Writer suggests an independent commission be assigned to find a new vision for BC’s forest service

Cuts to forest service are too deep

By Ben Parfitt, Special to the Sun December 8, 2010

 

 There are many things that distinguish “supernatural” British Columbia from other jurisdictions. But one of the most enduring of them is its abundance of publicly owned lands.

While many of us may not realize it, about 94 per cent of B.C. is Crown or public land. And over the decades the wealth generated from that land -the royalties and taxes from forest, natural gas, and mining activities – has enriched public programs such as health care, education and transit to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

Lately, however, our provincial government is behaving as if there’s nothing particularly important about our great, shared natural assets.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the speed at which one of B.C.’s longest standing public agencies has been gutted and dismantled — to the point where it is dangerously close to becoming irrelevant.

I speak of our Forest Service. In less than a decade, the provincial government has axed one quarter of the agency’s staff (1,006 positions) and cut the number of fully staffed district offices in half, effectively severing the link between the agency and 21 communities that it once so ably served.

The depth of the cuts to the nearly 100-year-old agency is a serious concern. And when one bores down to what the cutbacks mean on the ground — our shared ground with first nations — the alarm bells really go off.

To give perspective, consider the United States and its national Forest Service of nearly 30,000 employees. Each of its employees is responsible for an average of 2,700 hectares of national forestland. B.C.’s Forest Service is roughly one-tenth the size, but individual staff members are responsible for nearly 7.5 times more land – about 20,000 hectares each. And in northeastern B.C., where the natural gas industry is cutting through forests faster than a knife through soft butter, each Forest Service staff person is responsible for about 232,000 hectares of land, or more than 580 Stanley Parks each.

Audits of company reports on the value and volume of Crown timber they log are slipping as Forest Service “scaling” personnel diminish in number. With the most recent job losses, government scalers are now responsible for an average of 36,961 truckloads of logs each — a 7,500 truckload per person increase since 2002-2003.

Meanwhile, inventory specialists — who count trees to help determine sustainable rates of logging — have been reduced to just 39 people. That’s down from an inventory staff at Victoria headquarters alone of 100 people in the early 1990s and at least another 48 inventory staff in regional and district offices.

As if the drop in public servants wasn’t troubling enough, what is left of the Forest Service has been cleaved in two as a result of October’s cabinet reorganization — a move that saw internationally renowned departments within the Forest Service such as its 83-year-old research branch completely disbanded and scattered among four different ministries. To what end, no one inside the Forest Service seems to know.

Twenty years ago, a crisis of a different sort was confronted when the so-called “war in the woods” saw pitched battles between environmental organizations, unions and rural communities. Back then, the provincial government correctly responded by appointing the Forest Resources Commission to solicit public opinion and arrive at a new vision for B.C.’s public forests.

Today’s challenging environment demands no less a response. It’s time for an independent commission to determine whether or not the public service can any longer protect our publicly owned forests. Until the commission is finished we should declare a moratorium on any further cuts to our dramatically reduced Forest Service, and a halt to the cabinet reorganization that almost certainly means an end to the institution as we know it.

Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the author of Axed: A Decade of Cuts to BC’s Forest Service, available at: www.policyalternatives.ca/axed.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Cuts+forest+service+deep/3943414/story.html#ixzz181f572Us

A lament for the gutting of BC’s forest service in today’s Vancouver Sun is backed up by a much more detailed report that chronicles a decade of radical downsizing of the 100-year-old agency that overseas this venerable, but troubled, industry.

   The author of the oped, Ben Parfitt, has simultaneously released a report he wrote for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, where he is a resource policy analyst.

    The scope of the staff reductions is huge, according to Axed: A Decade of Cuts to BC’s Forest Service.

    Parfitt argues that Premier Gordon Campbell’s recent unilateral decision — one that led to the ignominious departure from cabinet of former energy minister Bill Bennett — to lump together all resource-related industries in a single ministry left the forest service “a rump of its former self.”

    But prior to that a great deal of down-sizing had already been done.

