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    Rochelle Baker
    Fairy Creek old-growth activists are facing arrest but the injunction won't stop them defending some of the last tracts of ancient rainforest on southern Vancouver Island.
     
    DESCRIBING THE PROTESTERS AS “MISGUIDED,” BC Supreme Court Justice Frits Verhoeven granted forestry company Teal-Jones an injunction on Thursday prohibiting roadblocks at various entry points to its Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 46 near the community of Port Renfrew.
    But Fairy Creek supporters say the court order only fuels the fight to save the pristine forests and giant trees growing in the headwaters of Fairy Creek, as well as remaining groves near Gordon River, Camper Creek and in the upper Walbran Valley.  
    Teal-Jones’ activities in TFL 46 are lawful and follow permits issued by the province, but blockades preventing logging activities are aimed at influencing government policy, Verhoeven observed.
    “It is clear that the defendants are dissatisfied with the forestry policies of the provincial government relating to logging of old- growth forests,” he said. But the blockades are illegal and violate the rule of law, he added.
    There is no disputing climate change is a grave threat to humanity’s future, but making a decision on the matter falls outside his jurisdiction, the judge said.
    “The effect of old-growth forests and logging on climate change and biodiversity is not before me, and is not for me to say,” Verhoeven said.
    “What is at stake in this court is the maintenance of law and order and respect for the rule of law,” he said.
    “The protesters are free to protest, demonstrate and attempt to influence the government in any lawful way they may choose, but no one has the right to disobey a court order, no matter how passionately they may believe in their cause.”
    In its application, Teal-Jones asked the court to prohibit the blockades until at least September 4 and grant RCMP the right to remove protesters violating the order.
     
    Court order a ‘flashpoint’ for public support

    The court order banning road blockades that prevent Teal-Jones logging activities is likely to build support for the Fairy Creek protest, say supporters. Photo by Will O'Connell
     
    Ultimately, the court’s decision is not a surprise, said Fairy Creek blockade supporter Kathleen Code, one of the defendants named in the injunction.
    Each individual protester will decide if they’re willing to risk arrest at the blockades, Code said, but the injunction won’t quash growing public support to save Fairy Creek. 
    “We know the instant Teal-Jones has access to those trees, they will cut them down,” Code said.
    “I think the decision will actually serve as a flashpoint. People are tired of having a government that is willing to sacrifice the last remnants of our old-growth forests.” 
    Case in point are the hundreds of people who turned up for the latest in a series of protests at the BC legislature in Victoria on Saturday calling for the end of old-growth logging in the province, Code said.
    Blockade supporter Will O’Connell agreed the injunction wouldn’t deter people from working to save Fairy Creek as an intact watershed.
    “The blockade has been going [for] eight months, but the court injunction is just the start of this story,” said O’Connell, who expects it will launch years of activism.
    “If anyone thinks this movement will be quelled by force, they have another thing coming.”
    O’Connell said he was compelled to support the blockades last summer because he couldn’t stomach watching the continued loss of ancient trees, some thousands of years old, to logging in the region.
    There’s a rapid groundswell of support for the blockade and protecting at-risk old-growth that feels different than in the past, O’Connell said.
    “This is not a fragile movement that people from a distance might think is just [the] status quo response by the environmental movement,” he said.
    “It’s not the passive grumbling about clear-cutting we’ve seen over the last decade where people make phone calls or write letters.”
    The final straw for the public has been the government’s inadequate response to meeting the recommendations of the old-growth strategic review, he said.
    “The NDP promised to change the way it approached old-growth, and it hasn’t,” O’Connell said, adding protecting big trees and forestry has long been mismanaged in a way that fails both the environment and sustainable industry.
    “It just feels like we’ve been documenting the collapse of our last ancient forests, but now there is a change that actually stands in the way of that being destroyed,” O’Connell added. 
     

    Fairy Creek blockade supporter Will O’Connell said the movement to protect old-growth forest is getting stronger and more active. Photo courtesy of Will O’Connell
     
    In his decision, Verhoeven agreed the blockades threatened Teal-Jones’ legal right to harvest timber worth approximately $20 million in the region, as well as the operations and employment of 460 people at the company’s mills.
    The Pacheedaht First Nation is also aware of the forestry operations in its traditional territory, has agreements in place with various companies, and has not objected to logging activity in planned cut blocks, Verhoeven said.
    And while three individual members of the nation testified that they object to logging in Fairy Creek and support the protesters, none claimed to represent the Pacheedaht collectively, Verhoeven said.
    One of the members, Pacheedaht elder Bill Jones, said his spiritual practices are threatened because logging the Fairy Creek watershed would endanger important bathing pools. But most of the Fairy Creek watershed is already protected, said Verhoeven, and the Teal-Jones cut block in the upper elevation of the region has intermittent watercourses and no bathing pools. And any freedom of religion challenge must be directed at government, not Teal-Jones, he added.
     
    Ball is in premier’s court
    Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee said while the injunction decision reflects the law, it doesn’t necessarily mean justice was applied. “Those are not the same things,” Coste said.
    “If the legal system was based on justice, there wouldn’t be an injunction and the blockades wouldn’t be there in the first place.”
    Following the ruling, the outcomes and the next move are up to the Province, Coste said. “Really, the ball is in Premier [John] Horgan’s court,” he said.
    Horgan has the power to save Fairy Creek, which is in his own riding, Coste added. If he fails to do so, government will wear the results. “The consequences are the lack of public faith in this government, and that’s not the responsibility of a logging company to restore,” he said.
    “Horgan can step up and defer logging in this TFL and give some of the last, best old-growth forests like Fairy Creek some breathing room while government plans how to ensure these ecosystems survive,” Coste said.
    The strategic old-growth review called for a paradigm shift, moving away from a focus on old-growth timber harvesting to the protection of at-risk ecosystems and biodiversity, Coste added.
    “The reason that folks are taking it into their own hands is because the government's not providing that.”
    Rochelle Baker is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with Canada’s National Observer. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
    See another story about the injunction by David Broadland here.
    Judith Lavoie
    Many in the Sooke area are heartbroken that a wolf pack that no one was complaining about may have been wiped out.
     
    FOR MORE THAN A YEAR, naturalist and wildlife researcher Gary Schroyen followed the activities of five wolves that ranged around Metchosin and East Sooke.
    In many ways, images captured on Schroyen’s wildlife cameras demonstrated that the pack, which he named the Meteask wolf pack, could live harmoniously among humans.
    Most area residents were unaware of the proximity of the wolves, which lived on deer and small mammals, and Scott Norris of the BC Conservation Officer Service confirmed that there have been no reports of the pack killing pets or livestock.
    “We’re not really getting any [complaints]…Nothing more than a sighting or a potential sighting. We haven’t had calls from concerned people at all,” Norris told Focus.
    All of which makes the deliberate killing of the wolves more tragic, say residents and wildlife observers who are mourning the loss of the animals and pushing for the provincial government to tighten regulations around wolf hunting and trapping.
    “This is a prime example, a model example of a wolf pack that can co-exist with people,” Schroyen said.
     

    Naturalist Gary Schroyen
     
    The wolves were apparently trapped by trophy hunter Jacine Jadresko of Victoria, who goes by the name of the Inked Huntress and hunts animals around the world. 
    Jadresko, who could not be contacted by Focus, previously said on social media she was aiming to remove an entire pack of wolves in the Sooke area because they were threatening people and attacking pets. She then posted photos of herself with two dead wolves.
    The loss is felt deeply by Schroyen, who uses a series of wildlife cameras, placed strategically in well-used wolf territory with the help of Shadow, his 13-year-old border collie who sniffs out wolf scat and identifies scent markings and scuffs.
    “I have spent maybe 1,000 hours researching these wolves,” he said.
    Over the last year Schroyen, who has also studied other wolf packs on Vancouver Island, has often heard howls from the Meteask pack—frequently close by—and has gathered numerous videos, photos and recordings, but has never encountered the animals face to face. 
    “I was able to identify the different wolves based on their tail markings and it is clear there are five different individuals,” said Schroyen, who did not previously disclose information about the wolves for their own protection.
    But, after more than a month without any sign of the pack, he is convinced they are all dead and he has posted a poignant video with the introduction “In memory of the wolves that I have come to know as the Meteask Wolf Pack. The wolves that chose to co-exist among the people of Metchosin and East Sooke.”
     
    “The Wolves Among Us,” a short video by Gary Schroyen
     
    The video opens with a wolf joyfully playing with its food—tossing a dead squirrel in the air—and footage of the wolves at night, passing the camera in formation.
    It also includes pictures, taken February 6 and 7, of Jadresko with two dead wolves and concludes with images taken about 10 days later of a lone wolf panting, sniffing and walking slowly down a path.
    Schroyen believes that was the last wolf left in the pack and some of the final camera images show her heading towards the area where he knew snares had been set.
    The traps were on property close to Beecher Bay and, judging from blood on the rear leg of one of the wolves, Schroyen believes they were trapped and then shot.
    For days before the last images were taken, the lone wolf returned to the same area, he said.
    “It led me to believe she was searching for the rest of her pack and just doing loops around. It’s incredibly rare for the same wolf to keep coming back to the same area,” he said.
    Schroyen knows it would be unusual for the wolf to leave her territory and he believes she is dead, which is why he decided to post the video.
    “The pictures speak for themselves. I just wanted to show the public the side of wolves that the media don’t usually show,” he said.
    UPDATE Following initial publication of this story, a spokesperson for Jadresko told FOCUS that Jadresko has seen evidence on her own trail cameras as recent as two weeks ago (as of March 30, 2021) that the wolf pack is alive and well. 
     
    Community outraged and heartbroken at wolf killing
    People have forgotten how to live with animals, said Schroyen, who is “sickened” by people who kill for the sake of killing and then glorify the deaths on social media.
    A 2017 CBC Fifth Estate story on Jadresko describes her hunting bears and giraffes and her desire to kill an elephant. She told the Fifth Estate that kill pictures demonstrate “respect for the animal.” After killing a lion she posted pictures of herself with the dead animal and then a post-taxidermy photo with the caption “Look who’s all stuffed and ready to come home with me.”
    Sooke Mayor Maja Tait has fired off a letter to Forests, Lands and Natural Resources Minister Katrine Conroy to share the community outrage at the destruction of the pack and to support an Oak Bay resolution calling for a moratorium on recreational wolf hunting.
     

    Sooke Mayor Maja Tait
     
    The resolution, which is going to the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities and the Union of BC Municipalities for support, asks the Province for a moratorium until there is a “scientific, data-driven and evidence-based study that includes consultation with the Island’s Indigenous communities, to re-examine the efficacy of unrestricted wolf harvesting practices and their impacts on the Island’s biodiversity, wildlife ecology and sustainability of the resident wolf population.”
    Many in Sooke were sickened by the “callous threat” by a Victoria big-game hunter to trap and kill an entire pack, especially as so many groups are working to protect wildlife and habitat, says the letter.
    The Sooke organization Project HOWL (Help Our Wolves Live), founded by teenagers Finn and Chloe Unger, has documented packs of Vancouver Island “sea wolves” roaming the Sooke Hills and looked at the role the wolves play in a balanced ecosystem while the Wild Wise Sooke Society and Coexisting with Carnivores have a living-with-wolves working group aiming to educate people on the importance of wolves as a keystone species.
    Sam Webb, Wild Wise president, said numerous people have shared videos or tapes of howling wolves, both from the Meteask pack and a couple of packs in the Sooke Hills.
    “We feel we got to know them, not necessarily on a personal level, but the community really started to love them,” she said.
    Sadly, Jadresko apparently killed the wolves legally and there is outrage in Sooke and surrounding communities and concern about the future of other packs, Webb said.
    “To take out a whole pack is just not good wildlife management,” she said, pointing out that controlling outside cats and keeping dogs on leash are better strategies. “You can see the comments of people who are just heartbroken that this happened right in our backyard,” she said.
    Sooke is growing and there is a concerted effort to make residents aware that, in a rural community, there is a need to co-exist with the carnivore population, said Tait, adding that most people thought it was cool to have a wolf pack in the area. 
    “Then we find out that they have been trapped and murdered. How long have they been here, just co-existing peacefully?” Tait asked. “So then this one selfish person decided on her own to do this…What is it—boredom? You’re just going to kill these animals because you can’t travel and kill some endangered species elsewhere because of COVID. I’m so disgusted by it, it really makes me upset,” she said.
    Tait pointed out that people are fined for poaching crabs, but there is no penalty for killing wolves. “They have no protection. They are treated like vermin and there needs to be some level of protection and a consequence,” she said.
    Almost 72,000 people have signed a petition asking for a moratorium on wolf hunting and trapping, as population data is scarce and relies largely on reports from hunters.
    A new poll, conducted by Mario Canseco Research and commissioned by The Fur-Bearers, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, shows public opinion appears to swing solidly in favour of more controls.
    The survey found 87 percent of those polled disagree with hunting or trapping wolves to increase ungulate hunting opportunities, 90 percent disagree with killing wolves for fur and 91 percent disagree with “recreational” killing of wolves.
    A large majority of British Columbians also disagree with killing wolves with neck snares, leg hold traps, poison or aerial gunning—a tactic used by the provincial government to control wolves in areas where caribou are threatened—according to the survey.
    However, more than half of British Columbians surveyed agree with eliminating wolves when they kill unprotected livestock.
    The Province has no information about the distribution of wolf packs, but estimates there are about 250 wolves on Vancouver Island and the ministry says the population is not under threat.
    Hunters on Vancouver Island have a bag limit of three wolves for anyone holding a basic hunting licence, with no special tag required, meaning the Province relies on hunters self-reporting.
    There are 217 wildlife management units in BC where wolves are likely to live; 115 of those areas have no bag limits or closed season on wolves.
    Conroy has said she will look at closing “loopholes” in the wolf trapping and hunting rules. When asked whether the actions of Jadresko were legal and ethical, she pointed to a previous statement to Focus.
    In that emailed statement Conroy said “The hunters I know are conservationists too; they support activities that protect populations. This kind of story is something that most hunters would find offensive. This person is abusing the hunting regulations just to boost her own profile.”
     
    Repercussions of eliminating wolves
    The basic problem is that the government and conservation officers continue to treat wolves as vermin and encourage hunters to kill them, said Gary Allan of the SWELL Wolf Education Centre in Nanaimo.
    Valid scientific evidence is needed to justify killing wolves, not anecdotal information from hunters and ranchers, said Allan, describing hunting surveys, used to assess wolf populations, as useless.
    Allan also noted that eliminating an entire pack is likely to have unforeseen consequences. History shows that cougars will likely move into the vacuum until another wolf pack repopulates the area, said Allan.
    “If you get a younger wolf pack that is not as accomplished in hunting their traditional prey, experience has shown us they will predate on livestock,” he said.
    “So you see the damage that this one trapper/hunter will do to both the wolves, the livestock and humans in the Metchosin/East Sooke area,” he said.
    Many Indigenous communities revere wolves as an integral part of the culture, but the question of hunting and trapping is complicated and controversial according to Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Union of BC Indian Chiefs president.
    “It’s very much a part of our spiritual connection to the land and our beliefs,” he said. “But a major concern to a lot of different groups, including Indigenous hunters, is a wolf sustains itself on 40 pounds of meat a day, so a pack of five can have a devastating effect on the population of deer and moose and caribou that sustain Indigenous people,” he said.
    The essential part of the equation is for the NDP government to consult Indigenous communities on any changes to regulations, Phillip said.
    Meanwhile, Schroyen has summed up his feelings with a quote from author Farley Mowat, which he used in the video.
    “We have doomed the wolf, not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be—the mythologized epitome of a savage, ruthless kill, which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself.”
    Judith Lavoie is an award-winning journalist specializing in the environment, First Nations, and social issues. Twitter @LavoieJudith
     
    Video of Finn and Chloe Unger, Sooke residents, on wolves as a keystone species:
     
     
    Russ Francis
    A proposed high-density development on the Victoria-Oak Bay border will either destroy the neighbourhood’s ambience—or help save the planet.
     
    WHO COULD OBJECT TO A MULTI-DWELLING PROJECT that—according to the developer—encourages walking, helps solve the climate crisis and eases housing pressures?
    “The project enables a high quality, densified, compact, walkable lifestyle which is critical to solving our climate and housing crisis [sic] all while creating more livable and healthier communities,” said Aryze Developments in a January 20, 2021 letter to the City of Victoria.
    Some neighbours in the Foul Bay Road-Quamichan Street area don’t see it that way, believing that the 18-unit townhouse project on a small lot adds too many dwellings, means the removal of too many trees, and will damage the neighbourhood’s ambience. Some are also very unhappy with what they regard as an attempt to intimidate them into supporting the development.
     
    The property
    The lot at number 902 sits just where Foul Bay Road, heading south, departs Oak Bay and ventures into the Gonzales neighbourhood of Victoria, where it remains before ending at Gonzales Beach.
    The property at 902 Foul Bay Road is a familiar one to those who follow heritage properties and to fans of large urban trees. The 1911, two-storey, cross-gabled house was reminiscent of a country estate, with an external granite chimney and a two-storey verandah nearly encircling the house, according to information from the Victoria Heritage Foundation. A heritage designation awarded in 2003 included the property’s rock wall and landscape. 
     

    The heritage designated house that occupied the site until 2016
     
    Large and Co. purchased the property in 2014 with hopes to develop some townhouses on the property, though also preserving the house. The company subsequently applied for a demolition permit and removal of the heritage designation, citing contamination from mould, feces and urine: the house had been unheated for two years and housed an estimated 100 cats. 
    In 2015, the City of Victoria’s heritage panel recommended that the council reject the request to demolish. But in January 2016—before the City council had determined its fate—an unexplained fire badly damaged the house. 
    One year later, Victoria police arrested Earl Large (who heads sales for Large and Co.), holding him in jail overnight. Large was released without charges the next day, because the Crown did not approve charges. Following the fire, the remains of the house were demolished.
    The 0.503 acre lot is currently assessed at $2,566,000, and is now owned by Lions West Homes Ltd, with Aryze as the developer. It is currently zoned R1-G, which permits four single family houses. Each is allowed one accessory use, such as a secondary suite. For the proposed development to proceed, the property would need to be rezoned to permit multi-family dwellings, as well as be granted a development permit.
     
    The project
    Aryze is a Victoria developer, active in numerous area projects from infill housing to the Telus Ocean office building. The privately-held company proposes to build 16 three-bedroom and 2 one-bedroom townhouses at 902 Foul Bay, according to the latest version of the project posted on the City’s website, dated January 20, 2021. The average size of the units is 1,100 square feet. These would be contained in two three-storey structures.

