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Crisis in environmental stewardship?
Environment ministry suffers institutional ‘sickness,’ say researchers
The ministry charged with protecting human health and the environment in B.C. is anything but healthy, according to independent government-commissioned researchers.
Linda Duxbury and Christopher Higgins1 were hired by the B.C. government last summer to take the pulse of the Ministry of Water, Land & Air Protection, and their conclusions—leaked to the public in April 2004—aren’t pretty.
After surveying more than 70 per cent of WLAP employees, including managers and clerical staff, the researchers concluded that Ministry culture is afflicted by an “institutional sickness” and a “very large disconnect between what the Ministry publicly states as its mission and values and what employees perceive to be occurring within the department.”
Most employees were found to be “deeply demoralized on a professional and personal level,” and describe their workplace culture as “events-driven, reactive, over-committed and rushed.” Seventy per cent of Environmental Protection branch workers think their department has poor capacity to deal with environmental crises, and one in four employees thinks about leaving the Ministry’s employ every week.
When asked what the Ministry has done well, nearly 20 per cent of the responses were negative to the point of acidic. For example, one worker offered: “Totally destroyed staff morale,” while another said “Gave up on protecting the environment.” Only 27 per cent of the workers surveyed believe that the ministry uses good science to support policy decisions.
The research was meant to gauge the Ministry’s internal climate following budget cuts of almost 30 per cent over three years, a major re-organization, and the catastrophic explosion of workplace stress in 2001 when a WLAP manager in Kamloops fatally shot two co-workers before killing himself.
The workers’ morale cannot simply be attributed to boredom or disengagement. Duxbury and Higgins describe them as hardworking, dedicated people who like what they do, appreciate their co-workers and managers, and view their workplace as a better than average place to work with scheduling flexibility they value.
A second study2 by the West Coast Environmental Law Association helps flesh out the picture, using in-depth personal interviews with current and recently departed ministry staff, objective analysis of current and former staffing levels and comparisons to their counterparts in other provinces.
WCEL’s conclusion: B.C.’s ability to monitor and enforce environmental and health protection laws is floundering.
Deep cuts since 2001 dramatically intensified a process already begun by the previous NDP government, and staffing levels in key areas of environmental responsibility, including park protection and enforcement of anti-pollution laws, lag far behind Alberta.
Evidence that that WLAP is falling short on monitoring of industrial forestry can be found in three recent reports from B.C.’s government-created independent monitoring body, the Forest Practices Board.
In March, the board concluded the province’s strategy for maintaining biodiversity had not been thoroughly implemented in 85 per cent of B.C. forest districts, and that there was no monitoring of the implementation of the strategy.3
In April, the board cited WLAP4 for failing to address, since 2000, the “significant threat to the environment” created by 53 problematic bridges built by Kemess Mines in the MacKenzie Forest District. And in June, the board found that WLAP had failed in its duty to complete risk assessments, forestry activity inspections, or summaries of compliance and enforcement on Nisga’a lands over a two-year period.
None of these reports surprise Cliff Stainsby, a Vancouver Island-based research officer for the BC Government Employees Union, which represents about 80 per cent of WLAP employees.
“ Let’s put it this way: [on-the-ground monitoring of forestry by WLAP] is not really happening… Members are telling me, ‘We’re office-bound,’” he says. “Habitat protection biologists are saying they spend less than five per cent of their time doing on-the-ground monitoring work, compared to about 25 to 30 per cent five years ago. They’re too busy with the time-consuming task of revisiting monitoring objectives made necessary by new legislation, and more paperwork and GIS-related duties due to cuts to support staff.”
According to Stainsby, our environment is paying the price. “For example, one of the few inspections done by WLAP in the Kildala Estuary in the past year uncovered critical grizzly habitat that was already slated for logging,” he says.
Stainsby says WLAP employees see a clear link between the Duxbury/Higgins report and the West Coast Environmental Law Association report: they’re registering the quakes caused by a “radical shift” in the philosophy underlying WLAP policies, towards a results-based regime where the job of monitoring industry impacts on the environment is being handed over to the industries themselves—with too few government employees left to provide effective oversight. He believes that responsibility ought to be earned by corporations based on their individual performance, not simply handed over.
Policy change is fine if it represents the broader public interest, adds Stainsby. “Many of [WLAP employees] consider themselves agents of change,” he points out. “But if there are questions about whether that change is in the public interest, the system starts to fracture. That’s what we’re seeing in those reports.”
Insisting on anonymity, an ecosystem section employee in one of WLAP’s northern B.C. offices harbours doubt about the new results-based regime.
“ It seems we have to continue to revisit history to learn from it again … I hope we don’t see another Riley Creek,” he says, alluding to an incident on the west coast of the Queen Charlottes where logging on steep slopes went ahead over critics’ objections and resulted in a massive landslide, which greatly damaged fish habitat. “Given where forest licensees want to operate right now, we may be back in that kind of risky business … Only time fixes big things like that.”