    “Between 2001 and 2004, 800 people working for the Forest Service either left their positions and were not replaced, or were let go,” Parfitt writes in his report. “Four fifths of those losses—647 positions—occurred in rural communities, the remainder in Victoria, where the headquarters of the ministry’s major departments and programs—revenue, research, inventory, forest health, silviculture, reforestation, compliance and enforcement, and scaling — are located.

    “While Victoria experienced the largest Forest Service cuts of any community, the job losses were nowhere near as deeply felt as they were in the numerous (55) rural communities to weather public sector job losses. The provincial capital’s large population, diversified economy and minimal reliance on the forest industry blunted the economic impact of the job losses in a way that smaller communities — whose economies were more closely linked to the forest industry—could not.

    “The provincial government also used the job cutting and budget paring exercise to initiate far-reaching changes to the infrastructure of Forest Service offices—one that for decades was built around a network of community-based operations.

    “A radical reorganization was implemented whereby slightly more than one quarter of all Forest District offices (11 of 42) were turned from full-service operations to minimally staffed field offices. Where once up to 70 people and commonly 50 people were em- ployed, 10 people or fewer remained. The gutting of district offices was most keenly felt in the communities of Grand Forks, Fort St. John, Horsefly/Likely, Invermere, Lillooet, Kispiox/ Hazelton, Bella Coola, Moricetown/Houston, Penticton, McBride and Salmon Arm.

    “Such dramatic changes were preceded by a reorganization that halved the number of regional headquarters that oversaw district operations. Gone were regional headquarters in Vancouver, Smithers and Nelson. Left was one regional headquarters for the entire BC coast, based out of Nanaimo; one regional headquarters for the northern half of BC’s Interior based out of Prince George; and one regional headquarters in Kamloops to oversee the southern Interior.”

    Click here to link to Parfitt’s oped in The Sun. Or click here to download a PDF of the 16-page report.

Revenues from oil and gas more than enough to finance industry reforms, says US co-chair of panel investigating BP spill

William Reilly and Bob Graham are co-chairs of the presidential spill commission, shown here at a public hearing.

The presidential panel investigating the BP Deepwater Horizon accident opened two days of public deliberations on Thursday as it begins to piece together its findings and recommendations. The hearings can be seen here, along with the staff reports on which their findings will be based.

The session began with a complaint from a panel co-chairman, Bob Graham, the former Democratic senator and governor of Florida, that Congress declined to act on the seven-member panel’s request for subpoena power. But he said that the commission’s dogged staff had uncovered numerous documents and brought to light previously unknown facts even without legal powers.

The other co-chairman, William K. Reilly, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, previewed what are likely to be some of the commission’s recommendations when it issues its final report next month. He suggested that the oil and gas industry needed to create a self-policing body modeled on that formed decades ago by the nuclear power industry, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.

Such an organization, financed by industry, would help oversee drilling operations, ensure that companies were employing best practices and shame bad companies into cleaning up their acts.

He said it was in the self interest of the oil and gas industry to create an institute that will ensure, as he put it, “that the laggards in safety and environmental stewardship can be brought up to a higher standard by their peers.”

He added, “We are not dealing here with a sick or failing or unsuccessful industry, but with a complacent one.”

Mr. Reilly said the industry needed to adopt a new safety culture. But he also said that government needed to improve a regulatory system that he said had “failed utterly” to keep up with advances in deepwater drilling technology. He said the commission was likely to recommend regulatory reforms that go beyond those already being put into effect by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and that the panel would ask Congress and industry to help fund the changes.

“Revenues from oil and gas development should be more than sufficient to finance the industry reformation that is needed,” Mr. Reilly said. Failure to remake the industry and its regulators, he said, would be a national scandal.

Published in The New York Times blog titled ‘Green’.

Legal-aid crisis demands we look for a new model

 Ian Mulgrew of the Vancouver Sun wrote the following commentary on November 24, 2010, emphasizing that more provincial money is being lost than saved by underfunding legal aid. Read on and share your comments here. We will include your thoughts in the next issue of the PEA newsletter, The Professional. 

 

Should legal aid be considered an essential service and funded like health care or education?

The legal community is seized with the question and thinks we are facing a crisis.

Provincially, they’ve put their money where their mouth is by establishing the current commission of inquiry by Vancouver lawyer Len Doust.

