Jump to Navigation

Freedom of information requests expose fines in B.C.’s forest industry

External Reference/Copyright
Issue date: 
December 19th, 2011
Publisher Name: 
Forest Talk
Publisher-Link: 
http://foresttalk.com/
More like this
SFM

-----------------

The Vancouver Sun has been investigating salvage logging of pine forests in British Columbia.

Through freedom of information requests, The Vancouver Sun has uncovered documents relating to compliance-and-enforcement action taken against logging companies in the Quesnel and Prince George forest districts.

Information uncovered:

  • Tolko Industries Ltd. was fined $4,500 for obtaining a cutting permit through falsified records
  • Tolko was fined $1000 in 2010 for environmental damage and excessive soil disturbance at several logging sites. Tolko then spent $95,000 to rehabilitate the sites and now gives annual refresher courses on soil disturbance to its contractors
  • West Fraser Mills Ltd. was fined $2,500 in 2010 for failing to ensure its logging near Bow-ron Lake Provincial Park met visual quality objectives
  • Canadian Forest Products Ltd. was fined $25,000 in 2009 for environmental damage in a roadside work area and failing to ensure the intended results of its forest plan were met
  • The 5C Cattle Company Ltd. was fined $28,315.46 in 2009 related to unauthorized fence construction and logging of 4.5 hectares of Crown land and given a remediation order
  • Botland Feeds Ltd. was fined $1,320 in 2008 for harvesting Crown timber from a woodlot without authority, and $5,500 in 2007 for failing to ensure that 12.7 hectares of a woodlot licence supported a free-growing stand of trees as required
  • Logging licensee Robert Duncan Sturgeon was fined $11,908.30 in 2010 for timber-marking violations under the Forest Act, while veteran logger Timothy Cecil Fillion was fined $1,000 in the same case

View all the documents released under the freedom of information act to The Vancouver Sun: http://www.vancouversun.com/pdf/response-records.pdf

---------------



Extpub | by Dr. Radut