Several current professional WLAP employees in this region contacted by northword magazine confirmed Stainsby’s statements, but refused to go on record. Two gave lengthy interviews on the subject, and then, just before press deadline, retracted their comments for fear of reprisal by the WLAP ministry.
Stainsby explains.
“ It’s very dangerous for government employees to comment publicly on what they’re seeing, because they’re under the direct supervision and authority of managers who hold their futures in their hands,” he says. “They know there could be repercussions.”
Dionys de Leeuw, a senior habitat protection biologist for more than 10 years with WLAP5 until his retirement in 2002, knows all about repercussions. In 2000, de Leeuw published a research paper that rigorously critiqued statistical methods used to justify the annual trophy hunt for grizzly bears. For this, he was suspended for two weeks without pay—provoking a legal battle which simmers to this day. On another occasion, he was reprimanded for independently publishing a paper about ethics around sport fishing in a philosophical journal.
“ As soon as someone like me speaks badly they’re squashed,” he says from his home in Terrace. He cites numerous personal examples of WLAP staff chronically hamstrung by inadequate resources, censorship of informed dissent, and routine, high-level political interference in science-based decisions.
“ The public simply believes these projects have been adequately reviewed, and that their biologists have agreed to it. But nothing could be further from the truth… It’s amazing, the degree to which this goes on,” he says, emphasizing that this is still happening.
Defining very clear steps for environmental review processes would help these problems, says de Leeuw, but at present “there is no transparency in environmental ministries. It’s completely opaque and it’s meant to be.”
Water, Land & Air Protection Minister Bill Barisoff couldn’t see things more differently.
In April, The Vancouver Sun reported Barisoff had not yet read the Duxbury/Higgins report, which was circulated in the Ministry last fall.6 In late June, when asked by northword magazine if Duxbury & Higgins’ conclusion about WLAP’s culture and a “major disconnect” was accurate, Barisoff replied: “No. I don’t think it is at all.”
“ From my perspective, travelling around and talking to staff, there are very positive feelings, very positive attitudes [among WLAP staff],” he said.
Barisoff said he wasn’t aware of whether any of Duxbury and Higgins’ specific recommendations to “actually deliver on the culture [talked] about in [the Ministry’s] mission and value statement”—such as hiring more managers, making more financial resources available—had been implemented.
The key point to be taken from Duxbury & Higgins’ research, emphasized Barisoff, is that it shows a “100-per cent improvement” in ministry employee morale, employee concern over environmental standards, and the standards themselves—as compared to a 1999 study by the BCGEU following staff cuts of 21 per cent over three years. Although the BCGEU says the reports are not comparable at all, due to pronounced differences in questions, response rates, and most importantly, the pool of workers surveyed, Barisoff maintains his position.
“ It’s very, very positive.”
(Footnotes)
- Linda Duxbury, PhD is a professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University. Christopher Higgins, PhD, is a professor at the Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario.
- The West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) Association report, Please Hold: Someone Will Be With You, published in April 2004, is available at www.wcel.org/wcelpub/2004/14099.pdf.
- The board also noted that the future of the biodiversity strategy itself, under the new Forest and Range Practices Act, is unclear.
- The Ministries of Energy and Mines and Forests were also cited by the Board for not having fulfilled related duties.
- Prior to 2001, the WLAP ministry was known as the Ministry of Environment, Lands & Parks.
- According to the BCGEU, most WLAP employees have not seen the full report. “They were given a sanitized, 18-page summary,” says Cliff Stainsby of the BCGEU. In some offices, such as Smithers, employees were offered the opportunity to review, in paper format only, a copy of the Power Point presentation delivered by the researchers to WLAP managers. The 161-page document, which itself is an abbreviated form of the report, was marked “draft/confidential” and “do not copy,” but apparently someone did: it was delivered anonymously to BCGEU offices in April. “Our members were quite happy to have the report go public,” adds Stainsby. “They know things aren’t good in the ministry, and believe the public should know.”
Public service employees speak out
In 2002, WLAP employees Len Vanderstar and Sean Sharpe of Smithers, Dionys de Leeuw of Terrace, and others incorporated a non-profit society called Public Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (PSE). Today it has over 100 members.
“ PSE was formed to counter government manipulation of information, and provide a voice for beleaguered public servants who weren’t able to express their concerns about this in public,” says Jim Pojar, who served as its president until May 2004.
A highly respected forest ecologist with the B.C. Forest Service in Smithers for 25 years until his acceptance of a job in Whitehorse, Pojar believes the public has a right to know when political intervention supplants sound science in government decision-making. That’s why PSE has lobbied hard for effective, legislated protection for whistle-blowers.
In the wake of new expectations on resource extraction industries to monitor themselves, and staff cuts that erode B.C.’s resource ministries’ ability to ensure this is actually happening, PSE members say their goals as more relevant than ever.
“ Resources belong to people of B.C., and public servants who work for government are stewards of those resources,” Pojar explains. “If government isn’t fulfilling that stewardship role, resources will be depleted, our quality of life will decline, and the environment will be degraded.”
©Larissa Ardis
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