But the bar is hampered in its attempt to stimulate discussion by the appearance of self-interest.

Meanwhile, the cost of letting the situation fester is rising enormously.

A leaked federal report shows that more than one in 10 defendants lacked representation on their court dates — meaning more adjournments and more appearances before a judge, and that means more needless costs.

The study also, unsurprisingly, found offenders without legal assistance were least likely to be acquitted, which raises questions about justice, if the efficiency and monetary repercussions don’t grab your attention.

Courthouses are clotted with the lost, and their confusion affects the efficacy of every bench and every type of law, be it family, criminal or civil.

The underlying message is hard to ignore: We are losing more money out of other pockets than we are saving by underfunding legal aid.

Yet federal justice minister Rob Nicholson didn’t want to talk about it. Neither did B.C. attorney-general Mike de Jong or his provincial counterparts, when they met here last month.

The Liberals axed legal aid when they came to power nine years ago and have not restored funding.

In B.C., we’ve gone from being one of the provinces spending the most, per capita, on legal aid to one of those spending the least.

Victoria’s fai lure to increase the paltry legal-aid tariff is as much a scandal as the government’s refusal, for so long, to raise the minimum wage.

Costs elsewhere in the system have skyrocketed — for instance, in the last decade and a half, prosecution and Provincial Court expenses each have risen by more than 100 per cent.

Defence lawyers have tried to draw attention to the issue by withholding services in various centres across the province.

But those legal-aid boycotts have had little effect.

I think the time has come to consider a new model, maybe even one with a cadre of salaried public defenders.

Recently retired B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ian Pitfield thinks so, too.

“While I did not try a lot of criminal cases during my tenure as a judge, I did come to the view, latterly, that a public-defender system should be implemented in the province,” he explained.

“As with home construction and renovation, it is amazing how one’s perception of necessity and productivity, and full answer and defence, varies depending upon whether one is compensated by the hour or on a fixed fee or project basis. If lawyers in practice don’t want to work on a project basis, then a public-defender system would provide a reasonable alternative.

“There are a lot of talented, newly minted lawyers who would welcome the challenge and perform admirably in the process. Moreover, a public-defender system would release much-needed additional funds for those who have real problems to resolve, not the least of whom are the families who are trying to safeguard the interests of their children upon marriage breakdown.”

Maybe that isn’t the answer: The U.S. public-defender system is certainly no panacea.

But there is no question we must start considering alternatives and — as former justice Pitfield observed — ask whether we need to go for “a Bentley when a Corolla would do.”

imulgrew@vancouversun.com

Reitred PEA member calls for reversal of Forestry re-org

Re: “Ministry shake-up called into question,” letter published Nov. 18. in the Victoria Times Colonist, retired PEA member and Forester, Anthony Britneff, explains further the damage done by Campbell’s cuts to the forest research branch and the ministry re-org.

Ex-minister Bill Bennett revealed the lack of cabinet participation, thought and process behind Premier Gordon Campbell’s unilateral order-in-council effectively nullifying the Ministry of Forests and Range Act and eviscerating the B.C. Forest Service after 98 years of service to British Columbians as their forest agent.

One of the many casualties of this act of madness is the disbandment of the forest research branch. Since 1927, research by forest service scientists has built an international reputation for B.C. forestry while providing the evolving science for sustainable management of our publicly owned forests.

The goodwill derived from world-class renown cannot be bought. It is an asset of considerable worth that has been built up steadily over 83 years. Indirectly, it supports the marketing of sustainably produced lumber to many export markets. To chuck it away is a reckless act of public vandalism.

For the same reasons the government rescinded Campbell’s tax break, it must reverse this ill-considered reorganization of resource ministries before the situation becomes irretrievable and too much damage is done to the environment and to an intimidated group of public servants ruled by the tyranny of a compromised premier.

Anthony Britneff

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/Ministry+changes+destroy+forest+research/3876073/story.html#ixzz16DrtKJFQ

Are we digital dummies?

CBC TV’s DOC ZONE airs documentary — also available for viewing online — which examines the risks associated with keeping pace in our high-tech, high speed world.

