CKNW Editorial
for July 26, 2000

The, shall we say, exchange of views I had with Energy and Mines Minister Dan Miller yesterday needs a bit of follow-up.

Mr Miller correctly states that we have a huge need for sand, gravel and aggregates in this province and that we should have some guidelines. I applaud his recognition of that fact. It would be churlish of me to remind listeners that with the Pitt River Gravel mine issue it was Premier Ujjal Dosanjh who ended the matter with my spies telling me that Miller wanted to give Laurie Carlson of Mainland Sand & Gravel the right to mine the pit in question.

But let's give Mr Miller marks for wanting to establish a process so that this sort of unpleasantness does not re-occur.

And let me make it clear that the four people he has chosen for this panel are all decent, law-abiding citizens and I intend no personal criticism of them. Two of them, Graham Lea and Ben Marr I know personally and they're fine men.

But having said that, if you were going to put together a panel of people whose record shows an utter lack of sensitivity to the environment you couldn't have done better than this group.

Coquitlam Mayor Jon Kingsbury is no doubt a good chap but he is well known as a developer's mayor. There is nothing sinister or evil about that but it's scarcely the kind of appointment one who expects evenhandedness would applaud.

Laurie Carlson is president of Mainland Sand and Gravel and I have documentary evidence of his willful and persistent disregard for directives from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans concerning his gravel operations.

Ben Marr was formerly Deputy Minister of the Environment but I can tell you from pe4rsonal experience that hardly made him an environmentalist. He is an engineer and looked at environmental concerns as engineers are inclined to do. When he headed the GVRD he was an enthusiastic supporter of putting chloramine in the water system even though once it gets into streams it kills all life therein. When I was Environment minister he was appalled that our government would buy off Seattle Light and Power to save the Skagit. I used to kid him with my line that he would dam a horse peeing if he thought a watt of energy could be produced. He is a nice man - a decent man. But scarcely the man you would want to be indifferent as between development and environmental sensitivities.

Graham Lea, a former NDP cabinet minister and MLA has, in a long career, shown absolutely no propensity to defend the environment and, as an old party hack who has returned to the fold, he needs the money.

But the foregoing is only part of what's wrong. It would have been just as wrong for Mr Miller to appoint raging environmentalist to this panel. The object is supposed to be to find a fair and equitable balance between the ongoing needs of society and the obligation to preserve the environment God blessed us with. This means not only a Chair and panel that are impartial but, more importantly, a chair and board that appear to be impartial. I don't deny the four men a role in this exercise but it ought to be as intervenors. Mr Carlson especially ought to be heard because he is a large player in the industry.

This panel as selected by Dan Miller is a clear example of putting the fox in charge of the hen-house. Sadly, this means that no matter how incisive and fair their findings may be, they will be hard to accept.

There is an old adage amongst politicians that you never appoint a commission unless you know what their recommendations will be or you don't give a damn. I suspect that the latter is true for Mr Miller who himself has shown no sensitivity to the environment either in or out of government.

I can only hope that even though the fix is obviously in that the environmental community makes its voice heard, if only for the record.