    An illustration of Aryze’s proposed townhouse project at the corner of Foul Bay and Quamichan
     

    An aerial illustration of how the proposed development will occupy the 1/2-acre site
     
    Aryze says it has applied to the BC Housing Affordable Home Ownership Program (AHOP), which would allow prices to be reduced by from 5 to 20 percent for eligible buyers, in part by providing interim construction financing at reduced rates.  To support what it calls “middle income” families, BC Housing would hold the second mortgage to cover its contribution. There are a number of hurdles to be passed before BC Housing approves a project under AHOP.
    For instance, community support for the project should be “evident,” and projects should be “consistent with official community plans and strategies,” according to AHOP’s published principles. As well, the townhouses would not be available to the open market. Ineligible are any would-be purchasers who already own or part-own a dwelling anywhere in the world. To buy an AHOP dwelling, purchasers must currently be in rental or other non-tenureship housing, must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents, and must have lived in BC for the past 12 months. These rules apply to everyone on the title of a townhouse.
    In addition, buyers are limited by household income, which cannot exceed the 75th income percentile of BC families with children—currently $163,220—for those purchasing a three-bedroom unit. For one-bedroom units, their household income must not exceed the 75th percentile of BC families without children—currently $116,330. As of March 13, 2021, 902 Foul Bay Road had not been approved for the AHOP program.
    To give an example of the strength of these restrictions, somebody just arrived from Ontario, would not qualify, even if living in a tent. A family that part-owns a quarter-acre lot in Australia or earns $164,000 annually would also be ruled out. It remains to be seen how many prospective buyers there are who both meet the stringent qualifications and can afford to pay the mortgage.
    Aryze principal Luke Mari has said the three-bedroom townhouses would sell for $725,000 each, assuming that the project is approved under AHOP for the maximum 20 percent of the project’s market value. This means that the market value is 5/4 x $725,000 = $906,250. If, on the other hand, AHOP covers just 5 percent, the selling price would be $860,937—or approximately $136,000 more than the $725,000 figure quoted by Aryze. In an email, Mari responded, “Even though the BC Housing AHOP program allows the discount to be anywhere from 5-20 percent, we have committed to the City and BC Housing to use an income test methodology instead. This would cap the sale values of the one-beds at $375,000 and the three-beds at $725,000. This will be secured by a tri-party agreement should we move past committee of the whole.”
    Neighbours have expressed concerns about added traffic resulting from the addition of 18 new housing units, as well as parking issues. 
    To judge by the latest version of the proposal, Aryze appears to be bending over backwards to support cycling over driving. The proposal includes a bike repair station and 36 bike stalls, but just 16 places to park a car. As well, it is promising 18 memberships in the Modo car-sharing service. Aryze claims there are no fewer than 841 street parking stalls within a five-minute walk. The proposal does not state how many of those stalls are already occupied much of the day.
     

    Signs like this abound throughout the neighbourhood
     
    Aryze proposes to plant 39 trees, of which 21 would be native, including 4 Garry Oaks. At the same time, it will remove 7 existing Garry Oaks, and two much-admired mature Copper Beech trees, among others. This has led to some of the most vociferous complaints, with signs throughout the neighbourhood proclaiming “Save the Trees at 902 Foul Bay.”
    Responding to criticism of the proposed tree-cutting, in an August 20, 2020 letter to neighbours, Mari said: “We take no pleasure from cutting down trees.” However, he added, “to retain all trees on the property, only a small single building can be built.” Mari also commented on the beech trees. “The two large beech trees, while beautiful, are in declining health and are non-native species,” he said in the letter, which did not mention the fact that nearly half of the promised new trees would also be non-native.
     
    Heritage concerns
    Though the house is now gone, the property’s landscape heritage designation means that any development project must still pass muster at the City of Victoria’s Heritage Advisory Panel. At the panel’s November 10, 2020 meeting, chair Pam Madoff—a longstanding heritage advocate—asked about the proposed removal of the beech trees. 
    In response, architect Erica Sangster told the panel that the trees grow in a “challenging part of the site,” according to minutes of the meeting. “We tried to keep one of the copper beeches, but it was not in the best health,” added Sangster. “We had to choose which had to be removed. Ultimately both would need to be removed.”
    In the end, the development sailed through, with five voting in favour, and just Madoff opposed.
    In a later interview, Madoff told Focus that it’s rare for a property owner to designate the landscape, and she wants to honour that decision. “We are the stewards of that intention,” she says.
     

    The treed property at 902 Foul Bay Road, with two large copper beeches
     
    The loss of the two beech trees was a particular concern. “I just felt that there was not enough attention paid to the mature trees on the site,” Madoff says. Though not native, the beeches are a significant feature of the site, storing significant quantities of carbon that new trees would not.
    Monique Genton is a neighbour of the proposed project who would also like the older trees to remain. “There’s value in mature trees, even if they’re not native,” says Genton, a member of UVic’s Native Plant Study Group, and who is registered as a native-plant salvager in Saanich. She adds that the beech trees are very much loved by the neighbours. “The best tree is the one you’ve got.”
     
    A $2 million neighbourhood?
    In arguing that the 16 three-bedroom town homes will sell for $725,000 each, Mari said they would be far cheaper than the $2.1 million he says is the average price for a three-bedroom house in the neighbourhood. To some, that $2.1 million figure is on the high side.
    Madoff, for one, questions Mari’s claim regarding local house prices. “I thought that was very misleading,” she says, adding that the average price is likely much lower. A check of assessed values in the immediate area lends support to the view that the Aryze claim is far too high. 
    BC Assessment lists nine properties as “neighbouring” 902 Foul Bay. Of these nine, just three are three-bedroom; one has two bedrooms. The average assessed value of these four properties is $971,624.
    Only four properties adjoin 902 Foul Bay, all on the north side. The 910 Foul Bay Road address consists of two properties, one of which has a 2,236-square-foot house; the other is vacant. The two properties are currently assessed at a total of $1,249,500. On Hawes Road, a small cul-de-sac that runs off Redfern Street, sit 1940 and 1946 Hawes. They are assessed at $846,000 and $910,000 respectively. 
    The property at 910 Foul Bay that adjoins 902 makes for an interesting comparison with the Aryze proposal. The single house on the two properties at 910 occupies 0.47 acres, just less than 902’s half-acre. Put another way, this means that the Aryze proposal would result in 18 times more dwellings on roughly the same size lot as its only immediate, single-family, Foul Bay Road neighbour. One concern for neighbours is that if the Aryze proposal is approved by the City, it might set a precedent for subsequent redevelopment of nearby properties.
     
    The covenant: A hindrance or irrelevant?
    There is a longstanding covenant executed against the title of 902 Foul Bay Road, and approximately 100 neighbouring properties. Registered October 24, 1924, the covenant reads as follows: “No building is to be erected upon any lot other than a private dwelling house with suitable outbuildings; and no dwelling house to be erected upon any lot adjoining or fronting on Foul Bay Road shall cost less in erection thereof than Four Thousand Dollars ($4,000.00) and on other lots not less than Two thousand dollars ($2,000.00).” (The minimum prices for houses seems positively laughable in today’s runaway real estate prices; they reflect typical prices of nearly a century ago.)
    Such restrictive covenants remain in effect when the property passes on to successive owners. This feature of covenants is often referred to as “running with the land.” 
    If enforced, this restrictive covenant may well rule out 18 townhouses on the lot. Or does it?  Mari claims that some other properties covered by the covenant already violate it, since they have basement suites.
    Answering a question from Focus, Mari says the effect of the covenant is “unclear” regarding townhouses. “The covenant restricts the property to ‘private dwellings,’ but does that exclude townhouses?” Mari says in the emailed response. He adds, “The Strata Property Act did not exist at the time of drafting. Under property law, a strata townhouse is a form of private dwelling.” 
    With regard to the trees, Mari notes, “the private covenant does not save the trees as the existing zoning rights allow potentially even broader tree removal in order to build out the four single-family dwellings under existing zoning.”
    In general, the practical impact of restrictive covenants is questionable. Many are found in older neighbourhoods, even predating zoning bylaws. Sometimes, they are placed by developers as a selling point, in an attempt to control the neighbourhood. They are technically separate and apart from anything the city does. Municipal governments are not obligated to abide by them, though some cities do take note of them in deciding on a proposal. In the case of Victoria, a City official told Focus the City ignores restrictive covenants in determining the fate of a proposed development. The only exception is when the City is a party to the covenant; in the case of 902 Foul Bay Road, it is not.
    Are restrictive covenants immutably attached to the properties they govern? The short answer: No. Under BC’s Property Law Act, a court may discharge a restrictive covenant. Section 35 of the Act lays down a number of conditions under which a restrictive covenant can be set aside. How difficult is that? According to an in-depth 2012 report on restrictive covenants for the British Columbia Law Institute, the threshold for modifying or cancelling a restrictive covenant under section 35 is “quite high.”
    Said the report: “The courts will not exercise the powers given by section 35 lightly, recognizing that a restrictive covenant is a valuable property right.” The report notes that restrictive covenants have been seen as “a useful means of protecting valuable interests connected with the use and enjoyment of land at a localized and private level that public planning does not reach.”
    On January 22, 2020, 902 Foul Bay Road property owner Lions West Homes Ltd filed a petition asking the BC Supreme Court to discharge the covenant. In support, Lions West lawyer Lindsay LeBlanc cited changes in the nature of the neighbourhood, as well as the covenant’s “impediment of practical use.” The petition claims that since the covenant was signed, “the neighbourhood has experienced significant densification with the restrictive covenant not being followed or enforced.” 
    Noting that 31 of the approximately 100 lots to which the covenant applies have more than one dwelling, Lions West said in the petition that the restrictive covenant is now “obsolete,” and “is unreasonably impeding the petitioner’s plans to build on the property.” 
    Representing a number of area residents, lawyer Kyle Hamilton filed a response to the Lions West petition on June 24, 2020. In the response, the neighbours said that the covenant provides them with a such practical benefits as natural beauty, the park-like feel of backyards due to the collective view of all yards together, peaceful setting of their homes, established green space, uniform visual appearances, low turnover rate of owners, and a sense of neighbourhood.
    In the court filing, the neighbours said that removing the covenant would lead to loss of privacy, increased residential noise and traffic, loss of the neighbourhood’s current character, removal and destruction of green space, and their uniform park-like view replaced with three storey, multi-family units.
    To the surprise of neighbours, on August 13, 2020—less than two months after the response was filed—Lions West asked the court to adjourn hearing the petition. Asked in March 2021 for the reason, Mari provided a single sentence in an email to Focus: “It was adjourned to gather additional material as requested by the respondents.” 
     
    A threat? Or helpful advice?
    A letter from Aryze, headed “Common Questions and Answers” was distributed to residents served with petition materials in February 2020. It said that Aryze was pursuing removal of the covenant because there is a “potential grey area” between the proposed development and the covenant. “As such, we are pursuing the removal of this covenant for clarity moving forward,” said the letter.
    The Aryze letter also contained what some recipients regard as a threat. Said the letter: “While not ideal, we should note that if property owners decide to pursue legal action to oppose this discharge, and we are successful in the removal through the courts, we will be seeking legal compensation from those opposing property owners due to the added costs of additional court processes.”
    In their response filed with the court, the neighbours said the letter had two purposes. Quoting from the court filing, these are:  
    “(a) To downplay the significance of the petition and what Aryze was seeking to do with the covenant and
    (b) threaten the respondents with possible financial repercussions should they oppose the removal of the covenant and lose.”
    Heritage advocate Madoff is not happy with Aryze’s statement that it will ask the court to order that opponents pay costs. “A letter like that would be very unsettling,” Madoff says. “The threat of an award of costs would be terrifying.”
    Asked for a response to residents’ concerns about that section of the letter distributed to the respondents, Mari said the following:
    “I can say with absolute sincerity, this portion of the letter was to give residents a clear understanding of what they were getting into,” Mari said in an email. “If they didn’t oppose, it’s a 3-4 week process to discharge the agreement, $5,000 in fees kind of thing. If they chose to oppose, it takes months and months and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. We take no joy in these situations and even conveyed that in a follow up letter that we welcomed their right to oppose but the added time, complexity, and costs then afforded us via the Courts to recoup some of those costs.”
    A neighbourhood website has been seeking donations to help cover legal costs.
     
    How many is too many?
    Despite their court-filed objections to the project, some neighbours regard an increase in density as acceptable. Neighbour Peter Nadler says that while some want no more than what current zoning allows on the site—four single-family houses—others would accept some densification, as long as most of the trees are preserved. “We have to accept increased density,” says Nadler, speaking for the second group. “What we’re after is balance.”
    Focus asked Mari if he would consider fewer townhouses on the property. He replied: “Yes, we could provide less homes on the property, but it would mean that we would be unable to provide 100 percent of the project under the BC Housing Affordable Home Ownership Program, which offers homes at more than 20 percent below market rates,” he said in an email. 
    He also stated: “Regarding neighbour feedback, we have found some inconsistencies. On one hand some claim to express support for added density on the property but then are also seeking to enforce a restrictive covenant that limits the project to no added density, as the covenant supports the existing zoning to build four single family homes which will certainly be priced at well over $2m each. So we are left wondering which is it?” 
     
    What’s next?
    The development proposal is expected to soon head to the City of Victoria’s committee of the whole to decide whether it merits proceeding to a public hearing. 
    Aryze is well known to council members from numerous development proposals as well as its recent spearheading of a project to re-purpose shipping containers as tiny homes for 30 homeless citizens.
    As with other developers, Aryze officials were generous in their support for some candidates during Victoria’s 2018 municipal election. Mari donated $500 to the campaigns of successful council candidate Marianne Alto and Mayor Lisa Helps, according to Elections BC records. A $500 donation to Councillor Jeremy Loveday was declined by Loveday. Mari also gave to unsuccessful candidates Anna King ($500), and Grace Lore ($485.20). In addition, Aryze staffer Ryan Goodman donated $500 to Helps, and $485.20 to Lore. Donations to Victoria candidates from both Mari and Goodman in the 2018 campaign totalled $3,470.40.
    These donations fall well below the permitted limit. Elections BC rules set maximum individual donations to a single local election candidate at $1,200 for 2018. (Only individuals may contribute to candidates for municipal councils; companies, unions and other and organizations are now banned from reimbursing individuals who make campaign contributions.)
    While some claim donations from developers put council members in a conflict of interest, a recent ruling from the BC Supreme Court confirmed donations to local election candidates do not in themselves restrict successful candidates from voting on donors’ projects. Two lawyers with Vancouver-based law firm Young Anderson, Kathleen Higgins & Sarah Strukoff analyzed the court ruling in a January 12, 2021, report. “In summary, this case, along with others, suggests that a campaign contribution made by a developer, assuming it has been accepted in accordance with other applicable legislation such as the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act and even if made while the developer has an ‘in-stream’ application before council, is not a ground in and of itself for a disqualification of a council member on the basis of the conflict of interest provisions in the Community Charter.”
    Asked when he expects to see shovels in the ground, Mari replies: “In an optimistic world, Fall 2021.”
    As an intense wave of high-density development sweeps through Victoria, Madoff is troubled by what she sees as a common attitude about new projects, the mistaken view that there is no such thing as bad development. Says Madoff: “I really care about what’s happening to this city.”
    Russ Francis admits to liking both houses and trees—not necessarily in that order.
    Cara McKenna
    SISȻENEM, off Sidney Island, has been transferred to W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council after historic agreement with The Land Conservancy of British Columbia.
    By Cara McKenna, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
     
    ABUNDANT WITH MEADOWS OF COLOURFUL FLOWERS and other pristine wildlife, a remote Salish Sea island is being returned to its rightful owners—the W̱SÁNEĆ people.
    The Land Conservancy of British Columbia (TLC) recently purchased SISȻENEM, a four-hectare island off the eastern side of Sidney Island, from a private owner for $1.55 million.
    On February 26, 2021, the charitable land trust signed an agreement with the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council (WLC) to transfer title and to commit to shared management of the site, also known as Halibut Island.
     

    SISȻENEM (Halibut Island) seen from above will be given back to the W̱SÁNEĆ people. Photo by Tara Martin
     
    Those behind the agreement believe it to be the first of its kind between a land trust and an Indigenous community in Canada.
    Tsartlip (W̱JOȽEȽP) Chief and Chairman of the WLC board Don Tom says the transfer is historic—and a tangible way the Land Back movement has become a reality.
    “This is the first time W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations have been asked about land acquisition unprompted,” Tom says, speaking during a signing ceremony over Zoom. “To me it is history in the making. It’s a history that will be told.”
    Tom points out that the land itself was never given up by his people, who are protected by the Douglas Treaties and their inherent Aboriginal rights and title. Still, the island was owned privately for many years. 
    When it went up for sale in 2019, TLC approached W̱SÁNEĆ leaders about returning rightful title to SISȻENEM and did most of the legwork in the transaction, Tom says.
    It was facilitated in part by Tara Martin, a conservation scientist with the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry, who contacted TLC and sought out a major unnamed donor to fund the purchase.
    Martin grew up on Salt Spring Island, and remembers being curious about SISȻENEM since she was a child.
    “I could see from the boat that it was something special. It had not been logged, it had not been developed,” she says. 
    “I could see with my binoculars even at a young age that there were some extraordinary wildflowers on the island.”
    When Martin became a scientist, she continued to think about SISȻENEM and wanted to study the wildlife there, but she says she was denied permission by the landowner at the time. When the island came up for sale and she was finally able to visit the island to do a survey last year, Martin says what greeted her was “extraordinary.”
    She was greeted by an abundance of important plants—there were meadows carpeted with wildflowers such as camas, barestem desert parsley, chocolate and fawn lilies, as well as plentiful shellfish, Saskatoon berries and more.
    The island was also rich with old-growth Douglas firs, Garry oak, pollinators, and other animals such as eagles and ducks. 
    “These ecosystems don’t exist in very many places anymore,” Martin says. “They used to be extensive and these were the gardens of First Nations across this region.”
    Tom says, to him, the island’s pristine condition and diversity of wildlife feels “like going back in time.” 
    W̱SÁNEĆ Elder SELILIYE (Belinda Claxton) says she has good memories of SISȻENEM as a place of bountiful harvesting. She recalls, when she was younger, going from island to island to gather everything from seagull eggs and boxwood to sea urchins and stick shoes (chitons) and being struck by the smell of wildflowers on SISȻENEM. 
    “It brings back such beautiful childhood memories. It was so natural and so pleasant to be able to see that when I was a child,” she shares in a statement. “This is the sort of experience I want my children and my grandchildren to have … There are not many places like this left.”
    Fellow W̱SÁNEĆ Elder J’SIṈTEN (John Elliott) says that the name of the island in the SENĆOŦEN language loosely translates to “sitting out for pleasure of the weather.”
    “This little island we call SISȻENEM, it comes from the word SISḴ, which in our language it means, you know when you’re out enjoying the sun? That’s what that word comes from,” he says. “That’s a place where you go to enjoy the beautiful sun and be just there for the enjoyment of the beautiful weather.”
     

    A bumblebee feeds on rare wildflowers that grow on SISȻENEM. Photo by Tara Martin
     
    TLC executive director Cathy Armstrong says now that the agreement has been signed and the land is being transferred back to W̱SÁNEĆ leaders—the council represents Tsartlip, Tseycum, and Tsawout Nations—work can begin on an eco-cultural restoration plan.
    TLC will work on the plan with W̱SÁNEĆ Elders and community members as well as Martin and her team at UBC.
    “TLC is humbly grateful for the opportunity to facilitate this ground-breaking transfer of title for the benefit of future generations,” Armstrong says.
    A press release about the title transfer adds that TLC will be fundraising this spring to assist efforts of restoration and monitoring.
    “Most importantly for W̱SÁNEĆ people today, SISȻENEM will be a place where W̱SÁNEĆ people can be in peace,” the release states.
    For more information about SISȻENEM and how you can get involved, visit www.conservancy.bc.ca or call TLC at 1-877-485-2422.
    Cara McKenna is a Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) Reporter for thediscourse.ca. LJI is funded by the Government of Canada.
     
    Judith Lavoie
    A growing number of British Columbians are pushing the provincial government to tighten rules around killing wolves.
     
    FORESTS, LANDS, NATURAL RESOURCE OPERATIONS AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT Minister Katrine Conroy said this month that she is looking at closing “loopholes” in wolf hunting and trapping rules. One of the few certainties is that Conroy will be walking an emotionally-charged tightrope.
    On one side, defenders of wolves point to the ethics of killing an animal with no intention of eating it. They also note the lack of reliable population figures and regulations that allow uncontrolled wolf hunting and trapping. The wolf’s role as an apex predator that helps maintain balanced ecosystems is also cited as a reason to stop the unregulated killing.
    On the other, hunters point to dramatically shrinking ungulate populations—caused in large part by logging that has given wolves easy access to prey. (In a rare point of agreement, both primary sides say that habitat protection and restoration is desperately needed.)
     

