THE INTENTIONAL DEFEAT OF THE OLD GROWTH DEFERRAL BY FLNR

If you care about BC’s iconic Old Growth Forests and protecting our wealth of biodiversity, this Petition is for you.   It is about asking for a public commission to investigate how the Ministry of Forests found work-arounds to those Government directives that we were told were about protecting the remaining Old Growth forests and the biodiversity treasures they contain.  Publicly, the NDP government says it cares about Old Growth, Biodiversity and Species at Risk, and behind closed doors, the Government allows the Ministry to engineer work-arounds.    

If you believe that things don’t add up, you are not alone.   Sign the Petition demanding a Judicial Inquiry to get to the bottom of how the Ministry of Forests defeated its own Old Growth Deferral Directive. 

Here’s the nitty-gritty of the Old Growth Work-Around utilized in some of our most endangered ecosystems:

Knowing the importance to British Columbians of conserving our dwindling iconic old and ancient forests and the biodiversity they hold, the NDP Government promised to implement the recommendations of the independent Technical Advisory Panel to conserve those vital biodiversity hotspots, dovetailing with the Government’s commitment to ensure protection by 2025 of 25% of the land-base, achieving 30% protection by 2030 ( COP 15 commitment). 

Meanwhile, knowing the commercial jeopardy that an Old Growth Deferral would bring, including to the FLNR program, British Columbia Timber Sales, (which enjoys tenure to approximately 25% of BC’s forested lands), the upper level managers and bureaucrats set out to engineer work-arounds.   These work-arounds were constructed as a shared endeavour between the Ministry offices in Victoria, the Regional Offices and the District Offices.  

A suite of work-arounds to the anticipated Old Growth Deferral Directive was engineered by FLNR with the express shared intention of “saving” timber permits, sales and harvests from being “caught” by the Deferral.    This directly contradicts the stated intent of the Deferral which was to capture British Columbia’s remaining old and ancient forests that were of the most endangered forest types ( BEC zones and variants).   These most endangered BEC zones do not have legal protection or quasi protection to the threshold of 10% per biogeoclimatic zone.    Each biogeoclimatic zone is further split into BEC variants, some of which in their own right are highly endangered meeting the CDC conservation status criteria of Red or Blue listing, which further brings them within the legal definition of “at risk ecological communities”.  

With advance notice of the TAP recommendations, FLNR and BCTS set out to identify which specific tenures would be “at risk” of being lost to the anticipated issuance of the Old Growth Deferral by Premier Eby KC and the Minister of Forests, Minister Ralston, KC.    Once these commercially “at risk” tenures were identified, FLNR and BCTS manipulated facts and created new BEC variant classifications to insulate these “at risk” tenures from being caught by the Deferral to be directed by the Premier after release of the TAP recommendations.

Most egregiously, the factual manipulation included re-classifying old and ancient forests OUT of their historically determined ecological classifications.    Through this, for example highly endangered Interior Douglas Fir forests of the arid Interior were “pivoted” to Interior Cedar-Hemlock and other classifications.   FLNR created “new” classifications within Interior Cedar Hemlock to which to “pivot” Interior Douglas Fir.   Interior Cedar Hemlock BEC was intentionally chosen, because, on a provincial basis, this BEC has protection or quasi protection exceeding that threshold of 10% protection ( as per the TAP recommendations). 

The factual manipulation included toying with the aging of the dominant tree species ( the climax forest trees).   By expanding forest boundaries, FLNR and BCTS could capture adjacent burned forests, former clearcuts or historical selectively logged portions of the forest, so as to lower the average age of the trees in the ‘endangered’ forest.   

The factual manipulation and re-classification of old and ancient forests OUT of the Priority Deferral forest classifications is largely documented and crystallized in the official FLNR BEC Map version 12, published on August 31, 2021, days before the public release of the TAP recommendations in September 2021.   Comparing the BEC Map version 12 to the pre-Old Growth controversy BEC Maps, the ‘shrinking’ of the most endangered BECs is evident, particularly to the Interior Douglas Fir forests of the arid Interior, such as the forests flanking the Okanagan Valley and other valleys carved within the Thompson Plateau. 

Effectively the Government (Ministry of Forests together with the Government timber selling entity, BCTS), engineered its “at risk” tenures out of the risk being presented by the Government’s own Old Growth Deferral Directive.   This was an intentional endeavour to defeat in substance, the point of the Technical Advisory Panel’s work which was to set the criteria and parameters for temporarily protecting British Columbia’s most at risk old forests, and their biodiversity, while consulting and implementing permanent protections to meet several Government commitments connected to First Nation reconciliation, Biodiversity, Species at Risk, Watershed, Climate Change Risks, and Recreational Opportunities. 

The engineering of the BEC swaps has implications for Climate Change risks and risk mitigation.    It matters to the BC Wildfire Service and communities mitigating fire risk that forests have been pivoted on paper into climatic zones that are not what they factually are.    It matters that the tree species have been pivoted from what they in fact are.   It matters for issues relating to drought and to flood risks that the BEC Map version 12 replaced biogeoclimatic zones that are precise to and reflective of climatic conditions to ones that imply a wetting of the arid Interior.    None of us can mitigate for Climate Change Risk if we are misled to climate facts. 

Only a Judicial Public Inquiry can unravel the engineering of these work-arounds and determine how Professional Reliance and the system of checks and balances that regulates Professional Reliance failed British Columbians.   A Judicial Inquiry permits the gathering of testimony and evidence, the analysis of that evidence and the determination of culpability for the engineering and implementation of the work-arounds that on the face of it, appear to be a “whole of Ministry” endeavour to circumvent the Government’s Old Growth Deferral Directive.    

This Petition calls upon Premier Eby, KC, to appoint a justice of the superior courts to conduct an Inquiry into the engineering by FLNR of the substantive defeat of his Old Growth Deferral Directive.    The justice must be given a mandate to fully examine all circumstances and whether or not the work-arounds were explicitly tied to ensuring commercial objectives relating to economic performance objectives of either FLNR or its for-profit program, British Columbia Timber Sales.   The justice must be directed to consider the  Abuse of the Public Trust provision of the Criminal Code, and whether there appears to be criminal culpability by public servants, and if so, where the line is to be drawn between criminal culpability and mere professional/public servant misconduct.