Posts by Ben Parfitt

About Ben Parfitt

Ben joined the CCPA staff team as a resource policy analyst in 2005 after years working as an investigative journalist with numerous magazines, and previous to that as a reporter with The Vancouver Sun. He is author and co-author of two books on forestry issues and currently devotes much of his policy research to natural resources, with special attention paid to energy, water, and forest resources and climate change.

Ben values being part of a great team at the CCPA as well as the opportunities provided to meet regularly with First Nations, community leaders, environmental advocates and the many people who work in the province’s resource industries and who are committed to progressive change.

Ben is an avid cyclist and budding day hiker who likes to take advantage of the many outdoor recreation options open to him and others living in Victoria and south Vancouver Island. He is the proud father of a super-talented daughter, Charlotte Priest, who is wise beyond her years and has taught him much. He also loves to listen to music—the good old fashion way—on vinyl. Follow Ben on Twitter

Thanks for a great ride

Apr 26, 2024

By Ben Parfitt

Twenty years ago, an insect attack of biblical proportions in British Columbia’s forests became a hot-button topic.  Thanks to unusually warm winters (guess why), mountain pine beetles exploded in number in the province’s interior forests killing millions upon millions of lodgepole pine trees.  The provincial government responded by approving huge increases in logging so that… View Article

As wood pellet exports to Japan surge, BC’s primary forests feel the strain

Apr 24, 2024

By Ben Parfitt

In the land of the rising sun, the light of a setting sun glints so brightly on the shiny metal piping of Renova’s Ishinomaki Hibarino power plant that you have to shield your eyes. Located near the city of Sendai, north of Tokyo, the new thermal electricity plant is one of several in Japan that… View Article

Leaked data reveals new threat to BC’s old growth forests

Mar 7, 2024

By Ben Parfitt

BREAKING: officials in the Ministry of Forests have been working on a map that radically departs from the recommendations of a panel appointed by the provincial government to advise it on how to protect British Columbia’s imperiled old growth forests…. View Article

Government must do more than shuffle chairs to solve BC’s water woes

Dec 20, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests was always a poor choice to manage the province’s water resources—and it showed. So it was fitting in October that the government decided after years of being urged to do so to transfer that power to the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. But shunting public servants between ministries… View Article

Time to end information hide-and-seek games: Public deserves more prompt government disclosure of basic data

Nov 16, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

No one should be told to file a Freedom of Information request simply to learn who works for them. Government must give members of the public access to up-to-date and useful information on who is there to serve them and quit obfuscating and abusing access to information laws, Ben Parfitt writes…. View Article

Failure to act means failing dikes

Sep 13, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

  Province must take responsibility for flood protection infrastructure Provincial and municipal officials were warned repeatedly that the dikes in one of the cities hit hardest by the floods that paralyzed southern British Columbia in 2021 were structurally unsound and could fail should water levels in local rivers rise quickly. For years preceding the disaster,… View Article

BC First Nation logs almost all of its treaty lands, leaving behind lots of stumps and questions

Jul 10, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

  In just three years, much of the McLeod Lake Indian Band’s treaty lands were stripped of their bountiful and exceedingly valuable trees in a surge of logging that included one massive clear-cut that is almost 3,000 hectares in size, or 7.5 times larger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park.   The extensive logging by the band of… View Article

Promises of cleaner air up in smoke

Apr 28, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

Calls for BC environment minister to suspend pellet mill permit Every year, the air in the Bulkley Valley community of Smithers becomes hazardous to human health as thousands of fires known as slash burns are deliberately set at logging sites. The contaminated air can stay trapped in the valley’s airshed for extended periods as the… View Article

The extra-long logging haul

Apr 12, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

As forests shrink, drivers work 16-hour days to deliver single loads of logs to BC sawmills When Eugene Wilson started driving a logging truck 24 years ago, he worked out of the Bulkley valley community of Houston three hours west of Prince George. He recalls the trips as if they were yesterday. He’d begin the… View Article

Houston Falling: Super-sized mills lead to super-sized problems for BC forests and workers

Mar 2, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

When the world’s biggest sawmill opened its doors, then-premier Gordon Campbell enthused that it could shoot out enough lumber to build all of British Columbia’s new annual housing stock, which was then averaging 26,000 units per year. After the ribbon was cut and the first logs passed through its computerized scanners and whirring sawblades on… View Article