    Photo by Ian McAllister
     
    While the websites of legal guide-outfitters show piles of dead wolves in an effort to persuade tourists to take part in “trapline adventures,” wildlife watching businesses and environmental groups say killing BC wolves is scientifically unwarranted and gives the province an international black eye.
    The debate has become so heated that spokespeople for both sides say they have been subjected to threats of lawsuits or violence.
    “I get death threats all the time,” said Jesse Zeman, BC Wildlife Federation director or fish and wildlife restoration, adding that there are fringe elements on both sides. Less than two percent of hunters in BC identify as trophy hunters and most hunt because of the chance to spend time outdoors with friends and family and for food, Zeman said.
    However, according to a study published in Conservation Biology and written by researchers from Raincoast Conservation Society and the Universities of Victoria and Wisconsin, those hunters should be concerned their reputation is being tarnished by trophy hunters.
    Wolves and other large carnivores are rarely killed and eaten and that does not sit well with many members of the public who see it as gratuitous killing, said one of the study’s authors, Chris Darimont, a wolf researcher, University of Victoria professor and Raincoast Research Chair in Applied Conservation Science.
    “Large surveys tell us that the public generally show strong support for hunting to feed your family, but not to feed your hunger for status,” said Darimont pointing to the Province’s decision to end the grizzly bear hunt after persistent public pressure.
    There is certainly not much empirical data on wolves in BC, but, for Darimont, the issue does not revolve around the numbers and whether there is a harvestable surplus. Most opponents of wolf hunting and trapping would continue to be opposed even if the science showed healthy populations, said Darimont. “Why they are really opposed is not over conservation concerns, but rather because hunting an animal not to feed your family, but to feed your ego, grossly misaligns with most people’s values,” Darimont said.
     
    No real numbers—or regulations
    Grief and outrage followed the shooting of Takaya, the lone coastal wolf who for eight years lived on Discovery Island and adjacent islands off Oak Bay. His death put an international spotlight on BC’s wildlife regulations.
    Takaya, known as Staqeya by the Songhees First Nation, was legally shot by a hunter near Shawnigan Lake in March 2020 after being relocated to the Port Renfrew area by BC conservation officers. 
    No one knew Takaya better than Cheryl Alexander, wildlife photographer, environmental consultant and former environmental studies teacher at the University of Victoria, who studied Takaya for much of his life and wrote the book Takaya: Lone Wolf.
    A sense of foreboding hung over Alexander after Takaya was relocated. Even though she believed Takaya had never lost his wildness and, like all wolves, was cautious around humans, she anticipated he would die in a trap or from a bullet because of BC’s Wild West attitude towards wolf killing.
    “I think most people do not understand that we have regulations that allow and even encourage hunters to kill wolves and that there is ostensibly no limit,” she said.
    “There’s an issue about the scientific management of wolves and the knowledge base and there’s also an issue around ethics and having a free-for-all and deciding to take out all the wolves.”
    Alexander feels the Province has turned wolf management over to citizens, letting them decide when to shoot or trap wolves rather than making the BC Conservation Service responsible.
    Alexander wants a moratorium on recreational wolf hunting until population numbers and the role of wolves in regional ecosystems are confirmed. She also wants to see compulsory reporting of wolf kills and a requirement for all hunters to obtain a species licence or tag to hunt or trap wolves. Alexander has recently written an open letter to Premier John Horgan to this effect.
    If a tag had been required, the Shawnigan Lake hunter may not have killed Takaya, Alexander believes.
    Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland have a bag limit of three wolves for anyone holding a basic hunting license, but in some other areas of the province there is no bag limit, no closed season, and no requirement to report wolf kills. British Columbians do not require a tag or special license to kill a wolf and non-residents pay a fee of $50.
    The lack of regulations makes estimating the number of wolves in the province—alive or killed—little more than a guessing game.
    Emails from the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, sent to Alexander as she was researching her book, confirm there is no information on the distribution of wolf packs on Vancouver Island and population estimates are “inferred.”
    The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, responding by email to questions from Focus, said wolf population numbers are not directly monitored, but the numbers killed by hunters, trappers or for government “control efforts” are recorded through hunter surveys. Wolf populations change quickly because of high reproduction and prey availability, said the spokesperson.
    “Staff know when populations are healthy and we know that, while there are not huge numbers of wolves on Vancouver Island—about 250—we know that the populations are not under any immediate threat,” he wrote.
    Ministry figures show that the Province itself has killed 1,208 wolves since 2015 in areas where caribou herds are in trouble—even though there is conflicting evidence whether removing wolves noticeably increases ungulate populations. In 2019 there were 695 reported kills by hunters and trappers, down from 939 the previous year—but that’s only the reported kills.
    On Vancouver Island there were no reported wolf kills in 2019 and 35 the previous year.
    The lack of scientifically verified information about the province’s wolf packs has convinced more than 71,600 people to sign a petition asking for a moratorium on wolf hunting until population numbers are confirmed. Also, in February 2021, a resolution going to Oak Bay Council calls for recreational wolf hunting on Vancouver Island to be re-examined for scientific and ethical reasons.
    The resolution underlines the scant information about the size of Vancouver Island’s wolf population and the effects of unrestricted harvesting on habitat and wildlife ecology. If it passes, the resolution will be sent to the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities and the Union of BC Municipalities
     

    Photo by Ian McAllister
     
    Indiscriminate killing—but no conservation concerns?
    Advocates believe the absence of regulation feeds the attitude of hunters such as Victoria resident Jacine Jadresko, who describes herself on social media as the InkedHuntress and posts pictures of herself with animals she has killed, including wolves in Sooke.
    Jadresko has posted that she is trapping wolves in response to a problem wolf pack threatening pets—believed to be feral cats in East Sooke—and wrote “full pack removal is always the goal.”
    Two years ago, Steve Isdahl, also from Vancouver Island, posted pictures of rows of dead wolves and, on his Facebook page, appealed to hunters and trappers to join him in killing as many wolves as possible. Isdahl attempted to raise money on-line for snares and traps.
    Conroy, in an emailed answer to questions from Focus, said most hunters she knows are conservationists who would find such an attitude offensive. “This person [Jadresko] is abusing the hunting regulations just to boost her own profile. We will be working with the BC Wildlife Federation and the BC Trappers Association to change the regulations to close this loophole so this type of behaviour is prevented in the future,” she said. “We’ll work with stakeholders to find a solution that works for everyone.”
    The idea that government will work with hunting organizations to tweak regulations has alarmed environmental groups. Conroy did not reply when asked which other stakeholders would be consulted.
    An open letter to Conroy, in February 2021, signed by 26 scientists and organizations, including the BC SPCA, environmental groups and wildlife tourism businesses, asks for a balanced review.
    “Surely your ministry would not select only two interest groups for consultation—and groups that have a vested interest in killing wolves at that,” says the letter, which also takes issue with a statement made by Conroy to the Globe and Mail, that “wolves breed like rabbits. There are no conservation concerns.” That, states the letter, is a “common fallacy that has long been promoted by hunters, trappers, and some wildlife managers who have failed to take note of the science of ecology.” (An open letter from senior wolf researchers Dr John and Mary Theberge also points out this faulty assumption.)
    “To the contrary,” the letter states, “we assure you that wolves have been wiped out over a vast area of the United States. They were nearly wiped out historically in parts of southern Canada from early trapping, strychnine poisoning and persecution.” Wayne McCrory, chair of the Valhalla Wilderness Society, which spearheaded the letter, condemned what he calls the indiscriminate killing of wolves.
    Urging the minister to ensure that “environmental groups, independent conservationists, independent scientists and non-consumptive wildlife viewing tourism businesses have standing equal to hunting and trapping interests in this matter,” the Valhalla letter noted, “hunters, trappers, and their organizations lobby constantly to have large carnivores regularly killed in order to increase ungulate populations, for no other reason than to make it easier for humans to hunt [ungulates themselves].”
     
    Lack of deer cited as justification for killing wolves
    An opposing open letter to Conroy and other cabinet ministers, from the Hunters for BC Interior Chapter-Safari Club International, says too much credence is being given “to the emotions of the anti-hunting movement,” and there is concern that could influence a decision to ban or limit wolf hunting and trapping.
    The letter, signed by Robin Unrau, president of the organization, accuses anti-hunting advocates of bullying and says that if people do not appreciate “thousands of years of hunting and trapping traditions,” they should not visit social media sites owned by hunters and trappers.
    For Zeman of the Wildlife Federation, the history of crashing deer populations on Vancouver Island illustrates why wolves must be “harvested.” Old-growth logging means predators move efficiently across the landscape and the deer have nowhere to go, he said.
    “In the 1960s hunters would have harvested 20,000 to 25,000 deer on Vancouver Island and now we’re down to 3,700,” he said. “That’s an 85 percent decline in deer harvest, so, in terms of food security, that represents red meat for close to 20,000 people on the Island…If we don’t manage wolves, we won’t have any deer,” said Zeman.
    But without accurate data, how can anyone be sure of this? Zeman admits there is a lack of accurate wildlife statistics because of BC’s scant funding for wildlife management.
    McCrory noted there is evidence from areas such as Yellowstone National Park that showed the reintroduction of wolves dramatically improved the ecosystem. “There is a lack of recognition that wolves are an arch predator and have evolved with ungulates in the ecosystem to keep it all healthy,” McCrory wrote.
    Others, like biologist Kyle Artelle, who reviewed 667 management plans for 27 species that are hunted and trapped in Canada and the US in 2018, have observed that it doesn’t make biological sense that if a food source—like deer—is crashing, the predator population would be increasing. He told the Narwhal that anecdotal information on declining deer populations and on increased wolf populations was being used to justify hunting and trapping practices on Vancouver Island and pointed to a study in southeast Alaska that found declining deer populations were the result of logging activities rather than wolf predation.
    With 16,000 kilometres of logging roads in BC giving access to predators and hunters, there are few places where ungulates can safely birth calves and forage.
    And, as the Valhalla Society letter noted, “Simply reducing wolf populations can have very negative ripple effects in ecosystems that can extend to wiping out other species.” McCrory also stated that disrupting wolf packs and killing alpha males or females means young wolves are more likely to get into trouble with preying on livestock or heading into populated areas.
    Regardless of the “loopholes” closed by the BC government, Indigenous rights and practices will likely be respected by all.
    John Henderson, vice-chairman of Kwakiutl Tribal Council on northern Vancouver Island, said, “There’s so much shortage of food everywhere whether it’s the fishing crisis or the wildlife crisis. [Wolves] are predators that we have protected for a long time, but now it’s time to start managing them.”
    Surveys have shown that deer populations have dropped from about 13 animals per square kilometre to 0.1 animal, said Henderson. Wolf trapping is now part of the training for young people from the eight nations who are learning the ways of their ancestors. “We train our kids to go out there and they’re actually trapping wolves and skinning them and using them for cultural purposes and that’s positive—what better way to treat a problem,” he said.
    Ultimately, it is logging and other forms of industrial incursion and urbanization that decimated the ungulates’ ability to forage and maintain healthy populations. But the wolf is, of course, easier to “manage,” especially when there are few rules, at least in settler society.
    In the letter that Cheryl Alexander wrote to Premier Horgan as founder & executive director of Takaya’s Legacy Project, she noted, “Trappers across BC are ‘encouraged’ to kill wolves, with no limit on the number that may be trapped.” She told of communication with a Vancouver Island trapper in 2019, who told her “he had taken 18 wolves off his single trapline in 2018, and that in the first three months of 2019, he had taken six. As well, sponsored wolf-killing contests in northern and interior BC encourage participants to kill as many wolves as possible, with prizes provided.”
    For Alexander, the question for people living in interface areas where wolf territory has been disrupted, is how to live with an iconic animal, rather than using traps and guns to wipe them out. “It’s our human responsibility to figure out how we can best live with them near us or around us and most people value that,” she said.
    McCrory agrees: “We have to reverse this freight train of wolf killing that has been going on in the province. They’re extremely beautiful, iconic animals and many of us who have worked in the Great Bear Rainforests for a long time have come to a deep appreciation of how important they are.”
    Judith Lavoie is an award-winning journalist specializing in the environment, First Nations, and social issues. Twitter @LavoieJudith
    Ross Crockford
    Every year, dozens of old buildings end up in the landfill. We need to get smarter about how we replace them.
     
    IN MARCH OF 2018, a call came into the Focus offices, asking us to hurry down to Despard Avenue, a leafy, sidewalk-free street in Rockland. A crew was at a beautiful old house there, the caller said, and getting ready to tear it down.
    The house was a 1,600-square-foot, three-bedroom bungalow, built in 1933. Many of its period details, like its mullioned windows, had already been removed, but the house was still distinctive, topped by a series of gently curved roofs, like a Chinese temple. A neighbour said it had been owned for many years by a doctor who’d lived in Africa, and had recently died. 
    The crew fired up an excavator and started pulling down the house, smashing its wood framing into splinters.
     

    Photographed in 2017: a unique, 1933-built bungalow, for sale on Despard Avenue.
     

    A few months later, the bungalow mostly ended up in the landfill. The replacement house was three times the size, erasing any claims for greater “energy efficiency.”
     
    A beardy guy named Kevin, who lived in a new place down the street, said that when he’d gone out for a walk, the old house was still standing. Now, on his return, it was half-demolished. Kevin said the house had needed work. What kind? “It was old,” he simply replied, although realtors’ photos suggested the house was in immaculate condition. 
    An elderly neighbour stopped by. Kevin asked him, “Well, what do you think of that?” 
    “I don’t know. What can you do?" the neighbour replied. “But that roof looks like it’s in better shape than mine.” 
    This scene gets repeated dozens of times every year. In 2019, the City of Victoria issued permits to demolish 39 single-family homes, and local municipalities issued 182 such permits across the Capital Region, according to federal statistics. Over the past decade, some 375 houses have been demolished in the City of Victoria alone. The annual numbers peaked in 2015, when 53 houses in the City were torn down — inspiring residents to sign petitions and deliver presentations to Victoria’s councillors, urging them to do more to protect character homes. But the destruction has continued. 
    Blame our overheated housing market, and rules that amplify its effects. The large demand for the limited supply of land relatively close to the water, and/or downtown jobs, has pushed up prices so much that the few people wealthy enough to buy into Victoria often also have the money to tear down an old house and build new — something our property-tax system actively encourages. 
    The BC Assessment Authority evaluates properties according to what it considers “the highest and best use of land,” which means putting the biggest, most expensive building upon it possible. Old homes generally don’t qualify, as BC Assessment presumes that buildings steadily depreciate with age, and undergo “functional and economic obsolescence.” If an old house gets torn down, it likely was “no longer contributing to the value of that property,” one assessor told Focus: the buyer realized they could do more with the land. “The system isn’t set up to protect individual houses,” the assessor said. “It’s set up to reflect markets.” 
    (In keeping with this bizarre logic, a heritage designation on a house actually reduces its property’s overall financial value. “If it impacts the ability to tear it down and build something new, the market’s going to reflect that,” the assessor said. “Any time you have a restriction on a property, it’s going to be worth less.”)
    The situation is worse in the City of Vancouver, where around 1,000 houses get demolished every year. In 2017, UBC architecture professor Joe Damen and data analyst Jens von Bergmann created a “teardown index,” identifying Vancouver houses most likely to get replaced because they have a low “relative building value” compared to the land they sit upon. Many of these doomed houses were built before the 1960s, but Damen and von Bergmann argue that in this market, even homes only a few years old will get flattened too: “Despite their high price, their value of these buildings relative to overall property is low, suggesting today's new single family home is tomorrow’s teardown.” They predict a quarter of all single-family homes in Vancouver will be demolished by 2030.
     

    Coming to Victoria? Analysts predict a quarter of all Vancouver single-family homes will be torn down by 2030 because the apparent value of those buildings is low relative to the cost of land.
     
    The casualty isn’t just the loss of built heritage. Damen and von Bergmann say this constant replacement also destroys affordability: because new homes are expensive to build, they jack the value of their respective properties even higher, turning more of the city into an exclusive enclave for global wealth. (This inflationary spiral might be broken if houses were being replaced by apartments, but the vast majority of demolitions occur in areas zoned residential, where one single-family house is simply replaced by another.)
    Constant replacement is also terrible for the environment. Developers sometimes claim old houses should be replaced because new homes are more “energy efficient,” but that’s deceptive. In a 2018 paper, Damen and von Bergmann calculated that once you factor in the energy used in constructing a modern house — which the high cost of land often incentivizes the owner to build to maximum size, requiring more energy to heat — it would have to stand for 168 years to produce less carbon dioxide than the leaky old house it replaced. “The results show that at the scale of both the individual building lot and the city,” they concluded, “the environmental benefits of tearing down and replacing even very poorly performing buildings are dubious at best in Vancouver.” 
    But that pattern got repeated on Despard. The 1,600 square-foot, 1933 bungalow was replaced by a rectanguloid of nearly 5,000 square feet. The new building is assessed at $1.77 million and the land at $1.47 million for a total of $3.24 million, making it one of the 10 most expensive residential properties in the City of Victoria.
     
    Waste another big issue
    Unaffordability and energy overuse aside, perhaps the most obvious stupidity of demolishing old homes is that their remains typically get treated like garbage, and not as a bank of materials to be reused in new housing. As recent back-and-forth arguments in the Times Colonist have noted, the Capital Regional District is planning to cut 73 acres of forest to expand the Hartland landfill — partly, it turns out, to accommodate a growing volume of construction and demolition waste. 
    “The only material to have increased in waste generation compared to all other years since 2001 was wood and wood products, now representing 61 kg/capita [annually],” a 2018 report to the CRD noted. “This is primarily wood from construction, renovation and demolition activities. All other primary materials have either stayed consistent or have decreased in the overall weight arriving at Hartland.”
    A solution to this waste problem has emerged, though — and you can see it in action at 1015 Cook Street, where the Unbuilders are systematically taking apart a two-storey house built in 1908, and rescuing nearly every bit of material used in its construction.
    “We hit 95 percent on every house, that’s 95 percent salvage and recycle,” says Dan Armishaw, the Unbuilders manager for Vancouver Island, standing in what used to be a dentist’s office, surrounded by items his crew has already set aside. 
    The stained glass will be reused in The Charlesworth, the five-storey, 31-unit rental apartment block slated to replace the old house. The kitchen and bathroom fixtures will be donated to Habitat For Humanity. The windows, doors and mouldings — painted wood usually goes in the landfill, Armishaw notes — will go to Demxx, a massive heritage resale warehouse in Coombs. Even the old stucco scraped off the walls outside will get recycled into concrete.
    But upstairs, in the house’s two former apartments, Armishaw’s crews are getting ready to extract the house’s real treasure: the dense, old-growth lumber used in its framing and walls. 
    Armishaw pries off some strips of lath to reveal the Douglas-fir studs underneath. This is true dimensional lumber, he says, likely milled in the 19th century. “This is the wood that made BC’s economy what it is. To throw it away, it’s like throwing our history away.” Perfectly preserved inside the walls, it could be reused in furniture, or even to frame new houses.
    Armishaw says he prefers to see old houses renovated instead of deconstructed, but this site, just south of Fort Street, suits greater density, and the house can’t realistically be saved. (Nickel Bros. looked at moving it, but decided the house wasn’t in good enough condition and too many utility cables were in the way.) “This building has to come down,” Armishaw says, “but at least there’s peace of mind knowing that people in the community are going to get a piece of that heritage, and that the wood used to build that house can be put back into circulation.”
     

    Signs of improvement at 1015 Cook, where the Unbuilders are dismantling a house built in 1908.
     

    Dan Armishaw reveals old-growth lumber that the Unbuilders will salvage. A forthcoming City of Victoria bylaw, modelled after those in Vancouver and Portland, could mandate such deconstruction.
     
