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  • Book review: Not On My Watch, by Alexandra Morton

    Uncategorized June 24, 2023 , by

    This book (available here) was written by a remarkable and courageous woman, Alexandra Morton of Echo Bay, British Columbia. It has 335 pages (not including notes), but it took me a long time to get through it. That’s because it contains several stories. Two of them are Morton’s personal history, and the picture she gives of life in the remote coastal communities of British Columbia. It’s something that most people who have spent most of their lives in Vancouver and Kelowna know nothing about.

    Mostly, though, it’s the story of her battle against salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago off northern Vancouver Island. It began in 1989, and didn’t end until February, 2023.

    Things started to get serious in 2001, when large numbers of wild salmon were infected sea lice. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise, because of massive sea lice infestations in Scotland and Norway. Two years later, Morton and other scientists (including one from the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans [DFO]) observed massive die-offs of pink salmon. In 2009, there was a collapse in the Fraser River sockeye salmon return. As time went on, Morton and her allies observed fish that were blind, had tumours, and were missing their lower jaws. In 2013, pink salmon and chinook turned up that were yellow all the way through.

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  • Roberts Bank Terminal 2 opposition demands answers from governments on expansion: Environmentalists, communities, and unions stand together

    Roberts Bank Terminal 2 June 19, 2023 , by

    June 14, 2023 press conference highlights government’s weak reasoning to sacrifice wildlife and ecosystems in the name of jobs and economy, based on false justifications and incomplete facts

    VANCOUVER / UNCEDED xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh AND səlilwətaɬ TERRITORIES —
    Labour, community, and environmental groups have come together in a united front against the
    controversial Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (RBT2) expansion project, holding a press conference
    this morning at Crab Park. With the federal government’s recent approval and the decision now
    resting with the B.C. government, these groups are determined to halt the project, citing its
    detrimental impacts on wildlife, the environment and job security.

    Today’s press conference was organized and endorsed by 13 organizations including the BC
    General Employees’ Union, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Georgia Strait
    Alliance and the Wilderness Committee.

    One major concern workers and unions raise is the threat of widespread automation in the
    sector. Representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union say that RBT2 will
    reduce family-supporting jobs as existing terminals will be forced to automate to compete with
    the fully automated RBT2. They emphasize the need for jobs that do not come at the expense
    of the ecosystems that sustain us.

    Speakers from environmental organizations at the press conference highlighted the project’s
    impacts on migratory birds, southern resident killer whales (SRKW), and chinook salmon. These
    species, already facing significant challenges, will be further endangered by the expansion. The
    project’s environmental consequences exist despite the inclusion of 377 lacklustre mitigation
    measures and are deemed unacceptable by the opposition groups. Moreover, concerns have
    been raised about the consultation process.

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  • Sudden Silence: Hidden Voices

    Drug abuse April 18, 2023 , by
    Sudden Silence Magazine front page

    Toxic illicit drugs have already killed more than 11,000 people in BC. This magazine, Sudden Silence: Hidden Voices tells the story of 16 of them through the voices of their loved ones, who are calling for a regulated safe supply. It includes a postscript by Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr and Action in Time Director Paul George.

    A photo-voice project of Mothers Stop the Harm. Project lead: Deb Bailey. Published by Action in Time, April 2023. Photos copyrighted by Gabrielle Beer.

    Click here to read or download the magazine.

  • Governments of Canada and B.C. Guilty of “Project Creep” and “Project Splitting”and Ignoring Public Submissions

    Tilbury LNG September 8, 2022 , by

    A press release from the Boundary Bay Conservation Committee

    Do you want dangerous LNG Tankers daily on the Fraser River, in Burrard Inlet, and through the
    Salish Sea?

    Over a thousand public submissions voicing concerns have been ignored and buried.

    Ignoring due, and legal, process, the Governments of Canada and B.C. refuse to appropriately
    call for a federal Review Panel Environmental Assessment of plans for massive, full-scale LNG
    operations, including an LNG Marine Terminal, at Tilbury Island, Delta.