One thing is certain about human nature…we’re born talkers. Our urge to communicate is universal. And now with modern technology we can meet anybody… anywhere… at anytime. Today our means for communication are endless: twelve billion text messages are sent worldwide every day. Thirteen million Canadians are Facebook users. And the number of personal computers in use around the globe is expected to double in the next four years. But is all this access to technology actually making our lives better? Are We Digital Dummies? takes a hard look at how computers and the latest cell phone technology affect our families and our co-workers in addition to our own lives.

Technology expert, Tod Maffin: “I don’t think I’ve met a single person who says they’re happy managing the technology pace,” says Tod Maffin, a Canadian expert on technology use. “One of the problems with living in an ‘always on’ society is we perceive the need to always be on.”

Canadians interviewed for the film say they now can’t live without their personal devices. But they also complained that computers and especially smart phones like the BlackBerry have taken over their lives and they worry about how much time they’re spending surfing the internet. And it is not just for personal use. Many of us have careers that depend on us being able to be reached at any time on any day no matter where we are. I

n this provocative, fast paced, funny and shocking documentary, Are We Digital Dummies? examines the risks associated with using our tech gear behind the wheel of the car, at home, as well as at the office where cell phone use in meetings have re-written the rules of etiquette. We discover that there is growing concern that our technology use has turned us into a distracted nation. That the emphasis is shifting from deep thinking to getting superficial knowledge fast and that despite what we think, we’re not very good at multi-tasking with all those devices. Our brains simply can’t keep up with all the modern demands for our attention. But some people can’t turn off their technology. They need to immediately read that next text, take that call or check their Facebook. Experts interviewed at an internet addiction centre in Washington State say that between six to ten per cent of the population that’s online meets criteria for internet addiction. Are We Digital Dummies? takes measure of how technology devices are affecting our personal lives both for the good and the bad, and leaves us with an important question: Can we manage the technology around us or will we let it manage us?

New UVic lecturer focuses on First Nations storytelling

Richard Wagamese is an award-winning writer and published author.

Journalist, novelist and broadcaster Richard Wagamese— the University of Victoria’s new Harvey Stevenson Southam Lecturer in Journalism and Nonfiction—will share his award-winning storytelling techniques with UVic students next term.

His class, “Changing Perspectives: Discovering Your Story’s Voice,” is a lecture and discussion course exploring how the observational skills and traditional spiritual principles of First Nations’ storytelling can help all writers to improve their craft.

“Relying solely on memory and improvisation, oral storytellers created an enduring legacy of tales still told in the same manner today as when they were created generations ago,” explains Wagamese. “Our class discussion will focus on the principles of traditional storytelling and combine them with contemporary narrative skills to learn to ‘free the mind’ and allow a spontaneous generation of ideas and expression to occur.” Wagamese’s course will follow First Nations pedagogy by using the land as the setting for discussion and oral exercises to encourage students to discover their authentic voices.

Wagamese is an Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario. Now based in Kamloops, BC, he is the first native Canadian to win a National Newspaper Award for column writing (in 1994). A prolific and acclaimed author and broadcaster, he has worked as a producer, scriptwriter and host in radio, film and TV; a columnist and reporter for the Calgary Herald and other periodicals; and has published four novels and two memoirs. His latest nonfiction book, One Story, One Song, will be released by Douglas & McIntyre in February, 2011.

The annual Harvey Stevenson Southam lectureship is made possible by a $250,000 gift from one of the country’s leading publishing families. Harvey Southam, a UVic alumnus and journalist, was an heir to his family’s publishing empire when he died suddenly in 1991. The gift was made by his mother, Jean Southam.

Learn more at www.richardwagamese.com.