    Demolishing a big house might cost $10,000, while deconstruction can run three or four times that. “We’re six people on a site for a few weeks, instead of a machine operator for a few days,” explains Adam Corneil, the Unbuilders founder. But the extra cost is worth it to owners. In some cases, they can donate the building’s materials through Unbuilders to Habitat For Humanity, which gives the owner a hefty tax credit. In other cases, Unbuilders wholesale what they salvage, which reduces their bill, and gives the owner an appealing story.
    Corneil got the idea for the company in 2014, when he was mainly building new passive-solar homes in Vancouver with single-use products. (“Even though I was building energy-efficient homes, they weren’t really aligning with my values,” he says.) One project involved gutting a heritage house, and the wood he took out was so beautiful that he reworked it in a shop and reinstalled it in the finishes. “That’s all the owner could talk about when the job was done — they didn’t talk about their fancy kitchen and their marble, they just talked about the reclaimed wood. And at the same time, every house around me in Kitsilano was being demolished,” Corneil recalls. “So I said, ‘We’ve got to make a business out of this.’”
    That business will soon get a boost from the City of Victoria. Last November, staff unveiled the City’s zero-waste strategy, aiming for a 50 percent reduction in landfill disposal by 2050. Some of its forthcoming actions have already been mentioned publicly, like a ban on styrofoam takeout food containers, but another includes “new requirements for contractors, property owners and developers to recover waste materials during construction, renovation and demolition,” with the goal of making reuse and deconstruction commonplace. City staff are crafting a bylaw, likely to come later this year.
    In 2014, the City of Vancouver introduced its own bylaw requiring reuse and recycling of demolition materials for pre-1940 homes; in 2018, it expanded the bylaw to include pre-1950 homes, and require deconstruction for pre-1910 and heritage-registered houses. 
    “It’s a good start, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough,” says Corneil. “The ‘recycling’ bit is greenwashing, because what occurs in the industry is smashing all that lumber, and then taking it to a facility that mulches and incinerates it” — releasing its stored carbon and contributing to climate change. Corneil wants to see deconstruction required for pre-1940 homes, as it is in Portland, or even pre-1950 ones, because they still contain old-growth lumber. “I’m pushing the City of Victoria very hard to follow suit,” Corneil says. 
    Whether Victoria’s bylaw will make a significant dent in our region’s volume of waste is unclear, as other levels of government still seem afraid of running afoul of the construction and waste-removal industries. In its draft Solid Waste Management Plan, which anticipates the expansion of Hartland, the CRD only outlines vague, long-term strategies to reduce construction and demolition waste, such as “develop and disseminate educational tools to support material diversion,” “promote green building standards,” and “investigate” bans on dumping clean wood and mixed demolition loads at the landfill — even though the Regional District of Nanaimo has banned such dumping since 2014. Back in 2009, federal and provincial environment ministers, including British Columbia’s, committed to developing Extended Producer Responsibility programs — the eco-fees currently levied on items like paint and batteries to pay for their recycling or disposal — to cover construction materials, but no such measures have appeared.
    “You can do whatever you want in the interest of sustainability, if you’re not concerned about housing affordability,” says Casey Edge, executive director of the Victoria Residential Builders’ Association, when asked about the City’s plans. “We’ll see what the City of Victoria wants to do with mandatory dismantling of homes, but it’s not going to increase affordability, which is the biggest concern right now when it comes to housing in our region.”
    “We’re cutting old-growth forests at an alarming rate, and we’re throwing old-growth timber into the landfill at an alarming rate,” replies Victoria mayor Lisa Helps. “So [the prospective bylaw] is about more than zero waste, it’s about reclaiming, reusing, and looking at environmental protection at the same time.” Helps says it’s not clear if the bylaw will issue a mandate, or provide incentives, but like with its plastic-bag ban, the City will consult with local businesses to ensure they’re on board. “At a certain point, this will just be the new normal.”
    As for affordability, Helps says that should be improved by the City’s forthcoming “missing middle” bylaw, which could permit triplexes or fourplexes to be built on current single-family lots — although others say such blanket “upzoning” merely increases the value of land even further, and accelerates the demolition of existing homes.
    In any case, arguments about the fate of old houses are sure to continue. The bungalow on Despard Avenue may be gone, but a 1928-built home across the street, on a 13,000 square-foot corner lot, is currently up for sale.
     
    Ross Crockford lives in a suite in a house built in 1910. According to its latest assessment, the building is worth one-eighth the value of the land it occupies, likely making it a future teardown.
     
    Judith Lavoie
    More Langford citizens are expressing resentment over City Hall’s modus operandi.
     
    THE RAIN PAUSED AND, along a quiet side-street in Langford, residents are venturing out. There are no sidewalks, but a caregiver is pushing a wheelchair towards Veterans Memorial Park and a small dog strains at the leash, pulling a woman down the street.  
    Fairway Avenue, the site of a contentious redevelopment proposal, is the latest Langford neighbourhood to mobilize against what residents see as out-of-scale development. In addition to complaints that two multi-storey towers are being shoe-horned onto a site which held five single homes, there is an undercurrent of concern about lack of council transparency, difficulty in obtaining timely information, and a perception that too much influence is being wielded by developers in the fast-growing city.
     

    Location of the proposed development (Image provided by City of Langford)
     

    Artists rendering of proposed development (Image provided by City of Langford)
     
    Langford has grown to more than 45,000 residents from 18,840 in 2001. The City projects it will have 56,000 residents by 2026, a growth rate of 123 percent within 25 years.
    In many ways, Fairway Avenue represents the remarkable changes seen in Langford over the last two decades. On one side of the street, single family properties back on to the imposing trees of Royal Colwood Golf Course, but, across the street, properties back on to Goldstream Avenue, which has become a busy, urban artery. 
    Development became inevitable with the Official Community Plan designation of the area as “city centre,” a zone that has no height restrictions (the property still has to be rezoned). Still, residents were horrified when, at an informal meeting last summer with development consultant Mike Wignall, they were told the proposal was for two 12-storey buildings, one fronting on to Goldstream and the other on to Fairway, with all access from Fairway. 
    J. Scott, who has lived on Fairway for 17 years, sprang into action helping form Fairway Neighbours Unite for a Livable Langford, a group that has written countless letters, organized a 246-name petition against the development, contacted the Province about the makeup of committees, and lobbied staff and councillors. 
    By the time the proposal reached Langford’s Planning, Zoning and Affordable Housing Committee on Monday, January 11, the proposal was for a nine-storey and a six-storey building and, by the end of the meeting, developer DB Services, agreed to two six-storey buildings. 
    Scott is grateful for that concession, but said the group will continue to push for four storeys on Fairway. 
    Caller after caller to the phone-in committee meeting voiced concerns and, at the conclusion, Councillor Denise Blackwell, committee chair, said staff will be asked to look at concessions such as a sidewalk along the entire length of Fairway, instead of only in front of the development, and the possibility of an entrance/exit on Goldstream – something Fairway residents are adamant is needed to prevent the quiet street from becoming a busy thoroughfare. 
    “It should not be a life-threatening experience to walk down Fairway Avenue,” Scott said, pointing out that wheelchair-bound residents of The Priory, a complex care centre, frequently use the street, in addition to neighbourhood children and dog-walkers. 
    An additional niggling worry for residents is that the developer, Design Build Services, is the same company that developed Danbrook One, a 90-unit Langford highrise that was evacuated a year ago after being deemed unsafe. 
    However, Blackwell said the fault with Danbrook One lay with the engineer, not the company. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to just say because they built Danbrook One they shouldn’t be allowed to build anything else,” she said in an interview. 
    The Fairway plan will go to council for first reading Monday, January 18 and then to public hearing, but some residents have little faith the changes will be sufficient to stop the neighbourhood being obliterated. 
    Chris Peterson told Focus he had planned to retire on Fairway Avenue, where he has lived for six years, but is now reconsidering. 
    “What can you say about Langford Council—committed to no tree left standing and a concrete jungle of ugly looking condos,” Peterson said. 
    “We understand development will happen and accept that, but, when everything around you is three or four storeys and council says it doesn’t see a problem with a new six or 12-storey building blotting out your access to sunlight or the total loss of privacy at your family dwelling, then it is time to ask what gives,” he said. 
    Like others, Peterson questioned why cumulative impacts are not considered during rezonings and pointed to plans for another large development at the end of Fairway Avenue. 
    But, Blackwell said, as that plan has not yet come to councillors, it could not be part of the discussion. 
    “Developers put in proposals all the time, but that doesn’t mean that what they are proposing is going to be the final product,” she said in an interview. 
    That was little comfort to Peterson. 
    “Council always has time for developers, but, if you are a private citizen, complaining about a proposal, council is quick to let you know they don’t care or your complaint isn’t relevant to the proposal,” he said. 
     
    Citizens resent being left in the dark—and out of decisions
    Like others in Langford who have fought the scale or density of developments, the Fairway group has found the major obstacles are obtaining timely information and unearthing what was discussed at meetings. 
    “I got my notice on Thursday afternoon which was three days before the [Planning and Zoning] meeting and you’re supposed to have 10 days,” said Scott, who was then told she needed to have her submission in by the previous day to have it included in the agenda package. 
    Fairway resident Petra Bezna said she received a notice the same day as the meeting. 
    “There are no details and the map of the development on the back of the letter is not very helpful in my opinion.” she said. 
    Scott said the first time the neighbourhood saw the plans was three days before the Monday meeting. “It’s unacceptable, we have been asking to see the plans since last spring,” Scott said.
    True to form, Langford Council released its agenda package for the upcoming January 18 council meeting late on Friday, January 15. Running to 572 pages, Scott noted that it includes public hearings for no less than five developments, three of which are contentious (e.g. 11- and 12-storey buildings planned for Costin and Carlow)—plus numerous bylaw changes including one to rezone the Goldstream/Fairway properties as “city centre,” allowing for two multi-storey buildings. Scott was dismayed to see that the package still portrays the buildings as six and nine storeys—rather than the two six-storey ones the developer agreed to at the committee meeting .
    There is simmering resentment at the lack of information and records, apart from bare-bones minutes, and even those are not available until shortly before the next meeting. 
    “They don’t put an agenda up for Monday meetings until 3 pm Friday and then City Hall is closed, so you can’t ask questions,” said a resident of South Langford, where a group is battling for green space and traffic mitigation after finding out about a proposal to put 25 duplex lots on a semi-forested area, with traffic routed through a previously quiet cul-de-sac.
    A Whimfield Terrace resident, speaking at the Planning and Zoning Committee meeting, said hundreds of Langford residents are frustrated because they feel that, by the time a proposal goes to committee, City staff and developers have worked together and the development is a fait accompli. 
    “People just don’t feel like our voices matter and I would really encourage the planning committee, City staff and council to consider that residents would like to have a say in how their community is being developed—not just the developers,” she said. 
    Blackwell responded that residents’ views are taken into consideration, pointing to the height concessions on Fairway, but acknowledged staff work with developers to hone proposals before they come to committee. 
    “Our staff is very professional and very good and that’s one of the reasons why we pay so much attention to their reports,” she said. 
    Public delegations are usually referred to a standing committee, rather than full council. But Langford’s standing committees do not meet the requirements of the Community Charter, which says standing committees must be made up of a majority of councillors, said Scott, who asked for the Planning and Zoning Committee meeting to be postponed because the discrepancy. 
    Langford’s standing committees have only two councillors and, adding to the discomfort, the makeup of the Planning and Zoning Committee has come under criticism by residents for the preponderance of appointed members associated with the development industry.
    In an email to Scott, Marie Watmough, Langford manager of legislative services, said, although the committees are referred to as standing committees, they operate as advisory committees, which require only one councillor, and the City is in the process of changing the website references. 
    Lauren Mulholland, spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs said the ministry is aware of concerns about committee structure and has contacted Langford staff to offer support. 
     
    Langford lags on livestreaming and recording meetings
    At the heart of much of the discontent is the difficulty in obtaining information if someone cannot phone in to committee and council meetings—or wants to refer back to what was said. 
    Unlike most municipalities, Langford does not livestream or tape the awkwardly-timed 5:30 pm meetings, and despite a $4.8-million grant from the provincial COVID Restart Fund to ensure municipalities were able to keep residents informed during the pandemic, Langford voted at an in camera meeting in December to delay debate about live-streaming until this year’s budget discussions. 
    Under growing pressure, Mayor Stew Young, who has led Langford since 1993, agreed earlier this month to ask staff to post audio recordings of council meetings—but, that does not extend to committee meetings. 
    Mulholland said the ministry is aware of citizens’ concerns. “Local governments are required…to make best efforts to keep the public informed and able to participate in their council and board meetings, including committee meetings,” she said in an emailed response to questions. 
    “Local governments must also review or develop a resolution with respect to open and electronic meetings and state how they will continue to meet the principles of openness, transparency and accountability in the current circumstances,” she wrote. 
    Langford’s opaque behaviour exasperates John Treleaven, chair of the Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria. “They are increasingly at odds with what motivated, educated residents and taxpayers expect as a modus operandi,” he said. Treleaven believes it would benefit councillors to livestream meetings and allow the public to see how they balance decisions.
    “It seems to us that Langford does what it can to make the voice of the community easier to ignore,” he said. 
    And he was appalled that council met in camera to discuss transparency and livestreaming. “How in God’s name can you meet in secret to discuss transparency. To me that’s a red flag that something is fundamentally wrong and it should be called out…There is no institutional memory in a format that is easily accessible to taxpayers,” Treleaven said.
    Blackwell, who voted in favour of livestreaming, said that she was told the meeting was held in camera because it was a new service. “We did ask the question,” she said. 
    It is strange that Young wants livestreaming to be part of budget discussions given the provincial grant and directives that are clearly geared to access, Treleaven said. “So, you have the money, the need is obvious—be a hero. It’s 2021,” he said. 
    Judith Lavoie is an award-winning journalist specializing in the environment, First Nations, and social issues. Twitter @LavoieJudith
    Judith Lavoie
    On the eve of renewing aquaculture licences for farms in the Discovery Islands, it seems more of an absolute definite maybe, with a new plan…by 2025.
     

    Young wild salmon swim around a salmon farm’s open-net pen in the Discovery Islands (Photo by Tavish Campbell)
     
    IN THE POLITICAL WORLD, news releases are carefully crafted to offer leeway for government shifts. The evolution of statements on the future of BC’s salmon farms is a case-study in allowing wiggle room.
    Last year, during the election campaign, the federal Liberal Party’s campaign literature promised to “work with the Province to develop a responsible plan to transition from open-net pen salmon farming in coastal waters to closed containment systems by 2025.”
    There was elation among those who had argued for years that fish farms were threatening shrinking stocks of wild salmon because of the transfer of sea lice and diseases from farmed fish, while the salmon farming industry pointed to economic and employment losses, technological problems, and the additional costs of closed containment.
    Then came the mandate letter issued to Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan to “work with the Province of British Columbia and Indigenous communities to create a responsible plan to transition from open net-pen salmon farming in coastal British Columbia waters by 2025.”
    Hmm—note the disappearance of closed containment systems.
    In November came an announcement from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) that “the Government of Canada is committed to developing and delivering a real and concrete solution for transitioning open-net pens in coastal British Columbia waters.”
    So, what does transitioning mean? And transitioning to what?
    It is a slippery word, said Aaron Hill, Watershed Watch Salmon Society executive director. “Does it mean you’ll have the farms out by 2025 or you will have a transition plan in place by 2025? We don’t know yet,” he said.
    And does transitioning mean getting salmon farms out of the ocean?
    Well, not necessarily right out of the ocean and not necessarily by 2025.
    Jane Deeks, press secretary for Minister Jordan, said nothing is set in stone and multiple options for transitioning will be considered.
    “I can’t say what is going to be done by 2025. We’re not going to rush the process. It needs to be done really well and responsibly in a way that takes into consideration all of the factors and jobs at stake,” she said.
    BC Salmon Farmers Association says salmon farming supports 7,000 direct and indirect jobs in coastal communities and contributes about $1.5-billion annually to the provincial economy. A report commissioned by the Association says that, with clearer government policy, the industry could invest $1.4-billion in technology and infrastructure and create 10,000 new jobs by 2050.
    Terry Beech, parliamentary secretary to Jordan (and MP for Burnaby-North-Seymour), made it clear at a news conference last month that options now under consideration are wider than moving farms on land and could include “area-based management” that would look at the timing of wild salmon runs and cumulative impacts, as well as looking at new technology.
    The key must be sustainability, Beech said.
    That could include hybrid systems such as a semi-closed containment system, now being tested by Cermaq Canada in Clayoquot Sound. The system is fitted with a polymer lining that wraps around the net pen and eliminates lateral contact between wild and farmed fish.
    Salmon farmers are also looking at increasing the time salmon spend in land-based systems before being transferred to ocean pens.
    The joint federal-provincial study released earlier this year, State of Salmon Aquaculture Technologies, which will help inform the transition plan, concludes that both land-based pens and hybrid systems are technologies ready for commercial development in BC.
    Other systems such as floating closed containment systems need more evaluation, it says.
    Beech acknowledged it is going to be tough to find a balance, but emphasized the need to not simply protect wild salmon, but to restore runs to historic levels. “We know that the long-term success of the economy is completely reliant on the long-term success and health of the environment,” he said.
    At the same time, almost half the fish consumed by people today comes from aquaculture and aquaculture could be a clear driver of a future blue economy, Beech said. “I am passionate about making our aquaculture sector as sustainable and viable as possible,” he said.
    Beech will be in charge of consulting with BC First Nations, the aquaculture industry and “environmental stakeholders,” with an interim report going to Jordan this spring, 
     
    The big test: will Discovery Island fish farm licences be renewed?
    The Watershed Watch Salmon Society’s Aaron Hill said delaying action for yet another report is frustrating because wild salmon cannot wait: “They’re now just starting the consultation process, which is something they should have gotten going a year ago. The outcome is just going to be a report by next spring and next spring a record low number of small, young wild salmon will have to swim past the usual gauntlet of salmon farms and all the viruses and parasites that they spew out. Another report won’t be much help in getting the lice to stop chewing their faces off,” he said.
    Fraser River sockeye returns hit a historic low of less than 300,000 fish this year.
     

    Fraser River sockeye salmon may be going extinct, judging by 2020’s record low numbers
     
    Biologist Alexandra Morton, a tireless advocate for wild salmon, has done extensive research on the effects of sea lice and pathogens spreading from salmon farms and believes Beech understands the impact of the farms and the importance of wild salmon to British Columbians and especially to First Nations.
    “But this is a difficult situation, particularly in COVID where no job loss can be seen as being promoted by government,” said Morton, who has lobbied strenuously for closed containment. She points out that, in Norway, where most parent companies of BC operators are located, closed containment is now seen as the way to protect the industry. “The sea lice and the viruses are attacking the farm fish [in Norway] so badly, they have to get them out of the water,” she said.
     

