Writing from our researchers this year
Dec 19, 2024
Climate change, the impact of fossil fuels and the role of BC’s oil and gas industry were much-read analyzes this year. Here are some key articles…. View Article
Environment, resources & sustainability
Cedar LNG: Chronicles of a petro-state in the age of climate change
Jul 31, 2024
A final investment decision in June 2024 by Cedar LNG highlights the challenges and contradictions of BC’s climate and energy policies. For the BC government, this is the model industrial project: it creates jobs and development in the North, has a major Indigenous partner in the Haisla Nation and will meet the low-emissions target established… View Article
Thanks for a great ride
Apr 26, 2024
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
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
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
Connecting BC: A 10-year vision for public transit throughout BC
Feb 16, 2024
Let’s not keep BC riders waiting. It’s time to invest in the transit British Columbians deserve…. View Article
Government must do more than shuffle chairs to solve BC’s water woes
Dec 20, 2023
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
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
What would it take to meet Canada’s 2030 climate targets?
Oct 5, 2023
Adapted from the CCPA’s fall 2023 submission to Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body by Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood & Marc Lee When Canada first signed the Paris Agreement way back in 2015, the commitment to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 seemed far away. So far away, in fact, that in… View Article
Failure to act means failing dikes
Sep 13, 2023
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