UVic shows there’s a better aboriginal way

Incentives to support first nations students show a 20% increase in graduation rates

The key to aboriginal independence in Canada is education. Few disagree. While attainment levels among our aboriginal population are not quite as dismal as they once were, they are still sadly lacking. Although more first nations students are finishing high school these days, the number choosing to go on to university is unacceptably low. In 2006, only 8 per cent of Canada’s indigenous peoples between 25 and 64 had obtained a university degree, compared with 23 per cent in the rest of the country. More related to this story * How UVic is encouraging aboriginal students to dream big dreams * Ottawa must not sell out Tsilhqot’in * Battling aboriginal tradition Photos Editorial cartoons, October 2010 Universities have often been able to entice first nations students to their campuses only to lose them before they complete a degree. Many leave because they feel they don’t fit in. Schools don’t have support systems in place that address the concerns and needs specific to aboriginal students. The University of Victoria is one institution trying to do something about this. The school’s president, Dave Turpin, recognized a decade ago that this would be an emerging national issue. The school decided to focus significant resources on trying to create a culture on campus in which aboriginal students felt more comfortable. At the time, it had fewer than 100 first nations students on campus; today, there are more than 700. In 2005, the school began a four-year pilot project aimed at improving aboriginal outcomes. It was hoped the program would entice more to finish their degrees and even go on to graduate school. The endeavour was dubbed Le,Nonet, a Coast Salish term for “success after many hardships.” Program participants were offered a range of support measures: bursaries from $1,000 to $5,000 a year; emergency funding of up to $750 a year; peer mentorship that provided new students with one-on-one tutoring by senior aboriginal students; a community internship program in which students completed 200 hours of work with an aboriginal community in exchange for a $3,500 stipend and 1.5 units of course credit; and a research apprenticeship program in which students completed 200 hours of research work with a professor at the school for a $3,500 stipend and 1.5 units of course credit. The 200 students who participated in the project could take advantage of any (or all) of the various incentives and forms of assistance being offered. Their progress and results were compared with both aboriginal students who had attended the university in the previous five years before the project began and those aboriginal students attending the school but not participating in the study. (The project administrators compared program participants with aboriginal non-participants on a number of levels, including grade point averages and grades coming into university, and found that, on average, the two groups were indistinguishable. This eliminated the possibility that program participants were destined to have better outcomes because they were smarter to begin with.) On Wednesday, the university released the study’s findings: Graduation rates among those in the program improved by 20 per cent; the withdrawal rate was two-thirds less than among those not in the program; and degree GPAs were higher among students taking part in the study than those who weren’t. In interviews and surveys, 73 per cent of the participants said the program helped them become a more integral part of the campus and gave them a better chance of succeeding. In 2001, the university granted undergraduate degrees to 22 indigenous students; last year, the figure was more than 100. The school didn’t grant a single graduate degree to an aboriginal student nine years ago; there were 11 last year. Is Le,Nonet the answer to the aboriginal postsecondary dilemma in Canada? Not completely. But for the annual $400,000 it will cost to continue it, it seems money well spent. Certainly better value than the hundreds of millions being dispersed to first nations communities by the federal government under the aegis of the Post-Secondary Student Support Program, a plan with seemingly zero oversight and little effectiveness. The University of Victoria is showing there’s a better way. Other universities should follow its lead.

BC Forest Service felled by bureaucracy

We owe it to the next generation to appoint a commissioner of forests who can advise governance of BC's forests. Photo by Debra Brash, Postmedia News.

Anthony Britneff writes in the Vancouver Sun, November 5 -

With two provincial ministries performing the work of one, inefficiency is inevitable and sustainable-use policies will be ignored

After bleeding like a wounded pig for almost a decade from cutbacks to reforestation to constraints on spending its voted funds, Premier Gordon Campbell and Forest Minister Pat Bell finally put the ailing BC Forest Service out of its misery with one swift blow, splitting it in two — the Ministry of Natural Resource Operations (NRO) and the Ministry of Forests, Mines and Lands (FML).

Premier Campbell and Bell didn’t consult the public or communities as to whether or not they wished two ministries to manage their provincial forests after almost a century of uninterrupted service by the BC Forest Service. Nor did they offer any plausible rationale for such a dramatic organizational change.

On the BC Forest Service’s centenary website, an overenthused Bell pens a characteristically paradoxical message, “As the Forest Service nears the century milestone [2012], we should all take a few moments to look back at what makes this province’s forest and range management so great.” So why effectively demolish the agency?