    Alexandra Morton sampling farm salmon (Photo courtesy Sea Shepherd)
     
    Morton also noted that the aquaculture branch within Fisheries and Oceans has considerable influence and seems intent on barrelling ahead to promote and protect the fish farming industry. However, on the political side, there appears to be an understanding that Fraser River sockeye are actually going extinct and action is necessary.
    The biggest test will come on December 18 when 18 federal aquaculture licences for farms in the Discovery Islands expire.
    A DFO spokesperson said that, since September, the department has been focusing on consultations about the licence renewal with the seven First Nations with traditional territory in the Discovery Islands. “The outcomes from the consultations will inform the minister’s decision regarding the renewal of aquaculture licences,” she said.
    Almost one-third of BC’s wild salmon migrate through the Discovery Islands and, in 2012, the Cohen Commission report on declining Fraser River salmon stocks called for the prohibition of Discovery Islands fish farms by September 2020 unless there was proof they posed “only minimum risk of serious harm to the health of migrating Fraser River salmon.”
    However, in September, DFO concluded the farms presented little risk to Fraser River salmon stocks, even though studies had not looked at the effect of sea lice.
    The lack of consideration of sea lice drew an outcry from conservation groups and while further consultation with First Nations in the Discovery Islands area was announced, the process came under fire for not including First Nations on the Fraser River who depend on wild salmon.
    Fish farms should never have been put it such a critical area, said Morton, who is hoping the dramatic drops in wild salmon numbers will help persuade the federal government to cancel the Discovery Islands licences. “But I have learned not to have confidence in anything around salmon, people always seem to cave in,” she said. “Now, the salmon of British Columbia are hanging in the balance.”
    In September, more than 100 First Nations, wilderness tourism operators and fishing groups demanded that the farms be removed and, in early December, the First Nations Leadership Council called on DFO to fully implement the precautionary principle and revoke the Discovery Island licences. (The precautionary principle recognizes that, in the absence of scientific certainty, conservation measures should be taken if there is a risk of serious harm to the environment or resources.)
    Chief Dalton Silver, UBCIC fisheries representative, said only between one and four per cent of out-migrating juvenile salmon return to spawn and, with this year’s historic low returns, the returns four years hence are likely to be dire. “We cannot afford to wait any longer. We need to act now and protect and rebuild from what’s left of the remaining salmon stocks,” he said.
    The other part of the salmon policy equation is the provincial government, which grants tenures and, in 2018, the BC government adopted a policy that, from 2022, the Province will grant tenures only to fish farm operators who have negotiated agreements with the First Nations in whose territory they want to operate.
    Now, wild salmon advocates are watching to see whether Premier John Horgan’s newly-minted government will put protection of wild salmon at the top of the priority list. The appointment of Fin Donnelly as Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Aquaculture is viewed as an encouraging sign and Donnelly’s mandate letter includes “working with the federal government to develop new strategies to protect and revitalize BC’s wild salmon populations.”
    That sounds good, said Hill, but, in the past, the NDP government has sometimes shown a regressive approach to wild salmon. “My main question is, will Premier Horgan let him do his job,” he said.
    Judith Lavoie is an award-winning journalist specializing in the environment, First Nations, and social issues. Twitter @LavoieJudith
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    Leslie Campbell
    TLC needs another $45,000 to finalize purchase of 27 acres of the the Millstream Creek Watershed.
     

    A forest view in the Millstream Creek Watershed. (Photo by Dianna Stenberg)
     
    THE LAND CONSERVANCY OF BC’s latest fundraising campaign is focused on protecting a key 27-acre Coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem in the Millstream Creek Watershed. Located in the District of Highlands, the lush and diverse property is comprised of a mature forest and three different wetland types (sedge marsh, hardhack marsh, and skunk cabbage swamp). 
    Dominated by Douglas-fir, other trees include western red cedar, grand fir, arbutus, Garry oak, and red alder. The understory flourishes with salal, dull Oregon-grape, ocean-spray, bracken fern, sword fern, trailing blackberry, western trumpet honeysuckle, and Oregon beaked moss.
    The Coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem is the smallest and most at-risk zone in BC because it has been so altered by human activities. Less than one percent of the CDF remains as natural forests. Species-at-risk, including the Northern red-legged frog (SARA listed species of Special Concern) are found within its boundaries.
    While the Millstream Creek Watershed property on its own is valuable as a nature sanctuary, its importance really resides in the connectivity it provides for wildlife and protection of the local watershed. With two creeks (Earsman Creek in the east and an unnamed creek in the west) and numerous ephemeral streams that flow into Mary Lake, the parcel functions as a water source for the sensitive lake system found to the south. Protecting this parcel will help maintain a healthy intact watershed for these lakes, and allow for crucial wildlife corridors to the adjacent 42-acre Mary Lake Nature Sanctuary and established Capital Regional District (CRD) parks in the area.
    In 2016, the Greater Victoria Greenbelt Society purchased 42 acres around Mary Lake from the estate of Peter and Violet Brotherston for about $2 million, with Tsartlip First Nation joining as partners in 2018. Cathy Armstrong, executive  director of TLC, says, “Our piece [27 acres] was needed to complete the Sanctuary,” as it will conserve and protect the lands around the lake.
    All of the Nature Sanctuary land was originally used by the Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum, Esquimalt and Whyomilth (Songhees) peoples for hunting, gathering food and medicinal plants and spiritual practices.
    Due to donations from the community since the campaign was announced this fall, the initial goal of raising $75,000 by December 31 has been whittled down to $45,000. Donations are being matched 4-fold by an anonymous donor. So a $500 donation becomes, in effect, $2500. The federal government has also contributed funds towards the overall purchase.
    Armstrong is especially excited that salmon spawning streams can be rejuvenated and restocked with coho. “Mary Lake can be a breeding and nurturing place for the fry,” says Armstrong. Yet another partnership is involved in this endeavour: “Peninsula Streams Society is key to re-establishing coho in the watershed, beginning with the newly constructed Millstream Creek Fishway,” says Armstrong. 
    The Fishway project includes building five fish ladders, the first of which was constructed in the summer of 2020, allowing migrating fish access to over 6.5 km of habitat upstream of the Atkins Road culvert. Brian Koval, biological coordinator for Peninsula Stream Society describes the project thoroughly in a video (see below), pointing out that the Atkins Road culvert was impassable till this summer. In all, as the video illustrates, 13 step pools with weirs were constructed up to the huge culvert, which was lined with concrete to further help the fish heading upstream. Four more ladders are coming, as well as plantings of native plants on eroding banks and some trash removal (volunteers welcome). Ian Bruce, executive director for the society describes it as the organization’s biggest project ever. Once all fish ladders and other restoration work is completed, coho (initially from local hatcheries) will have access from Esquimalt Harbour right upstream to Mary Lake with the deep pools, gravel, and vegetation they need to thrive.
    With TLC’s financial problems well behind them the organization has purchased a property every year since 2017. “We do so carefully and slowly,” says Armstrong, “making sure we have all the resources we need to fund an endowment.” She sees the purchase of this watershed property as a rare opportunity to protect an undisturbed parcel of critically imperiled Coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem on southern Vancouver Island, 
    The sanctuary will be just that with only limited access by the public. A number of hiking groups have toured the property with Armstrong who says that the fall weather only seems to have enhanced the beauty of the property, with the strong-running creeks, a waterfall and lush green vegetation, all habitat for many birds, frogs, and deer.
    “TLC envisions a future for the site that protects the vast biological diversity found within its boundaries while including educational opportunities for participants in the land trust’s existing Passport to Nature Program and Deertrails Naturalist Program,” says Armstrong. 
    Support for the Millstream Creek Watershed acquisition can be arranged by calling TLC at 1-877-485-2422 or by giving online today at www.conservancy.bc.ca/millstream. Any amount is welcome. Also contact TLC if you’d like to arrange a tour of the property for your group.
    Besides the TLC’s website, further information on the Mary Lake Sanctuary can be found at https://www.marylakeconnections.ca.
    Leslie Campbell is the editor of FOCUS.
    Learn more about the Millstream Creek fish ladders:
     
    Judith Lavoie
    Residents worry as Capital Regional District prepares to spread sewage biosolids at Hartland Landfill.
     
    THERE’S A GUT REACTION to the idea of spreading processed human poop on land, whether to grow bigger trees, better tomatoes, or cap off a landfill. Suspicions remain even after sewage sludge is treated to remove pathogens and pollutants.
    Following sewage treatment at the Capital Regional District’s new McLoughlin Point Wastewater Plant, “residual solids” in the form of sludge are piped to the new Residuals Treatment Facility at Hartland Landfill. There, the sludge is treated by anaerobic digestion, dried, and turned into Class A biosolids, a granule-like substance, along with biogas which is used onsite.
     

    The new Residuals Treatment Facility at Hartland Landfill
     
    The CRD has developed a plan to spread the biosolids on about five hectares of the Hartland Landfill, contrary to an earlier commitment to prohibit land application. While CRD staff insist the plan is safe, residents near Hartland are increasingly anxious that, despite treatment, toxins flushed down Greater Victoria’s toilets and drains will blow on to nearby properties—or leach into fields, gardens or wells. 
    Some living in the area of scattered small farms and acreages are worried that chemicals such as flame retardants, PCBs and other hormone disrupters will find their way into the environment. A particular concern is PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances found in items ranging from frying pans and rain-jackets to dental floss—known as “forever chemicals” because they are almost indestructible.
     

    Hartland Landfill, location of new Residuals Treatment Plant, forested area and surrounding neighbourhood and lakes (click to enlarge).
     
    A group of citizens in the vicinity of Hartland formed the Mount Work Coalition. It has condemned the lack of consultation around the reversal of the CRD’s previous ban on spreading treated sewage residual on land.
    In 2011, the Capital Regional District voted to prohibit spreading such biosolids on land, because of concerns it could contaminate farmland and food with chemicals, heavy metals and pharmaceuticals. Directors reaffirmed that decision in 2013.
    But earlier this year, with a new $775-million sewage treatment system on the verge of completion, the CRD board, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to partially lift the biosolids ban.
    The change of heart allows about 700 tonnes of biosolids to be spread on closed areas of Hartland Landfill as a short-term contingency plan starting in 2021. For between four and six weeks a year, the biosolids will be mixed with wood chips and sand and used to fertilize trees and as a dump cover to help capture methane gas, which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
    The rest of the year, biosolids will be trucked to the Lafarge cement plant in Richmond and used as fuel in cement kilns, with the CRD paying the company about a million dollars annually. The plant shuts down for maintenance twice a year, which is when the biosolids will be distributed on land at Hartland.
    The CRD had planned to simply landfill biosolids while the cement plant was closed, but that proposal was nixed by the Province which told the CRD to find a beneficial use for the product.
    With provincial grants at risk, the board opted for land application at the dump until a better solution is found—ideally a local “beneficial use” of the product. 
    The current plan was approved by the Province in September, and the CRD is working on a Long-Term Biosolids Strategy, which will require provincial approval by June 2024 and “will include comprehensive public consultation,” said a ministry spokesperson. 
    Hugh Stephens, a Willis Point resident and spokesman for the Mount Work Coalition, scoffs at the idea that the land dispersal is a temporary solution. “Once you spread it, it’s spread. No one is going to get down on their hands and knees and put it back again,” he said, suggesting alternate solutions such as sending the biosolids to a biochar plant in Prince George or using mines or remote areas for disposal.
    CRD director Mike Hicks, who represents the Willis Point area, voted against the plan to spread biosolids on land. “I don’t support it and I am not alone. I thought we could store it for a couple of months, but I was told it was too explosive to store,” said Hicks who is concerned particles could become airborne. “Absolutely there’s a concern and as the crow flies, Butchart Gardens is totally within striking distance,” he said.
    Hicks admitted it is difficult to assess which of the scientific studies bear the most weight. “But, I adopt the attitude of ‘why risk it?’” he said.
     
    BOTH SIDES POINT TO SCIENTIFIC STUDIES bolstering their viewpoints, and there seems a startling lack of research consensus.
    For example, a 2016 “Open Letter on the Danger of Biosolids,” from four scientists emphasizes the lack of information about many of the chemical contaminants that remain after sewage treatment. The scientists conclude that the supposed benefits are more than offset by risks to human and environmental health: “An unimaginably large number of chemical and biological contaminants exist in these materials and they persist in the product up to and after land disposal,” says the open letter from Sierra Rayne, John Werring, Richard Honour and Steven Vincent. 
    “Governments are playing Russian roulette with sewage sludge. Over time, there is a high probability this game will be lost at the public’s expense,” they conclude.
    Their letter was quickly followed by a rebuttal from four Canadian university professors, with backgrounds in biosolids research, who accused the opponents of stoking fear and equating chemicals, at any level, with unacceptable risk.
    “As any thinking individual knows well, any chemical can be harmful to humans if exposure is high enough; two acetaminophen tablets can cure your headache, but too many taken at once may harm or kill you,” it reads. “The weight of evidence, when examined fairly and from an unbiased perspective, does not support a moratorium on biosolids. It would simply be wasteful to disregard the benefits that can result from responsibly and safely recycling this important resource.”
    Biosolids are widely used in the United States and the US Environmental Protection Agency has endorsed land dispersal, but, illustrating the ambivalence, the EPA is currently seeking applications from researchers to study “potential risk from pollutants found in biosolids” and to develop standards and policies for biosolids management.
    Complicating the research, the effect of biosolids spread on land varies with the type of soil, amount of water and concentration. Moreover, jurisdictions have a variety of standards and use different chemicals to treat the sludge. 
    Glenn Harris, CRD senior manager of environmental protection, said land application of biosolids occurs around the world and problems rarely occur. He noted that organizations that have endorsed spreading biosolids on land include the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the European Commission on the Environment. “Globally, they all say that land application is safe if it is done properly,” he said.
    Stephens of the Mount Work Coalition, however, said, “There are lots of studies to indicate that there’s potential for airborne pollution and it has been shown to be dispersed for up to 25 kilometres,” and notes that the dump is less than a kilometre from Prospect Lake School and from Durrance Lake, a popular recreational area.
    They also worry about agriculture in the vicinity. Said Stephens. “These residuals get into the soil and there’s all kinds of documented cases of crops grown with polluted soil and how it gets into the food chain.”
    Stephens said residents also fear that pollutants, ranging from pharmaceuticals and heavy metals to microplastics and dioxins, will get into the water table in an area where most homes rely on well water. 
    Fears were exacerbated in October when a temporary pipe failed and 130,000 litres of sewage sludge leaked from the Residuals Treatment Facility at Hartland Landfill and escaped through a culvert into Mount Work Park.
    “The CRD says it has a membrane down, so it can’t leak, but that membrane has already leaked several times with leachate coming out and once it gets into the water table it will get into the drainage and then into Tod Creek or Durrance Lake,” said Stephens.
    As the CRD has not yet started producing biosolids, the exact makeup of the sludge is not known, but decades of monitoring wastewater quality gives a pretty good idea, Harris said.
    Concentration of most contaminants will be at a negligible level and environmental regulators have concluded that trace concentrations of contaminants such as pharmaceuticals do not pose unacceptable risks, Harris said.
    UBC engineering professor Dr Don Mavinic, considered one of BC’s top experts on sewage treatment, told Focus in 2016, “The fact is that there really isn’t any effective technology out there in the marketplace yet to deal with these other contaminants [such as pharmaceuticals, caffeine and endocrine disrupters, the latter found in many household and industrial products]. It’s coming, but it isn’t there. This is a very young science…the jury is still out.”
    Opponents to the CRD plan also point to the Halifax Project study, conducted between 2012 and 2015, that linked cancers to low dose exposure to chemicals in the environment. “There is no such thing as a safe amount of exposure,” says a fact sheet compiled by one of the Coalition members.
    The CRD’s Harris admitted that metals are not destroyed or degraded through any treatment process. “However,” he said, “given the low levels of metals in our wastewater, the quality of the biosolids produced at the Residual Treatment Facility will more than meet Class A standards.”
    Harris said ferric chloride will be used as a coagulant for treating the sewage at the wastewater plant (and some will remain in the sludge) and there is no anticipated risk as the material occurs naturally in the Earth’s crust.
    “We see the benefit of this. We know it is completely safe,” said Harris, emphasizing the practice is widely used around the world, including in BC and other regions of Canada.
    Land application of biosolids is regulated by the provincial Organic Matter Recycling Regulation and a graph on the Environment Ministry website shows some countries, such as Finland and Sweden, using 100 percent of biosolids for land application.
    Hartland already has dust suppression measures and anything blowing off site would have such minute concentrations of pharmaceuticals or pollutants that they would be almost undetectable, Harris said.
    Groundwater traps collect leachate from the dump, which is then collected in ponds and piped back to the McLoughlin Treatment Plant, he said.
    “We have a pretty extensive monitoring program to ensure nothing goes off site,” said Harris, who believes the opposition comes from a perception of risk versus true risk assessment and risk management.
     
    THE MOUNT WORK COALITION has concerns beyond the land application of biosolids, including a proposal to switch trucks heading to the landfill from Hartland Avenue to Willis Point Road and the expansion of the garbage pit at Hartland, which would mean logging and blasting about 30 hectares within the landfill boundaries over the next 80 years. 
    The CRD announced on November 18 that it is developing a new solid waste management plan to reduce how much material is sent to Hartland Landfill and guide how the region’s waste is managed.
    The Coalition says the proposed expansion plans would remove the last stands of old-growth Douglas fir on the Peninsula, though the CRD describes the area as primarily a young, second-growth Douglas fir forest.
    “Tree removal will begin in approximately 2030 to prepare this space for future landfilling unless the region significantly reduces its waste per capita rate or new technology for waste management emerges,” Harris said. The tree-removal will be offset by reforestation of closed areas of the landfill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
    The Coalition wants the CRD to look for more innovative solutions. Incineration, gasification and waste reduction should be top of mind, instead of digging a bigger hole, Stephens said.
    Finally, given the exponential growth of Langford and the Malahat area, the Coalition has urged that a landfill closer to Westshore be considered.
    For more information, check these relevant websites: https://www.mountworkcoalition.org and https://www.crd.bc.ca/project/biosolids-beneficial-use-strategy .
    People can view the draft plan of the CRD’s new solid waste management plan at crd.bc.ca/rethinkwaste and provide comment using an online form until January 15. There will be a live-streamed information session on the CRD’s YouTube channel on December 14.
    Judith Lavoie is an award-winning journalist specializing in the environment, First Nations, and social issues. Twitter @LavoieJudith
    Sabrina Yu
    Refugees on Vancouver Island have a unique service to help them heal from trauma thanks to the leadership of Adrienne Carter.
     
    LAST YEAR, as medical student at UBC and future physician, I embarked on a research project to better understand the resettlement challenges that refugees have when coming to Vancouver Island, and the issues that physicians face in meeting refugee health needs. My research led me to the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees and its founder Adrienne Carter.
    At the age of 12, Adrienne Carter became a refugee when her family fled Hungary to refugee camps in Austria before coming to Canada. Not only has she overcome tremendous challenges in her own life, but she has used these personal experiences to fuel her professional passions as a therapist, social worker and co-founder of the ground-breaking charitable organization Vancouver Island Centre for Immigrants and Refugees (VICCIR).
     

