federal order to protect endangered caribou herds. It’s a cruelly mistimed blow to B.C.’s struggling forest industry, and has implications for caribou zones down the Rocky Mountains to the Kootenays. The federal Liberals want to impress their urban environmentalist supporters going into a fall election, and Premier John Horgan appears to be trying to use the caribou crisis to further his aggressive transfer of provincial timber to Indigenous communities.
The initial B.C. proposal, worked out in secret with two selected Indigenous groups, created such a wave of public concern that Horgan put it on hold this spring and called on former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister Blair Lekstrom to advise his forests minister, Doug Donaldson. Lekstrom’s report details how local governments, other Indigenous groups and industry were shut out of private talks with the West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations. Their chiefs falsely claimed the sweeping restrictions would not eliminate forest jobs, and Horgan intervened after forest-dependent people started packing meetings in the Peace and Kootenay regions to demand answers. The struggle to protect dwindling caribou herds has been going on for many years, and B.C. is part of a much larger picture. Newfoundland’s herds are many times bigger than B.C.’s total population, and decline there as well as here is attributed to climate shifts, resurgence of wolves and grizzly bears and their access to prey via roads and snowmobile tracks.
In B.C., professional environmentalists are as usual the loudest voices. They’re appalled that the province has resorted to shooting wolves from helicopters, dismissing the temporary moratorium as too little and too late. Claims that successive B.C. governments have “done nothing” may be good for fundraising, but they are false. By 2016, the area protected from logging and road building in the South Selkirks was 2.2 million hectares, 95 per cent of the best caribou habitat. The South Peace recovery plan covered 400,000 hectares of high-elevation winter habitat. The same winter, the forests ministry worked with West Moberly and Saulteau to try to shoot 120 or more wolves in the South Peace, where the Graham herd, B.C.’s largest, numbered about 700 caribou. The fifth winter of wolf kills has now past, and oddly the NDP-Green government hasn’t been criticized for continuing it. Say what you want about these provincial efforts, but they’re not nothing. Predator control and maternity pens to protect tiny calves
are the only strategies that have been shown to work, and these costly efforts are continuing. Banning industrial activity and roadbuilding is also not a magic solution. As the Council of Forest Industries has pointed out, Wells Grey Provincial Park and Jasper National Park herds are also declining, with no industrial activity. Caribou are gone from Banff National Park, which has been protected since 1885. In the meantime, the Justin Trudeau government has just discovered another endangered species it wants to be seen trying to save. The federal agency wrote to B.C. in June, urging work to start on a plan for the “threatened” grizzly bear, one of the caribou’s main natural predators. Folks living in northern B.C. report that the main threat involving grizzlies these days is that there are too many of them, and they’re coming closer to communities. Tom Fletcher is B.C. legislature reporter and columnist for Black Press Media. tfletcher@blackpress.ca
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