Certainly, any seasoned practitioner of public administration would be astonished at a proposal to split policy from operations, regardless of the agency. Had Campbell and Bell created one natural resources ministry, as in Ontario, with responsibility for policy and operations, their rationale for doing so might well point to some efficiencies of scale.

With two ministries now performing the work of one, however, inefficiency will be inevitable: more organizational units, more senior managers, and more turf issues over what still remains a publicly owned resource.

Imagine for a moment that the policy ministry (FML) decides that it is wise to do forest inventories in each management unit every 10 years so that we have robust, updated information on how many trees we have and where following logging operations, forest fires and insect attacks — all of which is needed to determine sustainable logging rates. But the costs to do so would require the operations ministry (NRO) to spend some $200 million over the same 10-year period. It is easy to see why the new operations ministry — focused as its mandate will be on moving cutting permits out the door with minimal oversight so as to maximize Crown revenues — would place a low priority on inventory work. Another worrying trend is the continued isolation of forest policy in the hands of a centralized cabal of senior bureaucrats in Victoria, further imposing the Vancouver-Victoria urban perspective on rural communities. This will further diminish community relevance in determining how local public forests are to be managed and for whom.

Of greater concern will be the ready encouragement cabinet will likely give to moving resource authorizations speedily into operations without due regard for environmental policy and sustainable forest practices.

For some time now, the B.C. Liberals have applied this “one-stop-shop” approach to putting private economic interest ahead of public environmental interest in the form of B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission, which may well be the model the new Ministry of Natural Resource Operations seeks to emulate. Besides emphasizing the biosphere as a subsidiary of the economy, reorganization of the BC Forest Service into two ministries will also exacerbate the existing problems of forest management stemming from inadequate law and regulation. In their drive to deregulate forest management, the B.C. Liberals have cherry-picked some of the key elements of forest law and abolished them: reforestation of forests killed by fire and pests, and forest inventory, to name two key legal responsibilities of government abolished since 2002. Our forest laws have served us well from 1978 to 2002, when the B.C. Liberals began their ill-fated program of deregulation. But by then, the 1978 Forest Act was already showing signs of age and irrelevance for the new century ahead — issues of tenure reform that the 2009 Working Roundtable on Forestry chose to ignore.

For the 21st century, we need new forest laws to strengthen community involvement in forest management, to provide institutional stability for management of public forests, and to meet the formidable environmental challenges faced by our children.

To this end we owe it to our children to task a commissioner of forests to advise government on what new forest legislation and different institutional design will meet the challenges of the first half of this century and to demand of our timid politicians the courage to implement the commissioner’s recommendations.

Anthony Britneff recently retired from a 39-year career with the BC Forest Service, during which he held senior positions in the inventory, silviculture and forest health programs.

Gordon Campbell’s Legacy on Legal Aid

The following essay was posted on the blog belonging to the Coalition for Public Legal Services in BC on November 3, 2010. To read more about legal aid issues facing the province, please go to cplsbc.ca/blog.

Gordon Campbell resigned today. What can we attribute to him in relation to the state of legal aid and the justice system? What is the legacy he leaves behind? And will a change in Liberal leadership alter the course he set in 2002?

Here are Mr. Campbells words during a debate with Glenn Clark in an August 1998 published in BarTalk:

GORDON CAMPBELL: I have tremendous sympathy for all those who have been denied legal representation because the government has broken its promise to fund legal aid…Should we then reduce funding to legal aid? I don’t think so…We must be prepared to define a realistic mandate for legal aid coverage and make sufficient resources available to fund that mandate. This means that funding formulas must be stable, certain and predictable. At the same time we need to be honest enough to acknowledge that government revenues are limited and their allocation is fundamentally a matter of priorities.
 

