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