    VICCIR co-founder Adrienne Carter
     
    During 15 missions with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Carter had helped to establish mental health projects for those traumatized by war and natural disasters. At home in Victoria in 2015, she recognized that refugees settling on Vancouver Island from places such as Syria and Sudan have devastating and complex issues like those that she helped to address while working abroad. She decided to apply her expertise and experience to support those arriving on Vancouver Island by enlisting the help of volunteer therapists.   
    Many immigrants, especially refugees, have suffered overwhelming experiences, including loss of their home, their country, and loved ones. Some have been exposed to shocking violence, including torture. The manifestations of unprocessed trauma are multifaceted: immigrants and refugees may suffer flashbacks, somatic aches, anxiety, and depression that impede their ability to lead a productive and peaceful life at school, work, and home. 
    To illustrate challenges that the VICCIR team faces in filling a gap that bridges both the complex psychological and medical needs, Carter told me about a young Sudanese refugee who had been working with VICCIR but was worsening. Unbeknownst to his team of counsellors and interpreters who had been struggling to locate him, the client had been admitted to the psychiatry ward in Victoria. Without any familiarity to his surroundings and unable to speak English, the client was in extreme distress. It wasn’t until his team of counsellors found him that he was able to understand how and why he came to be admitted, finally accept an examination and his medications. 
    While medical needs such as immunizations and dental care are adequately identified and addressed within the public health system, the mental health sector that already faces waitlists and shortages of services is overwhelmed with the additional issue of providing culturally appropriate translation. Despite the clear and pressing need to address and provide quality care, some doctors are unable to accept refugee patients because of the difficulty arranging translators. Even programs for children and youth who are not refugees are overburdened.
    Carter quickly found beginning a therapeutic relationship is impossible without opening a conversation in one’s own language. She realized finding and funding professional translations for dozens of languages would be a formidable task. The solution was to involve refugees themselves, encouraging them to turn to their own communities to recruit interpreters. The process was surprisingly simple as volunteers came forward eagerly, many of whom had personal experiences in displacement, conflict, and poverty. 
    Behind the scenes, innumerable hours are dedicated by members of the team. Even before clients are identified and referred by schools, sponsors, physicians, and public health nurses, funding and planning has taken place. Government funding subsidizes only 10 counselling sessions for first-year refugees; VICCIR goes beyond that to continue providing services for as long as clients need them—most are not able to pay but still receive an average of 45 sessions pro bono. 
    Regardless of family size, the centre provides individual and family group counselling for multifaceted mental health challenges related to armed conflict, abuse, displacement, and grief. Often, a group of counsellors trained in different modalities will work with the family unit, with each member receiving a combination of therapies to address the challenging nature of their issues. This holistic approach recognizes the intense stress placed on family and social relationships, and helps both individual family members and the unit as a whole heal together. 
    Beyond these services offered in-office (and online during COVID), VICCIR works with school teachers to help struggling students. They organize workshops to assist mental health workers, provide consultation to settlement agencies, collaborate with police and community services concerned with domestic violence. 
    In addition to the wide range of expertise that VICCIR counsellors possess in different modalities (Somatic, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Art Therapy, Narrative, etc.), there is an emphasis on support for the healthcare team to manage the emotional toll that trauma counselling itself can have. VICCIR provides training to its interpreters to work with counsellors, and following each session they have an opportunity for debriefing and consultation. Supporting and preparing members of the team in culturally sensitive and trauma-relevant practices has enabled the therapeutic relationship to be far more effective. 
    Since its inception, VICCIR has helped over 300 clients, with enthusiastic contributions from the community in setting up and sustaining its work. Originally operating out of a church basement, it has become a registered charity receiving grants to continue their work and has expanded into an accessible space in downtown Victoria for its 18 counsellors, 10 interpreters, and 2 consulting psychiatrists. 
    Research has shown that trauma and violence experienced in childhood have far-reaching adverse effects on all aspects of life: school, interpersonal relationships, health outcomes, even future generations. Studying trauma survivors has yielded insight into how trans-generational changes can either impart or prevent further maladaptive coping behaviours in offspring, depending on the environment and interventions. 
    From Carter’s perspective, this research parallels her real-life experiences working with trauma. There is no expiry date for processing trauma, and the consequences of suppressed experiences manifest in all aspects of a client’s life. The commitment of the counsellor-interpreter teams to each client is to help them process their emotions, develop resilience, and restore a sense of meaning to relationships and roles within the community. In Carter’s mind, VICCIR has made a lasting difference not only because of the interpreters and their training, but also forming relationships in the clients’ own language, providing services to all members of the clients’ family for as long as it takes, and extensive cultural and trauma processing training. 
    In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, VICCIR has successfully moved its work online and is now responding to referrals from other provinces. The centre has been working with researchers from the University of Victoria, hoping to document the positive impacts that the centre has had on clients and disseminate their findings to the larger academic and medical community. VICCIR has demonstrated that the efforts of a community in rehabilitating refugees is paid back many fold as productive and healthy refugees are able to, in turn, contribute as students, colleagues, and neighbours. 
    In 2019 alone, 80 million people fled war, persecution, and conflict globally, 68 percent of which came from just five countries—Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar. 107,800 refugees were resettled to 26 countries in 2019, with Canada accepting 21,150. Both the conflicts that refugees have fled and the resettlement challenges that they face, necessitate the improvement of existing resources for transition and integration. 
    With the federal government’s previous and continuing commitment to accept refugees fleeing conflict and displacement, communities must respond to the complex needs of this uniquely challenging population. The VICCIR model has the potential to inform policy and procedure for newly arriving and settled refugees and alleviating the immense barriers experienced by family physicians and specialists in communicating with refugees and understanding their needs. 
    Researching the fascinating story of the community surrounding VICCIR Services led me to understand that services such as mental health counselling should be able to be accessed by everyone regardless of language and cultural obstacles. Seeing the way that therapists and volunteer interpreters have come together to bring these much-needed programs to Vancouver Island refugees has taught me that starting small in my own community can make a world of difference.  
    Sabrina Yu is a medical student at UBC. She acknowledges Dr Mary-Wynne Ashford for being a wise advisor and supportive mentor, and Dr Jonathan Down for his input. For more information about  the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees, see https://www.viccir.org/.
    Matt Simmons
    BC government gives Pacific BioEnergy green light to log rare inland rainforest for wood pellets.
     
    Matt Simmons is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
     
    SEAN O’ROURKE WAS HIKING in BC’s globally rare inland rainforest this spring when pink flagging tape indicating a planned cutblock caught his eye. Finding flagging tape is nothing new, but when he looked closer, he realized the tape had the name of a nearby pellet company on it—Pacific BioEnergy. 
    The company operates a plant in Prince George where it turns waste wood products—sawdust from mills, tree bark, wood shavings and clippings—into pellets to be burned to produce heat or electricity, replacing coal and fossil fuels. More than 90 percent of Canadian wood pellets are shipped overseas to Europe and Asia, according to the Wood Pellet Association of Canada. 
    But the ancient cedars and hemlocks in the rainforest in Lheidli T’enneh First Nation territory, about 60 kilometres east of Prince George, are most certainly not waste wood.
     

     Sean O’Rourke amongst old-growth Red Cedar in the Inland Rainforest north of Prince George (Photo by Conservation North)
     
    O’Rourke, a field scout with Conservation North, a grassroots organization advocating for the protection of old-growth forests in northern BC, took photos of the flagging tape to show his colleagues. He later combed through the publicly available harvest data to confirm the Province had indeed issued permits to Pacific BioEnergy to log the old-growth forest. 
    While wood pellets are often touted as a renewable energy source, Conservation North director and ecologist Michelle Connolly challenges that claim. 
    “If the raw material for harvested wood products or pellets is coming from primary and old-growth forest, it is not clean or green or renewable in any way, shape or form,” she said in an interview. 
    “Destroying wildlife habitat to grind forest into pellets to ship them overseas to burn, to feed into an electricity plant so that people can watch Netflix or play video games really late at night—we can’t allow that to happen,” she added. 
    The planned cutblock is set to be logged this winter for pellets, but Conservation North is asking the BC government to provide legal protection to all primary forests—those that have never been logged—in the northern region. 
     
    Rare ecosystem home to massive trees, endangered caribou, vast carbon stores
    After O’Rourke showed his colleagues his photos, they went to the rainforest together to explore the areas slated for logging. The group walked for almost two hours to get to the flagged boundary. The forest is surrounded by clearcuts and second-growth stands of lodgepole pine. Connolly described it as an oasis.
    “There are low carpets of moss and beautiful fallen old trees,” Connolly said. “The stands that we’ve seen have really large western red cedars and western hemlock, and we occasionally came across massive Douglas firs that are really large for this area…it would take at least three people to wrap your arms around them.” 
    More than 500 kilometres from the coast, the inland rainforest is one of the rarest ecosystems in the world. Temperate rainforests far from the sea are only found in two other places on the planet: in Russia’s far east and southern Siberia.
    The rainforest supports a variety of animals including moose and endangered caribou. The stands of old-growth trees have been absorbing carbon from the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and the soil also stores huge amounts of carbon.
    The rich biodiversity of these old-growth forest ecosystems is threatened by logging, according to a report published in June. 
    As The Narwhal reported last year, much of what remains of the inland temperate rainforest is at risk of clearcutting. Connolly said there is “little to no social licence” to harvest these old-growth trees. 
    “We talked to a lot of people who hunt, who trap, who fish, who guide, and among those people, we’ve sensed a lot of dismay about what’s happening,” she said. “We’re kind of at the limits of tolerance up here.”
     
    BC government ramps up support for pellet industry while plants run out of raw materials
    The Province’s promotion of the pellet industry focuses on using wood that would otherwise be wasted or burned in the forest to reduce the risk of wildfires, but rarely mentions the use of whole trees. 
    “The pellet pushers [including the present NDP government] originally said they would use only logging and milling debris as the source of wood fibre for pellets,” Jim Pojar, a forest ecologist wrote in an email. 
    However, a recent investigation by Stand.earth found that pellets made of whole trees from primary forests in BC are being sent to Europe and Asia. 
    “No mature green trees should be cut down and whole logs ground up to produce wood pellets for export, especially if the trees are clear cut from globally rare and endangered temperate rainforest,” Pojar said.
    Connolly said a lack of legal protection allows the provincial government to greenlight logging whole trees for pellets—and the government’s language around the industry hides the fact that old-growth is being cut down.
    “My understanding is that this is allowed because these forests don’t have any other use,” she said, meaning that they aren’t suitable for making lumber. 
    “The BC government has some really interesting language around justifying pellet harvesting,” she said. “What they say is that they’re using inferior quality wood.
    This isn’t the first time a pellet facility has logged trees to meet its production needs. As The Narwhal reported earlier this year, both Pacific BioEnergy and Pinnacle Renewable Energy, another large-scale pellet company, use whole trees to produce pellets.
    Over the past few years, BC has been ramping up its support for the wood pellet industry, but as sawmills shut down across the province, pellet facilities are running out of raw material. 
    Recently, the Province handed out a number of grants to support projects that take trees that would otherwise be burned on the forest floor in massive slash piles and convert them to pellets. Pacific BioEnergy has received more than $3.2 million from the Province through the Forest Enhancement Society for projects related to its operations.
    Connolly said the Province’s push to support the pellet industry is problematic. “We’re kind of rearranging the deck chairs, you know? They’re making little modifications of things they already do, instead of actually looking at the value of keeping the carbon in forests.”
    The Ministry of Forests could not comment on this story because government communications are limited to health and public safety information during election periods.
    Pacific BioEnergy was also not available to respond by publication time.
     
    Ecologists say burning pellets is not carbon neutral
    Wood pellets, sometimes referred to as biomass or bioenergy, are often touted as carbon neutral and sustainable, but critics claim that’s a dangerous misconception.
    Burning wood to generate energy is less efficient than burning fossil fuels, which means more wood is needed to produce an equivalent amount of electricity, according to Pojar. More carbon dioxide is sent into the atmosphere from pellet-fuelled power plants than traditional coal or natural gas plants, he pointed out. 
    The pellet industry and its supporters argue that replanting trees will eventually sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which means burning pellets for heat or energy is carbon neutral. But even if that is true, it could take hundreds of years for those replanted trees to grow big enough to offset the emissions produced by harvesting, transporting, processing and burning the wood. 
    In a 2019 report entitled Forestry and Carbon in BC, Pojar outlined myths and misconceptions about emissions and the forestry industry. “The CO2 from the combustion of biofuel is released almost instantly, whereas the growth and regrowth of wood takes several decades at least (mostly more than 75 years in BC)” 
    Connolly, who was an editor of the report, said the green narrative around the pellet industry and industrial logging is misleading.
    “It’s so ridiculous to claim that somehow logging is good for the climate,” she said. “What we’ve seen happen is that the BC government and industry have co-opted climate change to argue for more industrial logging. In this case, it’s for pellets, but they’ve been doing the same thing for harvested wood products for the last few years.”
    As climate change, industrial logging and other resource extraction projects continue to impact forest ecosystems, maintaining intact primary and old-growth forests is essential, she said. 
    “BC claims to be exploring all emissions reductions opportunities, but they are not,” she said. “They’re ignoring basically the biggest, best and cheapest opportunity, which is protecting nature. If we’re going to meet our climate commitments, keeping primary forests intact is an important step and what all of us should be asking is, ‘Why are they totally ignoring this?’ ”
    Matt Simmons is a writer and editor based in Smithers, BC, unceded Gidimt’en Clan territory, home of the Wet'suwet’en Nation. He is the author of The Outsider’s Guide to Prince Rupert. This story was originally published in The Narwhal under the Local Journalism Initiative.
     
    Conservation North’s short video interview of trapper Don Wilkins on liquidating BC rainforests for electricity in other countries:
     
    Rochelle Baker
    It goes against independent science and will endanger the survival of juvenile salmon, say ENGOs and First Nations.
     
    By Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
    OPPONENTS OF OPEN-NET SALMON FARMS are disputing a recent finding by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) that farms in Discovery Islands waters pose little risk to wild salmon.
    Environmentalist groups and conservationists claim DFO ignored crucial independent science to downplay the risks to imperilled Fraser River sockeye salmon in favour of the aquaculture industry.
     

    Young wild salmon swim close to open-net fish farm in the Discovery Islands area (Photo by Tavish Campbell)
     
    The DFO studied nine different farm fish diseases and concluded they pose minimal risk to wild sockeye. However, the federal agency failed to consider scientific findings about the harm arising from sea lice, which can concentrate in farms and potentially endanger the survival juvenile salmon transiting the region, said Stan Proboszcz, science advisor with Watershed Watch Salmon Society.
    DFO boldly misled Canadians when finding Discovery Islands salmon farms—situated along a critical migration route for juvenile salmon—don’t threaten wild fish, said Proboszcz, a past DFO risk assessment steering committee member. “Their pro-salmon farming bias and disregard for BC’s wild salmon could not be more clear.”
    “It’s a joke,” said Proboszcz, adding DFO also failed to do a synthesis assessment that would evaluate the combined risk all the pathogens and sea lice pose for wild fish.
    DFO insists steps have already been taken to control sea lice problems. There’s already an extensive range of research available on sea lice which DFO relied on in February to update a sea lice management regime, said Andrew Thomson, DFO’s Pacific regional director of fisheries management.
    There are measures fish farms can take to control sea lice problems, and once they are in place, the farms meet the minimum risk threshold, Thomson said.
    This claim is misleading, said Proboszcz, adding DFO does require farms to manage one species of sea lice, Lepeophtheirus salmonis, which tends to infect wild pink and chum salmon. However, DFO doesn’t require them to mitigate Caligus clemensi, a species that unduly affect sockeye salmon.
    As a result of DFO’s findings, Federal Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan decided Monday the 18 fish farms, which raise Atlantic salmon, will remain open pending discussion with area First Nations.
    The farms were in danger of being shut September 30, a deadline set by the Cohen Commission report investigating the precipitous decline of Fraser River sockeye.
    The 2012 report identified a number of factors threatening sockeye including climate change, over-fishing, and loss of habitat.
    But it also focused on the potential danger fish farms might pose to migrating smelts and recommended the fisheries minister should remove open-net pen farms in the Discovery Islands unless DFO could prove they posed minimal risk to the health of migrating Fraser River sockeye.
    Jordan’s decision takes place as Fraser River sockeye salmon returns—which used to number in the millions—are predicted to be 293,000 fish, the lowest number since records began in 1983.
    DFO’s stance is contrary to independent scientist and peer-reviewed studies that indicate sea lice from fish farms threaten wild salmon, said Jay Ritchlin, David Suzuki Foundation director general for western Canada. “Science has established that fish farms  can  raise sea lice levels, and that these parasites can kill young salmon,” Ritchlin said. “If you want to protect  struggling salmon populations, you should start by getting these fish farms out of the water.” 
    DFO’s determination of low risk to sockeye from the Discovery Islands fish farms is not based on absolute findings, Ritchlin added.
    Seven of nine of the risk assessments admit some degree of uncertainty, with two reporting a high level of uncertainty, he said.
    Ritchlin agreed with Proboszcz that examining each disease individually doesn’t give a full picture of the risk salmon face.
    Given the precariousness of salmon runs, the fisheries minister should take a precautionary approach and pull the farms if the science is uncertain, Ritchlin said.
    NDP DFO critic Gord Johns agreed DFO has minimized independent peer reviewed science, particularly around the threat of sea lice and Piscine Orthoreovirus (PRV), a type of virus prevalent in net pen salmon that could put migratory salmon at risk of various diseases and pointed out the agency is in a conflict.
    “It’s abundantly clear that DFO cannot both be a promoter of salmon farming, and a protector of Pacific wild salmon,” said Johns, MP for Courtenay-Alberni.
    The federal government should declare a salmon emergency and establish a plan to remediate the Fraser River, a vital watershed for so many communities and First Nations, he said.
    “It’s extremely alarming to see a minister sit idle, when we’re watching a collapse of wild Pacific salmon happen right before our eyes,” Johns said.
    The salmon farmers jumped to defend DFO’s findings. DFO’s peer-reviewed risk assessments clearly show ocean-based salmon farms pose minimal risks to wild salmon in the Discovery Islands, said Shawn Hall, spokesperson for the BC Salmon Farmers Association. “Sound science will support stability and shared values our industry is bringing to the coast today and into the future,” Hall said in a press release. Salmon farming is part of the economic fabric of the province, he added. And the industry is working closely and openly with Indigenous people to create a shared future of economic opportunity and environmental stewardship, Hall added.
    Aquaculture operators are looking forward to participating fully in the upcoming consultations with area First Nations, he said.
    Bob Chamberlin, a former chief of the Kwikwasut'inuxw Haxwa'mis First Nation, said he had little faith in the upcoming consultations between DFO and the seven First Nations in the Discovery Islands region. “For me to hear the government say that they will have an outcome from all this by December, really shows what a farce this is,” said Chamberlin. Plus, all First Nations impacted by the loss of sockeye salmon need to have a say on fish farms, he added.
    A broad coalition of more than 100 BC First Nations, wilderness tourism operators, conservation organizations, and commercial and sport fishing groups all called on the federal government to cease open-net pen operations and move them on land last week, said Chamberlin, spokesperson for the group.
    “My question is, ‘who the heck is the federal government listening to?’”, Chamberlin said. “Because it’s not British Columbians but three fish farm companies.
    DFO isn’t operating in the interests of the environment or fulfilling its duty to protect wild salmon, he added. “And I think that’s something that Canadians really need to be upset about.”
    Rochelle Baker is a Local Journalism Initiative/Canada reporter with the National Observer
    Judith Lavoie
    Seven years on, Victoria area kitchen scraps are still taking a long, costly journey to compost facilities.
     
    CHUCK THAT APPLE CORE into the kitchen container designated for organics, take the can outside and tip it into the green bin in time for garbage pickup, feeling satisfied knowing your household food waste is being turned into compost that will help grow more fruit and veggies.
    The routine is familiar to most Greater Victoria residents who, after 2015 when the Capital Regional District banned kitchen scraps from Hartland Road Landfill, slowly came to see the benefits of separating organic waste.
     