Here is a snapshot of Mr. Cambell’s priorites after reducing funding to BC’s Legal Services Society (LSS) by 40%:

LSS services in 2001:

• 17 Branch offices plus Head Office in Vancouver
• 14 Community Law Offices
• 14 Native Community Law Offices
• 441.9 FTEs
• Tariff’s paid out in millions:
• Family law: $20.7
• Criminal: $18.9
• Immigration: $5.2
• Human Rights: $.5
• Other: $2.2
• Poverty Law Clients served through staff lawyers, paralegals and clinics: 40,279

 LSS Services in 2009/2010:

• 2 regional centres (Terrace and Vancouver)
• 144.9 FTEs
• Criminal: $25.4
• Family law: $10.3
• Immigration: $1.9
• Human Rights: $0
• Other: $8.9
• Poverty Law Clients served through staff lawyers, paralegals and clinics: 0

When he took office LSS was an independent, arms-length organization, as it should be given the role of legal aid in providing legal representation to those utilizing the conflict-resolution structure that is our justice system, especially where the government is one of the parties involved (i.e. alleged criminal action or welfare fraud). LSS now has a Board in which the majority are appointed by the government, it can’t legally run a deficit (despite the unpredictability of legal cases), and the Memorandum of Understanding limits what legal subjects LSS can provide representation for.

 What is the cost of this legacy? No one has done rigourous data collection research to determine those numbers here in BC, so anything I write is purely speculative. Before I share the numbers I pulled up, consider this – according to BC research, it can be fairly estimated that about 250,000 people at any given moment have had a civil legal problem in the past three years AND DID NOT DEAL WITH IT BECAUSE OF A FINANCIAL OR OTHER BARRIER (such as language, access to a lawyer etc.) (see Carol McEwon, “Civil Legal Needs in BC” and the November 9th publication of  ”Rights-Based Legal Aid: Rebuilding BC’s Broken System” available on the BC CCPA and West Coast LEAF).

Category of Impact	Cost	Numbers from Canadian and BC research on unmet civil legal needs	Based on idea that 250,000 faced a barrier and therefore did not address their legal issue	Completely un-supported by research estimated cost in a 3 year period
Emotional/ Stress Related impacts	The Canadian Institute for Health Information reports that BC spends $5253 per person per year on health care. Not possible to determine what portion of annual health cost is directly tied to legal problem.	If 60% of people with civil legal problems experience emotional/stress related health issues in a three year period We arbitrarly applied 1/3rd of those individuals 3 year heath care costs to the heightened stress of their unmet legal need. It is not scientific, but not unreasonable as the amount could be 0-100% of their medical costs that year.	150,000 X $5253	$787,950,000
Physical Health issues	As above	53% of those reporting civil law issues report experiencing physical health issues as a result.	132,500 X $5253	$696,022,500
Safety and Security Issues	The Institute for Crime Prevention estimates of the cost of the Criminal Justice System is $676 per person in Canada per year	34% report experiencing safety and security issues relating to property or personal safety concerns, engaging the Criminal Justice system.	85,000 X $676	$19,000,000
Domestic violence	Domestic Violence can be tied into the nature of the legal problems, but there is also established research that there is a likelihood of an increase in violence post-separation. The Institute for Crime Prevention estimates violence against women costs Canadians $123 per person annually.	14% of respondents report violence in their lives as a result of a legal problem. This isn’t separated into domestic violence against women or stranger violence, but we will assume a relationship to domestic violence for the purposes of this exercise.	35,000 X $123	$4,305,000
Homelessness	BC Housing estimates that it costs $30,000 – 40,000 per homeless person in BC annually.	While homelessness is not recorded in the LSS study, if we estimate even .5% of this high risk group experience homelessness as a result of unmet poverty law and family law needs, we may capture some sense of the cost	$30,000 X 1250	$37,500,000
Workplace Safety	Worksafe BC estimates that workplace injuries cost BC $21,000 in healthcare and related costs	If knowing ones rights could prevent workplace accidents, and we estimate low benefits – say.5% of high risk group:	$21,000 x 1250	$26,250,000

So, Gordon has been in office for 9 years, so three times the total cost of $1.5 billion equals $4.5 billion. It’s possible (and I really mean possible as I am not an economist nor a social researcher) Gordon cost the public $4.5 billion because of an unwillingness to provide another 450 million to legal aid during his term in office. Hmmm…

A study done in Texas, USA, shows that investment in legal aid services lead to economic growth in the community by increasing jobs, reducing workdays missed due to legal problems, creating more stable housing, resolving debt issues and stimulating business activity; in fact, “For every direct dollar expended in the state for indigent civil legal services [legal services for low-income people], the overall annual gains to the economy are found to be $7.42 in total spending, $3.56 in output (gross product), and $2.20 in personal income.”[1]  Reductions in legal aid spending, therefore, have a negative impact on spending and create an economic burden on the community.

