GUEST COLUMN — BC’s land planning problems

The tremendous mineral wealth of British Columbia is part of our rich natural heritage, and we all have a right to share in the benefits of its responsible development, including an increased standard of living and economic support for health and education. A key factor in unlocking the wealth-creating potential of hidden mineral deposits is the ability to explore.

Exploration is as fundamental to sustaining mining in British Columbia as seed planting is to sustaining agriculture. One difference is that in mining there is normally more than a 10-year lag between exploration and the earliest possible “harvesting.” Another difference is that we don’t know, with any certainty, where the seeds will sprout or if any of them can be “harvested” economically. We do know that investors will not invest in exploration in B.C. — or anywhere else — unless they are convinced that they will be treated fairly; that is, that they have a reasonable opportunity to develop what they find.

Currently, exploration in B.C. is at a 40-year low, largely because of investor reluctance in the face of the province’s flawed land-planning process, which has a history of politics over-riding scientific decision-making.

Those not closely associated with B.C.’s land-planning issues may not be aware that over the past eight years, the people of this province have lost millions of hectares of land with valuable resources. Of course, this land was not lost in the literal sense; rather, it was conquered as by an invading army. This is not a bad analogy, because pressure and dollars to fund the campaign to shut down B.C.’s rural economy is coming from foreign sources. Fuel added to this fire comes in the form of misleading domestic information.

The land-planning process that presided over this loss first appeared under the Ministry of Environment’s Lands and Parks Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE). The CORE regional planning tables operated on Vancouver Island, in the East and West Kootenays and in the Cariboo-Chilcotin region during 1993 and 1994. Following the failure of the Vancouver Island process and the occurrence of a 25,000-person “yellow ribbon parade” protest rally in Victoria in 1994, the Lands and Parks Commission backtracked, switching the planning focus to the Land and Resources Management Planning process.

Through this mechanism, the province has been divided into more than 20 sub-regions. Today, more than half of the province has been “planned.” These committees continue to meet, and, with up to 12 under way at any one time, participation is a strain on resources. Also, members have been given little guidance in relation to scientific “gap” analysis of certain areas proposed for protection. They have also been given information that is often inadequate and misleading with respect to the socio-economic implications of proposed decisions. These factors, coupled with a strong anti-development bias pushed by a coalition of preservation groups and like-minded bureaucrats, has caused the process to get away from the government and resulted in some serious mistakes — ones that particularly affect mining.

This was not the outcome intended by the government. Park creation was to be based on gap analysis using strict scientific criteria; it was never proposed as a political tool for stopping proposed projects or for rewarding friends. The stated goal for the process was to double to 12% the land occupied by provincial parks and protected areas, which include marine-based ecosystems and wildlife habitats. Other prominent goals were to end the valley-by-valley confrontations, increase certainty of land tenure, and provide economic sustainability.

Although the land-planning process is now well past its mid-point, the only goal that appears achievable is the establishment of protected areas, but in much more of the province than the 12% explicitly outlined by the government. The problem is that there is growing and unfair pressure to include terrain deemed under-represented but without cutting back on over-represented terrain, thereby massively exceeding the protected areas “budget.”

In January 1999, after many years of exhausting and costly involvement in the province’s land-planning process, the mining sector elected to withdraw from direct participation. The lack of accountability for this process was just one reason; there are other, technical, reasons, which I’ll discuss next week, as well as potential solutions.

— This column is the first of two outlining British Columbia’s land-planning process. The author is executive director of the British Columbia and Yukon Chamber of Mines.