     
    However, in Greater Victoria, that apple core is starting a long, carbon-emissions-full journey. While efforts have been made to bring kitchen scrap processing closer to home, they appear to be years away from fruition.
    The apple core will first travel to Hartland Road where it is tipped on to a loading station, then trucked up-Island to Fisher Road Recycling at Cobble Hill. While most kitchen scraps are composted on site, when the Fisher Road facility reaches capacity, the remainder is put on a barge to the mainland and trucked to a composting facility in Cache Creek in northern BC.
    Russ Smith, CRD senior manager of environmental resource management, agrees it is not ideal to have Greater Victoria’s kitchen scraps travelling around the province, but it’s certainly preferable to scraps ending up in the landfill and more realistic than expecting all residents to do their own backyard composting.
    “It’s the pragmatic middle ground that is better than landfilling, but not as good as the ideal of backyard composting with everyone doing their own—and, of course, you have a lot of multi-family condo dwellers where they don’t have those opportunities,” Smith said.
    In 2013, there was an ill-fated attempt at local processing when the CRD contracted Foundation Organics to deal with kitchen scraps on a Central Saanich farm. It was forced to pull the operating licence in less than a year after neighbours complained about the smell. Since then progress has crawled along at a snail’s pace.
    It seems to have taken five years to make the next move towards local processing. In 2018, the CRD invited expressions of interest from proponents wanting to establish a processing facility “within or in close proximity to the Capital Region.” A facility could be built either on two hectares of cleared space at Hartland or on other sites, says the request for initial bids
    The current system of processing outside the region “requires extensive transportation and is inconsistent with the Region’s long-term objective of managing the kitchen scraps locally to the extent possible,” it says.
    More than a dozen responses were received, but the shortlist has not yet been compiled. Meanwhile, a new request for proposals for hauling and processing kitchen scraps closes this month with the successful bidder holding the contract until March 2025.
    That allows the successful bidder on the main contract time to construct a new facility, said Smith, who is expecting a staff report to go to the CRD board next spring. “Even if we get very clear direction in the spring of 2021, by the time the procurement finishes and construction starts you are certainly looking into 2023 and likely into 2024,” he said.
    A stumbling block is that no decision has yet been made by the CRD board on whether to opt for composting or the more expensive choice of building a biogas plant at Hartland. Biogas is produced when organic matter biodegrades without oxygen. The gas can then be filtered and, if done on a large scale, can be used to generate electricity or refined and fed into the gas grid.
    The cost of building a biogas plant at Hartland was estimated by CRD staff at between $25- and $40-million, compared to $2- to $8-million for composting. The capital cost could drop to zero if composting was done at a private site owned by one of the bidders.
    In addition to deciding what kind of technology should be used for kitchen scraps, there’s also the problem of getting municipalities to commit to sending their scraps to a new facility as operators need to know they would receive sufficient material
    Currently the CRD sends about 12,000 tonnes a year to Cobble Hill, but Victoria and Saanich have separate contracts with Fisher Road Recycling.
    Victoria collected about 2,000 tonnes of food scraps through its green bin program in 2019 and is expecting to collect more this year because of 25 zero waste stations installed around the downtown core and in City parks.
    City staff “continue to work closely with CRD staff on regional solid waste management initiatives,” said an emailed statement from the city.
    Saanich is the only local municipality to accept yard trimmings in the organics cart and collects between 8,000 and 9,000 tonnes annually. About 30 percent of that is food waste and the mix with garden waste provides the ideal carbon and nitrogen mix to make top-grade compost, said Jason Adams, Saanich operations supervisor.
    Adams, who has an extensive background in recycling, wants to see the CRD get on with a decision. “They just need to build it and get on with it and the tonnage will follow,” said Adams, who would like to see a model based on economics, rather than subsidies, and is hoping the CRD avoids an “over-engineered” system.
    One advantage of the many delays has been that the technology of composting has evolved over recent years, Adams said.
    Technology is a cause close to the heart of Peter Brown, a member of Malahat Organics, a consortium which made a bid to the CRD in 2018 proposing a rotary composter, meaning the material is contained inside a large drum—a method that controls odours and dust.
    “You put the kitchen scraps in one end and this thing very, very slowly rotates and it comes out the other end about seven days later and you have got beautiful compost. We’ve got an absolutely crackerjack proposal for the CRD and it would cost them nothing,” said Brown, who is puzzled by the delays.
     

    Example of a large rotary composter used to create compost from kitchen scraps
     
    The proposal envisages the facility being set up on Malahat Nation land, which is zoned light industrial.
    The CRD would pay a tipping price, which would be less than they are currently paying and the operators would require a guaranteed amount of tonnage each year. At the end of the contract, the facility would be transferred to the region at no cost.
    Hartland currently accepts kitchen scraps at $120 per tonne, but it costs the CRD about $145 a tonne for the composting.
    It is frustrating that it has taken so long to consider the proposals and, in the meantime, between the discrepancy in costs and trucking some of the scraps off-Island it is costing the region money, Brown said.
    “Isn’t it crazy?…It’s our money that’s going out into the wind and, in the last few years since we submitted our proposal, you could have had the plant operating right here,” he said.
    Brown fears that CRD staff are slanting recommendations towards biogas rather than composting even though a biogas plant is expensive and will take up a large chunk of land at Hartland.
    “Compost is a wonderful thing if it’s done properly like with these rotary composters that give you the very best quality compost. It’s valuable, not something to be sent away,” he said.
    Highland councillors Gord and Ann Baird also fear that there is a tilt towards biogas in staff reports and last year, in separate presentations to a CRD committee, both questioned why the Hartland site is apparently already being prepared for biogas.
    “The pathway towards more biogas production goes contrary to eliminating hydrocarbons as a fuel source as laid out in IPCC reports and the Climate Emergency declarations,” said Gord Baird, who is running for the BC Green Party in Langford-Juan de Fuca.
    There is no social licence for the old methods of composting, with all its shortcomings, but there is a social licence for new methods with no odour, no dust and no access to vermin, said Baird, who calculated that the value of finished compost, sold at $50 a tonne, would far exceed the value of biogas produced by anaerobic digestion.
    Jutta Gutberlet, University of Victoria professor in the Department of Geography, agrees that compost is a valuable resource and believes the ideal solution would be decentralized composting centres, which would eliminate the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
    “This could relatively easily be done with community gardens,” said Gutberlet, a director of the Community-based Research Laboratory.More space is being provided around Victoria for community gardens and the compost could be used on site, Gutberlet said.
    “They would not just produce organic composts, but they could become centres where people meet—centres of community, which is something we also need in our neighbourhoods,” she said.
    Judith Lavoie is an award-winning journalist specializing in the environment, First Nations, and social issues. Twitter @LavoieJudith
    Judith Lavoie
    Despite the homelessness and opioid crises, BC Housing has failed to employ Woodwynn Farm during its 2 years of ownership.
     
    THE ROLLING MEADOWS and picturesque barns of Woodwynn Farm on West Saanich Road remain in a serene time-warp. There’s no outward sign of activity despite a two-year-old pledge by the provincial government to establish a therapeutic recovery community on the 193-acre site.
    While the acrimonious Central Saanich controversy that divided the community and occupied countless hours of council time has faded to a whisper, simultaneously, the opioid crisis has tightened its grip on the province. In July a near record-breaking 175 deaths occurred with calls for more treatment beds and options beyond detox for those struggling to remove themselves from an increasingly toxic supply of street drugs. In the past 6 months, overdose deaths have numbered 750, while those from COVID-19 hover just over 200.
    So, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, with reduced treatment options and escalating homelessness problems, what has happened to the promise to turn the historic Woodwynn property into a therapeutic recovery community?
     

    Richard Leblanc, founder of the Creating Homefulness Society, at Woodwynn Farm in 2017.
     
    Selina Robinson, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, said, at the time of the purchase in July 2018, that the farm would provide a therapeutic environment for people experiencing mental health challenges and substance-use issues. “The purchase of Woodwynn Farm means we can provide more services for people living in supportive housing who will benefit from access to extended therapeutic care,” she said.
    Fast-forward to 2020 and a ministry spokesperson told Focus that planning for the site is on hold until discussions are held with Tsartlip First Nation and Ministry of Indigenous Relations. “The Tsartlip First Nation expressed interest in being part of the discussions around the use of the land and the Province recognizes the importance of Woodwynn Farms to the Nation,” the spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.
    Tsartlip Chief Don Tom did not return calls from Focus.
    In the meantime, BC Housing has completed $160,000 of renovations, including new roofs and demolition of the pig barn, according to the ministry. The Province budgeted $6.9 million to buy the farm, with $5.8-million going to the purchase price and $1.1-million for renovations, fees and consulting costs.
    The Province bought the 78-hectare property from the Creating Homefulness Society, which was mired in debt after trying in vain to persuade Central Saanich Council and BC’s Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) to allow on-site housing for 40 residents who would work as temporary farm hands while receiving addiction treatment.
    The society’s original plans called for 98 people to be housed at the farm, but, between neighbourhood and council opposition and ALR regulations that stipulate any housing must be necessary for farm use, the idea foundered.
    The Province skirted the housing problem by saying there would be no housing on site, but BC Housing would be working with Central Saanich and regional housing providers “to make this opportunity available to supportive housing tenants” (i.e. people living elsewhere).
    At that time, Our Place expressed interest in helping operate a therapeutic recovery community, but has received no recent information about provincial plans, said Grant McKenzie, Our Place communications director.
    McKenzie expressed skepticism about the project’s success. “Unless you are allowed to build some housing on that property to house people in therapeutic recovery and farming the land, not much is going to happen with it,” predicted McKenzie. The property would be useful, but busing people in would not be successful, he said. “I would say it’s probably a non-starter because [council and the ALC] would oppose it…The neighbours don’t want to see homelessness existing,” he said.
    Richard Leblanc, founder of the Creating Homefulness Society, no longer has any input into the future of Woodwynn, but, as the overdose death toll rises, he believes a properly run therapeutic recovery centre could be saving lives.
    The power and strength of a therapeutic community program at Woodwynn should be helping those who are struggling, he said. “It should be helping people deal with the root causes, rather than shuffling people around,” Leblanc added.
    However, there is no obvious solution to the remaining impasse over housing. Echoing McKenzie, Leblanc believes people should be living on site for an extended length of time and it is not realistic to bus people in. “The odds of a person showing up the second or third day in a row are almost zero,” he said, adding that people need to see rehabilitation successes among their peers to give them a sense of hope and the impetus to make changes.
    It is a wasted opportunity on so many levels, Leblanc said sadly.
    *December 18 UPDATE: The BC government has turned over the Woodwynn Farm property to the Tsartlip First Nation which once harvested medicines and hunted in its former cedar forest.
    Judith Lavoie is an award-winning journalist specializing in the environment, First Nations, and social issues. Twitter @LavoieJudith
    Ross Crockford
    Contest appears to be Andrew vs. Hardman, as other prominent candidates bow out.
     
    THE CITY OF VICTORIA’S by-election for a seat on Council, likely to occur this autumn, will look quite different from how it appeared in March, before it was cancelled due to COVID-19.
    Two prominent candidates in the spring by-election campaign won’t be running this fall.
    Rachael Montgomery, a registered nurse who had suspended her campaign to rejoin her colleagues at Island Health, told FOCUS that she plans to continue working in health care. “At this point, I’m not making any plans to run,” said Montgomery in an email. “I am excited with the work we are doing within healthcare and I’m committed to supporting our people and communities from within the healthcare system.”
    Jeremy Caradonna, who works in the province’s Climate Change Secretariat and teaches environmental studies at UVic, is entering provincial politics instead. His electjeremy.ca website has been retooled for a campaign to become “the next MLA for Victoria-Beacon Hill,” and a sign-up page instructs readers to join the B.C. Green Party, so they can vote for Caradonna in the riding’s nomination race. In an August 14 email to supporters, Caradonna wrote: “I hope to retain your support as a candidate for provincial office. When I began my campaign for city councillor, I never imagined I would be running provincially in the same year. But a lot has changed in 2020.”
    Consequently, the contest for a Council seat is shaping up as one mainly between former broadcaster Stephen Andrew, who has already revived his campaign online, and community researcher Stefanie Hardman, under the banner of the Together Victoria elector organization. Hardman confirmed to FOCUS in an email that she will be running again, but said that “out of resepect for an appropriate electoral process, I have not been actively campaigning during this interim time.”
    The narrowed field of prominent candidates — and recent events — will surely change the dynamic of the campaign described by FOCUS back in March. Montgomery, a former secretary of the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, and Caradonna both had backing from environmentally focused voters, and it’s hard to predict who those voters will support instead. The Black Lives Matter demonstrations and concerns about policing might draw some voters to Together, which successfully lobbied City Council this summer to eliminate police street checks, and to hire fulltime staff for a new Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Stephen Andrew, on the other hand, has been conducting online forums and surveys registering neighbourhood concerns about homeless camps in City parks, and a recent surge in violent crime. He says 80 people have signed up to volunteer on his campaign in the past two weeks.
     

    The City of Victoria is required to hold a by-election to fill the Council seat formerly held by Laurel Collins. COVID-19 protocols will push the cost to more than $400,000
     
    On July 29, the provincial government released new guidelines for by-elections under COVID-19, requiring each municipality to come up with a plan that considers the health and safety recommendations of the Provincial Health Officer and WorkSafeBC. These could include physical distancing and/or plexiglass barriers to take sworn declarations from candidates or voters, expanded mail-in voting and advance polls, curbside voting, and sanitizing voting booths and ballot-counting machines after every use.
    Door-knocking campaigns and in-person candidate forums typical of past elections will also be nearly impossible.
    City of Victoria staff will present a report to Council in September describing how this might work, and identifying possible dates for the by-election. Given the time City staff will need to prepare for the vote, it likely won’t occur until November at the earliest.
    The socially-distanced by-election will also come with a hefty price tag. The City earlier budgeted $170,000 for the vote, but City finance director Susanne Thompson told councillors on August 6 that she expects it to cost $250,000 more than that.
    The City is required to hold the by-election according to Section 54 of the Local Government Act, which allows a municipality to defer a vote only if an elected official resigns less than a year before a general civic election. Laurel Collins officially resigned last November, and the next civic election isn’t until October 2022.
    According to Victoria’s City Clerk, candidates who were part of the cancelled spring by-election will have to file new nomination papers for the fall contest, and new candidates will be able to join the race.
    “In terms of the by-election, the Ministerial Order that was passed in March cancelled the entire election process, including the rescinding of my appointment as Chief Election Officer,” Chris Coates said in an email. “What this means then is that the entire process starts from the beginning and is a brand new process. Any candidates must start from the beginning as well, so that means it is not limited only to candidates that filed during the cancelled election.”
     

     
    This summer, candidates in the cancelled spring by-election filed campaign finance disclosure statements with Elections BC. Together Victoria spent $39,873 on its spring campaign, and got $35,971 in donations, including $2,099 from former councillor (now MP) Laurel Collins. Montgomery spent $28,010 and got $22,269 in donations, including $1,200 from downtown businessmen Gerald Hartwig and Rob Reid, and environmentalists Carolyn Whittaker and Naomi Devine. Andrew spent $8,578 and got $11,468, including $1,000 from lawyer Kevin McCullough and realtor Scott Piercy. Caradonna spent $9,151 and took in $7,816, mainly from smaller donors.
    Elections BC told FOCUS in an email that campaigns in the fall by-election “will be re-starting from zero in terms of spending, fundraising and disclosure.” Candidates will be permitted to re-use their signs from the spring campaign, but “any materials from a previous election used in a new election must be disclosed at their fair market value.”
    FOCUS asked all nine candidates who ran in the spring if they will try again this autumn. Neighbourhood advocate Riga Godron says she will run, focusing more this time on “how the by-laws around daytime park camping are being enforced, (or rather not being enforced)” and “fully funding the Victoria police to perform the important duty that they are responsible for, most notably public safety.” According to statements she filed with Elections BC, Godron spent $13,323 on her spring campaign, and received donations of $2,424.60 from her husband and each of her three young children.
    Military veteran Keith Rosenberg says recent events have “doubled [his] resolve to run for and change the city council,” and that “a lot of people are ashamed of what our current city council has let our city become.” UVic lab instructor Alexander Schmid also says he will run again, expanding the focus of his campaign from transportation, public trust, and the role of neighbourhood associations to include “rational health measures and support for public safety.” Rosenberg spent nothing on his spring campaign, and Schmid spent $709.
    Previous candidates Peter Forbes and Gordon Mackinnon did not reply to emails. Forbes spent $217 on his spring campaign, and Mackinnon spent nothing.
    Online pundits have also wondered if political consultant Mike Geoghegan, who ran in Victoria’s 2018 mayoral election, might take a crack at Council this time. Geoghegan, currently working on contract for the Tŝilhqot'in National Government in Williams Lake, told FOCUS in an email: “I am still very interested in politics and hope to be making an announcement with regards to that within the next few months. But it will not be at the municipal level. So no I will not be seeking any municipal office in either Victoria or Saanich in the foreseeable future.”
    Ross Crockford is a Victoria journalist and former lawyer.
     
    Judith Lavoie
    Pipeline opponents continue the battle from treetops and in insurance company boardrooms.
     
    LEGAL CHALLENGES to the Trans Mountain pipeline are at a standstill, following the July Supreme Court of Canada dismissal of an appeal by several First Nations. However, opponents vow the battle is not over and are mustering supporters to continue fighting as construction nears some of the most controversial portions of the route.
    Years of protests and legal skirmishes were instrumental in Kinder Morgan developing cold feet and pulling out of the project in 2018. The Trudeau government then stepped in and bought the pipeline, which, when the expansion is completed, will almost triple the amount of diluted bitumen that can be carried from Alberta’s oilsands to a marine terminal in Burnaby.
    Costs of twinning the existing pipeline are escalating and are now estimated at $12.6 billion, on top of the $4.5 billion purchase price paid by the federal government.
    As budgets dive deeply into the red while governments struggle to pay for COVID-19 relief, some groups are pushing for the government to abandon Trans Mountain.
    “Canadians don’t want to see their hard-earned tax dollars wasted on a white elephant. It’s time to change course while we still can and invest those billions in clean, sustainable economic recovery projects,” according to Dogwood, which is running a letter writing campaign aimed at federal politicians.
    Pipe installation began in Alberta last year and Trans Mountain officials have said they expect construction to be underway along every section of the route by the end of this year.
    That is a plan that opponents are determined to derail.
    Tim Takaro, 63, a former Vancouver doctor and health sciences and environmental health professor at Simon Fraser University, is staging a treetop camp-in on an aerial sleeping platform in the cottonwood trees close to the Brunette River on the Burnaby/New Westminster border.
     

    Tim Takaro’s treetop sleeping platform
     
    Activists say the project calls for the trees to be felled before September 15. Takaro, with the help of supporters on the ground who provide supplies and who, if necessary, will take over the sit-in, says he will do anything necessary to delay the construction because he is convinced the pipeline must not be built.
    “We are in a climate emergency. This emergency is even more dire, in fact, than the COVID-19 pandemic that we have been so responsive to,” 63-year-old Takaro said in a video. “We need renewable energy and an energy supply that is not planet-destroying as our current fossil energy supply is,” he said.
    Reports detailing the climate-killing effects of the pipeline have not been addressed by the National Energy Board, Takaro added. “So, I now find myself in a tree, 25 metres off the ground, blocking construction.”
     

    Tim Takaro
     
    Will George, a member of the Tseil-Waututh Nation and the group Protect the Inlet, is among Takaro’s supporters.
    “We, at Protect the Inlet, will support anyone willing to do direct action, as our window gets smaller and smaller to stop the construction of the pipeline that, if completed, will increase tanker traffic through our waters by 700 percent,” he said.
    Tanker traffic increases in sensitive areas of the Salish Sea and its effect on endangered resident killer whales have been among the most visceral objections to the pipeline by British Columbians.
    Sven Biggs, Stand.earth Canadian oil and gas programs director, in an appeal for donations, said a construction delay could halt the work for an entire season because crews have only a few weeks to drill close to the Brunette River before salmon spawning season. The river supports chum and coho salmon and the endangered Nooksack dace.
    “The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has ruled that Trans Mountain must complete this work in what is known as a ‘window of least risk to fish’ which runs between August 1 and September 7,” Biggs said in an email.
    “A whole host of strategies could delay construction past the September 7 deadline,” he said.
    Meanwhile, a coalition of groups is calling on companies to stop insuring the pipeline because of Indigenous rights violations and its contribution to climate change.
    It is a tactic that is already having some success. Zurich, one of the pipeline’s main insurers, is dropping out and several other companies have signalled that they are having second thoughts about backing major fossil fuel projects.
    A letter signed by 140 organizations was sent this month to major insurers such as Lloyds, Liberty Mutual, Chubb and AIG, calling on them to drop their coverage of Trans Mountain. “Trans Mountain puts Indigenous communities, drinking water and our shared climate at grave risk. We urge you to rule out insuring Trans Mountain and exit the tar sands entirely,” the letter says.
    Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president, said in a news release that companies insuring Trans Mountain are accelerating climate change and violating Indigenous rights. “Now is not the time to finance a huge expansion of some of the world’s dirtiest oil. The pipeline does not have the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of all Indigenous communities across whose land this pipeline passes,” he said.
    A Trans Mountain spokesman said the decision by Zurich not to renew was anticipated and changes in insurance companies are a common occurrence. “There remains adequate capacity in the market to meet Trans Mountain’s insurance needs and our renewal,” she said.
    However, as the world slowly transitions away from fossil fuels and awareness of Indigenous rights takes root, opposition to the pipeline may be enough to send shivers of doubt through the boardrooms of major insurance companies.
    Judith Lavoie is an award-winning journalist specializing in the environment, First Nations, and social issues. Twitter @LavoieJudith
    Stephen Hume
    Local residents are outraged by the disruption of wildlife and peace, and fear the introduction of COVID-19 from the revellers.
     