Either way you cut it, Gordon has cost us all. But most importantly, he may very well have cost many British Columbians their homes, their children, their personal safety, and their access to justice.

Cuts leave B.C. exposed to eco-disaster

Province woefully understaffed for cleaning up dangerous spills

By Ben Parfitt, Times Colonist October 3, 2010

With the biggest marine oil release in history only now under control in the Gulf of Mexico, debate over the future of oil pipelines and increased tanker traffic off British Columbia’s coast will naturally intensify. Especially following recent disasters at oil pipelines in Michigan and Illinois owned by Enbridge, the company proposing to build a major pipeline to B.C.’s coast.

A debate over what kind of future we want for our province is important, but what of the present? How prepared is B.C. to deal with a spill that could occur at any time as oil tankers already move out of the Port of Vancouver and into the straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca or, for that matter, oil or hazardous waste spills on land?

The answer is very poorly. Especially when viewed against the resources that neighbouring Washington state devotes to responding to spills and reducing their likelihood.

We live in a vast province four times larger than Great Britain and with a coastline that, with its inlets and islands, is a total of 27,000 kilometres in length — or well in excess of half of the Earth’s equatorial circumference. Over this sprawling area, B.C.’s Environment Ministry deploys slightly more than 13 full-time staff to respond to oil and “dangerous goods” spills, of which there were nearly 4,000 in the province in 2008-2009.

Just across the border, Washington’s spill prevention and preparedness program has 77.7 full-time-equivalent staff. Washington also outpaces B.C. in funding this area of public and environmental health, spending roughly $29.1 million per year compared to B.C.’s paltry allocation of $2.5 million. Where it matters most — getting people to where spills occur or might reasonably be expected to occur — Washington has the dollars to do the work. B.C. does not. With a hiring freeze and plans to reduce an already emaciated environmental staff further through attrition, the government is saddling key agencies with absurdly complex challenges that will only get worse with time. Last year, in northeast B.C., 581 dangerous goods and oil spills were reported.

The region is slightly larger than Nebraska. Its spill response “team” now consists of 1.2 dedicated staff. Meanwhile, water by the hundreds of millions of gallons is being sucked from local rivers, streams and lakes, mixed with chemicals and pumped underground at extreme pressure to fracture underground rock formations and release their natural gas. Who is minding the shop? Who is ensuring that spills by natural gas companies and their suppliers do not poison public waters? Meanwhile, on the coast, 2009 marked a record year for oil exports from the Port of Vancouver. Sixty-five tankers moved 28.6 million barrels of oil out of the port, for an average shipment of 439,834 barrels per ship.

If just one shipment were to be disgorged into the waters between Vancouver and Victoria, it would dwarf the events of the evening of Dec. 23, 1988 — events that actually set in motion the creation of B.C.’s spill response program. On that date, a tug rammed into a tanker barge that it was towing. Oil spilled from the battered vessel, the Nestucca, into the waters off Washington’s Gray’s Harbour and carried with prevailing winds across Juan de Fuca Strait to reach numerous beaches on Vancouver Island’s west coast.

The oil released was later estimated to have killed 56,000 seabirds, despoiled numerous herring spawning areas and wiped out crab and shellfish fisheries. All that destruction was achieved with just 5,500 barrels of oil — or 1.2 per cent of what, on average, moves out of Vancouver in the hull of one tanker. BP’s Gulf of Mexico debacle should give us pause to reflect on the wisdom of future offshore oil developments and increased oil tanker traffic. But perhaps it is time to focus on more present dangers.

With an anemic provincial spill response staff, the risk that preventable spills will occur increases. Just don’t try to glean the likelihood of such risks from the relevant government publication. The province’s Environmental Emergency Management Program, which houses B.C.’s spills response team, has elected not to publish an annual report for 2009-2010. There’s no budget for it.

Ben Parfitt is a Victoria-based researcher and resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (www.policyalternatives.ca)