Kenneth Green is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.Premier David Eby claims to be a true and faithful protector of the environment. But in reality, he’s not.First, consider the Eby government’s opposition to a proposed new oil pipeline from Alberta, on the grounds that it would increase tanker traffic and soil British Columbia’s coastal waters. According to a recent exposé in the Vancouver Sun, over the past six years, more than one-third of federal food-safety recalls triggered by Canadian oysters on both sides of the border trace back to Baynes Sound on Vancouver Island. The cause? Human waste flowing into the waters of Baynes Sound from nearby homes and passing boats. In other words, it’s not the shellfish growers, processors, or sellers doing this — it’s raw sewage, typically from ships, recreational boats, or homes along the shoreline. This problem goes back decades. In December 2002, a quarter of the waters in Baynes Sound were closed for harvesting due to concerns of sewage discharge from boats. Perhaps Eby should pause his anti-pipeline crusade for a moment to help actually make BC’s coastal waters pristine.Next, his government should stop pretending to care about salmon while it helps dismantle the protections put in place to prevent salmon from being fished into extinction. Addressing the over-fishing of local fish was a big reason to institute fish farms or aquaculture decades ago. According to Our World in Data, this “growth in aquaculture has played an important role in increasing global seafood production without sacrificing fish stocks. Production has continued to grow while the output of wild fisheries has slowed or even plateaued. This allows us to maintain sustainable fishing levels that do not deplete wild fish populations.” Can’t be more clear, right? But the federal government plans to ban open net-pen salmon aquaculture in BC coastal waters by June 30, 2029. Clearly, Premier Eby should oppose this plan, which will surely degrade BC’s wild fish stocks..Finally, the BC government has enacted over time various policies to reduce the extent of clear-cutting, with buy-in from the forestry industry and First Nations. But governments have not made these agreements work. Five years after the release of 2020’s Old-Growth Strategic Review report, according to conservation group Wildsight, the “BC NDP’s momentum towards a ‘new, holistic approach’ to the management of old-growth forests has slowed almost to the point of regression. Rather than the ‘paradigm shift’ we were promised, we’ve seen Premier Eby’s government doubling down on its prioritization of timber and industry profits over all other values.”UBC researchers agree. From the Vancouver Sun: “BC must protect its forests to manage flood risk, and shift to more sustainable forestry practices, say researchers in UBC’s Faculty of Forestry. That means government needs to end the practice of clearcutting, according to a recent study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. The need to stop this practice is ‘urgent,’ said Younes Alila, a hydrologist and professor in the Faculty of Forestry, because of the mounting problems caused by human-caused climate change such as drought, flooding, and wildfires.”Eby has been in the news a lot lately, posturing as someone concerned about BC’s environment. But the noises coming from his mouth do not match his actions. Before obsessing about a new pipeline project, to be built safely with new technologies and new safety protocols, perhaps he should look more closely at his province and fix its glaring eco-problems.Kenneth Green is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