    RETIRED HOUSEHOLDERS, some of whom have lived on the Cowichan River for half a century, say intoxicated recreational tubers who don’t practice social-distancing are turning their quiet, rural gardens into a rowdy carnival midway from hell.
    “They seem to think the river is a roller coaster ride on which they can get drunk because it doesn’t hurt to fall off,” says Joe Saysell, a retired logger and fishing guide. “It’s getting really out of hand. They are getting more and more brazen all the time.”
    Rosemary Danaher calls it “the Booze Cruise.”
    She says up to 3,000 people, many with tubes rafted together, boom boxes blaring music and riders consuming large quantities of alcohol, will drift past her deck on a sunny weekend day.
    “The traffic is so heavy I can’t even swim—I wouldn’t want to, so many of them are drunk and wee-ing in the river. They’ve really got to do something about the complete lack of toilets.”
     

     
    Last Sunday, she said, one large group of tubers came ashore on her neighbour’s property and treated the householders to the spectacle of young women squatting, pulling aside their bikini bottoms and urinating on their lawn. Other residents complain of finding human feces in their shrubbery.
    Mavis Smith, who lives near Little Beach where tubers pull out after drifting about two-and-a-half hours downstream from Cowichan Lake, just says: “ARRRGHH!!!”
    She says neighbours are plagued by people leaving garbage and cutting through their yards to get back to the narrow stretch of Greendale Road where they’ve parked their cars.
    Chris Morley, a retired biologist who moved to what he thought was blissful rural solitude 30 years ago, says the parking so congests the narrow, winding road that it’s often blocked to emergency vehicles. “Last week an ambulance was called and it couldn’t get through. One of my neighbours was blocked and they couldn’t get into or out of their home. About 5 pm on Sunday [July 26] I walked to a neighbour’s place a little less than half a kilometre up Greendale Road. It was jammed with cars parked on both sides. It was to the point where no vehicles could get through at all.”
    Aaron Frisby, who rents out tubes at Cowichan Lake, runs a shuttle bus service so that people who want to drift the river don’t have to park near the pull-out point. He concurs that parking along Greendale Road is “absolutely a problem.”
    Frisby says his tube rental company has provided a shuttle service for tubers, even those who don’t rent from him, but the congestion is even restricting his company’s ability to responsibly operate its minibuses. “In the past we have had a shuttle-only service for people bringing their own tubes and due to COVID-19 we have had to heavily restrict that because of shuttle capacity. What this has caused is people to find their own transport and park at Little Beach. It’s affecting our service too as we are struggling to get our buses in and out.”
    Frisby says his tube rentals are limited to a maximum of 20 leaving every half hour in order to maintain proper social distancing but householders downstream complain that once on the river, tubers raft-up to drink and party as they float downstream.
    “Social distancing is not occurring,” Danaher complains. “They get on the water [at Cowichan Lake] and start roping tubes together to make rafts of 15, 20, 25 people, then they start drinking as they float down the river.” So far this year, she says the biggest raft observed consisted of 53 tubes tied together.
    She says the on-river congestion scares off wildlife like the blue herons and kingfishers which vanish from her stretch of river during tubing season. Saysell and Morley concur.
    They point out that the Cowichan is one of only three rivers in BC designated a Canadian Heritage River of national historic and environmental significance, is a BC Heritage River and is the core of Cowichan River Provincial Park.
    For more than a century it’s been a destination revered by anglers who came from around the world to fly fish for prized brown trout and steelhead. Daily catches on the river were once posted in the major newspapers in New York and London.
    “There’s now virtually no wildlife from my place to Cowichan Lake, it’s all been driven off,” says Saysell. “And cans that litter the river bottom are death traps for crayfish which are crucial for the large trout.”
    Morley says he’s observed tubers taking buckets of crayfish from the river and says the noise and congestion are stressing the larger game fish, which are already stressed by warm water conditions and seek refuge in the cold water in a few deep pools on the tubing route.
    “We are still seeing wildlife and fish right up to the weir [at the river’s mouth in Cowichan Lake]. Lots of activity up at our dock and morning runs see lots of wildlife on the way down,” counters Frisby of the tube rental firm.
    Of equal concern for householders, though, is fear that the heavy tourist traffic and what they perceive as inadequate attention to social distancing protocols will bring the COVID-19 pandemic into the heart of their rural community of mostly vulnerable seniors. “I believe there is a high probability that tourism locations like ours will be the root cause of the second wave of COVID this summer,” Danaher says.
    In late July, provincial public health authorities confirmed that a cluster of COVID-19 cases linked to parties in Kelowna led to broad community transmission of the virus and that there are now 130 new cases linked to the partying, half of all active cases in the province as of the BC Day long weekend. “We now know the situation has shifted to a more broad community transmission beyond these initial cases in downtown Kelowna,” an official from Interior Health confirmed to media on July 29.
    Danaher says she has a right to enjoy the tranquility, privacy and safety of her property but that it’s being compromised by the economics of tourism and that there seems to be a double standard for urban and rural residents. “If I were to descend en masse [into town] with a group of irate river homeowners and we were to trespass, urinate on people’s lawns and flash genitals in the process; if females were to take off their bathing suit tops, scream at the slightest opportunity, throw beer cans and garbage around and use the F-Bomb after every third word, we would no doubt be faced with a series of fines for unacceptable public behaviour and hauled off to jail. However, our ever-increasing Booze Cruise visitors seem to think this sort of gross behaviour is perfectly fine in the country.”
    Morley says he noticed a big change this year. “Until this year it was mostly families, very quiet, very little alcohol. This year it seems to be mostly young people, late teens to early 30s, and lots of alcohol. The yelling and screaming is just unbelievable.”
    Danaher points out that it’s a small, rural community and many of the householders are retired people who fall into high risk groups. “We really don’t need hordes of young people bringing the virus into a high risk area just because they think it won’t affect them. We simply do not know where these folk have been, who they’ve been with and what they’ve been doing, so the chance of COVID-19 being introduced into our high seniors population is real and alarming,” Danaher says.
    Morley agrees. “Social distancing? Totally out the window,” he says. “I can see big implications going forward with COVID-19.”
    That’s a correlation that makes Frisby wince. “My concern is that some are going to attack this issue as a COVID-19 issue. There are absolutely issues with idiots on the river but this is not a social distancing problem.
    “Tubers are outside and keeping away from each other, he says. “There aren’t many activities you can do during a pandemic, but tubing is a safe one, which is why it is so popular. We just have to find a way to get everyone to respect the river and residents.”
    But the social distancing issue for outdoor recreation is clearly a concern for public health officials as well as worried residents. Sharp upticks in reports of new daily infections appears to be related to outdoor partying in BC, Alberta and Ontario.
    BC’s Provincial Public Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry confirmed in her official briefing that most of BC’s current surge originated in Canada Day events at Kelowna. And elsewhere, from Hong Kong and Australia to Europe, infections appear to be increasing again where social distancing was relaxed after new cases had almost vanished, a reminder that the risk is far from over.
    Meanwhile in Lake Cowichan, in what looks a bit like barring the barn door after the horses have bolted, at least as far as complaining residents are concerned, Acting Mayor Tim McGonigle issued a warning in a media release July 27:
    “The town is working with the local RCMP to get a handle on the inappropriate activities of a few unruly visitors who are ruining the enjoyment of many visitors and residents,” he said. “If you are looking to come here and rowdily let off steam, so to speak, don’t bother.”
    He urged visitors to not gather in large groups and expressed concern for the safety of citizens. “Their lives should not be put at risk simply because of your desire to have fun with little regard for following required COVID-19 protocols.”
    Frisby agrees that a stronger police presence would help curb a lot of the behaviour associated with alcohol consumption on the river. “Ten years ago, there was this exact same issue on the river, where there was a party culture to tubing,” he says. “The RCMP did a great job curbing this by ticketing those with open alcohol and even going to the lengths of having a human chain on the river confiscating alcohol from tubers.”
    Which raises a question: If the activity on the river that concerns residents has been a subject of vigorous community discussion and provincial, regional and municipal authorities have a well-established kit of tools for managing the problem, why weren’t the alcohol, parking, littering, trespassing and crowds in a vulnerable residential district dealt with weeks ago at the beginning of the season rather than in the middle of it?
    Stephen Hume has spent half a century as a journalist writing about Western Canada, the Far North, BC and the Island.
    David Gooderham
    David Gooderham describes a hearing on July 7 at the BC Court of Appeal that was likely the first time in Canada that detailed evidence of the gravity of the unfolding climate peril has been presented in a courtroom.
     
    JENNIFER NATHAN, a science educator, and I, a retired lawyer, were convicted a year ago of criminal contempt of court for acting to halt the construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. Before the start of our trial, we applied at a two-day hearing on December 3-4, 2018 in the Supreme Court of British Columbia for leave to raise the common law defence of necessity, and for permission to call expert evidence at our trial about climate change and the emissions implications of continuing to expand Canada’s oil sands industry. The presiding judge, Justice Affleck, dismissed our application. Six weeks after the hearing, the judge’s written decision was released. We were convicted at a further hearing on March 11, 2019, and launched our appeal to the Court of Appeal for British Columbia the same day.
    The hearing of our appeal was held on Tuesday, July 7, 2020 in the BC Court of Appeal, in Vancouver. The three-judge panel was Chief Justice Robert Bauman, Justice David Harris, and Justice Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the hearing was conducted by Zoom conference, with public access by video link.
     

     At the one-day hearing, between 10 am and 12:30 pm, I made the oral submission by video link to the Court on behalf of Jennifer Nathan and myself. In the afternoon, Crown Counsel Leslie Ruzicka argued the case for the Prosecution. 
    I think George Rammell’s remarkable drawing, shown above, conveys some of the unfathomable character of the occasion of our hearing. Compared to many appeal hearings, there was very little questioning from the judges; there were no exchanges of the usual kind. Of course, from the courts’ perspective, for other good reasons, it was not an occasion for any engagement or lightness of touch. Jennifer and I were there convicted of criminal contempt of court. It was very quiet, the three judges listening—in Georges’s drawing the judge on the top left listening intently, the other two justices harder to see because of the lighting and relatively low definition of the Zoom video.
    At the conclusion, the Court reserved judgment. As is usually the case after an appeal hearing, the Court will take some time to consider its decision and then issue a written judgment. We anticipate that the Court’s Reasons for Judgment will be released within approximately the next two to six weeks, although the timing is uncertain and it could be at an earlier date or later. As soon as the Court’s written decision is released, we will make it available on our website. (https://dagooderham.com/legalaction/)
    There were two main issues addressed during the hearing:
    One, I think the main issue, is whether the trial judge, Affleck J., made an error when he made his key finding that climate change is not an “imminent peril” in the legal sense. He found there is a “contingency” that governments and businesses may adopt what he described as ”societal measures” that will avoid any “dire outcome” (I am borrowing the language used by Affleck J. in his judgment in paragraph 55). Because he made a finding that such societal measures may be adopted in future, he concluded that a very grave outcome is not a “virtual certainty” but is just in the realm of what is “foreseeable or likely.” He took the view that unless we can prove that a dire climate outcome is “virtually certain,” the common law defence of necessity cannot succeed.
    Our case is that the trial judge’s finding about the existence of such a contingency was not based on any evidence contained in the record. In short, he drew an inference—about both the intentions of governments and businesses to act and also about the economic and technological viability of unidentified future “societal measures” that he envisioned might solve the problem within the very short and unforgiving timeline remaining - an inference that we say has no foundation in any of the evidence that was presented to him at the trial.        
    In consequence, the appeal hearing (in terms of our approach to the hearing) required that we undertake a very detailed review of the actual evidence, the evidence contained in the record that we presented to Affleck J. We had to demonstrate, in effect, that there is nothing in the record that could have provided a reasoned basis for Affleck’s finding.
    The record of evidence in this case consists of the detailed written summary of the proposed evidence that we sought to call at a full trial. It is found in the Appellants’ Outline of Proposed Evidence (a link to that 119-page document is on our website). The adjudicative record also includes affidavits sworn by Jennifer Nathan and myself.
    At the hearing, our oral submission to the Court of Appeal, which took about two hours, was heavily focused on reviewing the details of the evidence in the Outline that we had originally presented to the trial judge in December 2018, including on matters of climate science (i.e., the atmospheric carbon concentration level and its current rate of increase); baseline projections of global emissions to 2030 (all of which unfortunately show global emissions are going to continue going up to 2030 and beyond); and a summary of the results of a series of other reports from the IPCC and other sources (including, in particular, the UN Emissions Gap Report 2017) all showing unequivocally that global emissions must in absolute terms go down 25 to 50 percent by 2030 (those figures represent the reductions required from all countries on average by 2030) to have any realistic chance of staying within the 1.5 degrees C or even within the 2 degrees C warming limit. We also referred to other evidence showing that, in many of the poorer countries like India, emissions are going to continue increasing at least to 2030—because those countries do not have the means to quickly reverse the trend of their rapidly increasing emissions.
    We pointed to evidence in the record showing that any prospect of achieving the enormous reductions needed by 2030 would have to depend on even deeper cuts by a relatively small number of rich advanced economies, like Canada, which do have the capital and technological capacity to achieve much deeper emissions reductions in the short term, but have chosen not to do so.
    On that point, our submission addressed the sorry record of Canada’s emissions, and we cited multiple reports showing how rising emissions from expanding oil sands production since 2005 are driving our national emissions far above even Canada’s existing modest reduction target. It is a very dark story.
    This was probably the first time in Canada that a detailed presentation of evidence showing the gravity of the unfolding climate peril has been presented in a courtroom, and certainly the first time at the appeal court level. (The National Energy Board inquiry during the Trans Mountain Pipeline approval process simply refused to accept any evidence about climate science or emissions). The terrible subject has been largely kept out of the judicial system. Of course, the Carbon Pricing Reference cases over the past two years in the Courts of Appeal of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario did address climate change obliquely, but they were really cases about which jurisdictions (Federal or provincial) have the constitutional power to impose carbon taxes. And none of the Carbon Pricing decisions came anywhere close to touching the questions about how bad it is, or whether Canada’s efforts are remotely on track to make any contribution to avoiding a grave outcome. (On this point, our Reply Factum addresses the very limited scope of what the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal’s judgment had to say about climate change and the nature of the threat, in its Carbon Pricing Reference decision.)
    For more detail on our science and emissions evidence, a useful summary of that is found in our main Factum (Appellants’ Factum) filed November 18, 2019, at paragraphs 9 to 55 (pages 2-14). Our oral submission on July 7 followed the sequence of the sections (I - VI) laid out in those 12 pages.
    The second major issue on the appeal concerns the question of whether Jennifer Nathan’s conduct and my conduct in disobeying the court injunction was “involuntary conduct” within the special meaning of that term in the earlier cases. I will not expand on that issue here. However, that question is fully addressed in our Reply (Appellants’ Reply Factum), at paragraphs 6 to 16 (pages 3-6), under the heading "“Voluntary” conduct and moral choice.”   
    Lastly, in advance of our hearing we filed the Appellants’ Supplementary Factum that addresses two foreign law decisions. The most important is Urgenda v. The State of the Netherlands. The judgment released by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in January 2020 is the first ruling by a senior level court in the EU or US concluding that climate change is an “imminent peril.” It affirmed an earlier ruling by the Hague Court of Appeal in 2018. The original trial in that case was in 2015. The Court of Appeal decision is only about 20 pages and is very readable. It provides a good analysis of the climate science evidence, from the perspective of the legal process. Our website has a link to an essay I prepared a few months ago about the Urgenda case, and how closely the Dutch courts were guided by the science in arriving at their decision. Links to the judgments in that case are given in List of Authorities, on the back page of our Supplementary Factum.
     
    David Gooderham practiced in civil litigation in Vancouver for 35 years, retiring in 2012. For more information, including background and eventual outcome of the appeal, please see https://dagooderham.com/legalaction/
    Russ Francis
    Next BC general election is a “high public heath risk” event
     
    SO FAR THIS YEAR, by-elections in Victoria, Lytton and Rossland, as well as a Kamloops referendum on a new arts centre have all been cancelled because of public health concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic. New Brunswick postponed its municipal elections—scheduled for last May 11—till 2021. And Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe was expected to announce a general election last spring, but has since said it will be held in October, 2020 because of COVID-19.
    Few medical experts presently forecast the end of the pandemic by October 16 of 2021, when BC is due to head to the polls. BC chief electoral officer Anton Boegman also appears doubtful that things will be back to normal by then. At the June 11 tele-meeting of the elections advisory committee, Boegman said it is “highly likely” that the next by-election or election in BC will occur during the pandemic.
     

    BC chief electoral officer Anton Boegman
     
    “It goes without saying that the best approach, when public health risk is highest, is likely to defer or postpone an election,” said Boegman, according to meeting minutes. “When the public health risk is lower, however, it is possible to hold an election in a safe and accessible manner, and one in which voters do not have to choose between exercising their democratic franchise and protecting their health.”
    “As an election is an event in which millions of British Columbians participate, it is a high-risk event from a public health perspective,” Boegman told the meeting. “Many election processes will necessarily need to be adapted in order to keep voters and election workers safe, as well as to maintain the necessary accessibility to the ballot box and the overall integrity of the electoral process.”
    Consequently, Elections BC is actively preparing, in case the election occurs as scheduled on October 16 next year. It is now tracking down sources for protective equipment, and for large quantities of vote-by-mail packages. Based on recent US experience, as many as 40 percent of votes could be cast via mail. Elections BC is also considering providing a face mask to every voter—not an easy thing to do in these days of short supply. Voters may each be handed their own pens, to take home, rather than have staff wipe down each pen after use. And to reduce election-day numbers, it expects to add more in-person early voting days.
    “Which adaptations are essential will to some extent depend on the state of the pandemic in our province at the time of the electoral event, and on the public health guidance of the Provincial Health Officer [Dr Bonnie Henry],” said Boegman.
    One traditional facet of campaigning will almost certainly be absent: Door knocking. But without trooping round the neighbourhood, how is a candidate supposed to get the signatures required to be even nominated? Asked an unnamed meeting participant: “Could this be done online?” Answered Boegman: “We have flagged this as an issue already, and we have no solution as yet.”
    Under the Election Act, the cabinet decides when to hold an election. However, once it has been called, Boegman can delay it because of special circumstances, said Elections BC communications director Andrew Watson in an email to Focus.
    For those still wanting to vote in person, Elections BC is ordering two-metre distancing, a 50-person limit in voting places, a preferred 5 square metres of open space per person, a maximum group size of 6, the provision of hand sanitizers, and increased cleaning of voting stations.
    The spacing requirements means that preferred voting places will be large—like school gymnasiums—and will have separate entrances and exits. Current distancing requirements are sure to be in effect during voting, said Boegman. “The population will likely not have sufficient immunity by next fall to rescind the distancing directive.”
     
    Russ Francis is convinced that Alberta’s recent decision to permit open-pit coal mines in the Foothills is based on the same implied, perverted logic used to justify BC’s $6 billion handout to LNG Canada: To boost jobs, we must wreck the planet
     


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