    Through a sneaky process called “Project Creep”, the Governments of Canada and B.C. have
    allowed a small LNG operation at Tilbury Island to gradually expand without any environmental
    assessments.

    In 2015, the federal National Energy Board granted Tilbury LNG a licence to export 3.5 million
    tonnes of LNG annually. Through Orders-in-Council in 20134 and 20145, the B.C. Government
    permitted a 46-times increase in liquefaction and a new storage tank that almost tripled LNG
    storage capacity.

    Now the Governments are saying plans for a massive increase to full-scale LNG liquefaction and
    storage is a separate project from the planned LNG marine terminal on the adjacent property,
    with the same project owner, FortisBC. This Project-Splitting is to avoid the highest level of
    assessment, a federal Review Panel Environmental Assessment. The projects are interdependent
    with plans for LNG tankers daily transporting Tilbury LNG for local bunkering and for export.

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  • Buried Public Input to the Tilbury LNG Marine Terminal Project

    Tilbury LNG August 30, 2022 , by
    Letter from the Boundary Bay Conservation Committee about the Roberts Bank Container Terminal Project

    A report from the Boundary Bay Conservation Committee, addressed to Hon. Steven Guilbeault, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change. You can read it here (PDF).

    They are concerned that due process has not been followed creating the potential for dangerous and damaging consequences to communities, as well as the Lower Fraser River and Salish Sea ecosystems.

    Excerpt: “By approving the B.C. Substitution Assessment process, the federal government is avoiding a proper cumulative effects assessment of federal responsibilities: protection of federal waterways: impacts to fish habitat and populations; species at risk; shipping; transportation; dumping at sea; dredging of federal waterways; federal energy laws and regulations; safety; and emissions. These are the issues identified in public comments to the process and, summarily dismissed in responses as beyond the scope and responsibility of the Proponent.”

  • Evidence-based science warns of unmitigable, irreversible harm to the Fraser River Estuary from the proposed Roberts Bank Container Terminal Project

    Roberts Bank Terminal 2 February 2, 2022 , by
    Letter from the Boundary Bay Conservation Committee about the Roberts Bank Container Terminal Project

    A letter from Susan Jones of the Boundary Bay Conservation Committee to Prime Minister Trudeau, Premier Horgan, Minister of Enviroment George Heyman, and 24 other government and tribal officials and organizations. You can read it here (PDF).

    Excerpts: “The Port of Vancouver has had eight years to present credible, substantive scientific information and mitigation measures and these have not materialized. It is disconcerting that the Port is being permitted to present yet another set of information and mitigation measures when submissions have clearly proven that the residual significant adverse environmental effects of RBT2 cannot be mitigated.

    “Submissions from experts on the Roberts Bank Container Terminal Project (RBT2) confirm that dredging and filling 186 hectares (460 acres) of the estuary for a widened causeway and man-made island the size of 250 football fields will alter the Fraser River estuarine processes. Subsequent changes in water flows, temperature, salinity, and turbidity will lead to the loss of nutrients and primary food sources. There will be a domino effect on the highly complex food web at Roberts Bank that links fish, shellfish, birds, and marine animals to the interactive, interdependent habitats of the river; the estuary; the adjacent agricultural lands; the Burns Bog Ecological Conservancy Area; the Strait of Georgia; the Salish Sea; and the Pacific Ocean.”

    Earlier version of the same letter here.

  • Horgan got his injunction

    Video April 9, 2021 , by

    On April Fool’s day, April 1, 2021 Justice Verhoeven granted Teal Jones the injunction rights to call the RCMP and remove the Forest Defenders and log the area.

    The NDP election promise to save the old growth forests is, in reality, a “talk and log” pony show. Meanwhile the government and the courts continually allow the destruction of the old growth forests and all the living thing that depend on them.

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