Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call second reading debate, Bill 26.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 26 — ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
AMENDMENT ACT, 2022

Hon. G. Heyman: It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak to Bill 26, the amendment of the Environmental Management Act. I would also like to note that I am the designated speaker for second reading of this bill.

Bill 26 is important for a number of reasons, a number of important administrative factors that will allow conservation officers to do their jobs more effectively and more efficiently, to provide greater protection for the public interest and to ensure that the intent of the legislation is completely reflected in the language of the legislation.

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

It’s also going to give me great pleasure to speak to this bill because it’s an opportunity not just to talk about the words that are in the bill and what they will mean in terms of enforcement but also to speak to the proud history of the conservation officer service — at one point many, many years ago known as game wardens — the role they play in the community, the challenges they face, the important interactions they have with members of the public, as well as the strong educational role they play.

Let me speak to some of the specifics of the amendment. What we want to do with Bill 26 is ensure that conservation officers are able to do their work more efficiently and more effectively.

What this amendment says on its face is that evidence collected by conservation officers in the course of an investigation can now be held for up to 12 months. That means that when conservation officers seize evidence, they will be able to take the time that’s necessary to properly process the evidence, to consider it, to provide it to the court in an acceptable manner and form and to ensure that the timetables and schedules and delays that are sometimes encountered in the course of the justice system don’t interrupt this important flow.

This can often take much longer than the three months, and this timeline has regularly been exceeded. That’s the timeline of three months that we are seeking to amend with this bill. What that means is that conservation officers will frequently end up having to go back to court, sometimes as many as three times, before the 12-month mark in order to get extensions. That takes up their time that could be better spent pursuing the investigation or doing other duties — of the many, many duties they have over the large areas they routinely cover and are responsible for.

[3:00 p.m.]

It also, of course, takes up valuable time in the court system, time that the court could better spend addressing cases that come before it and meeting the public’s expectation that the courts will operate efficiently, effectively and address the issues of public safety that the courts exist to protect as well as to ensure that justice is done.

This is not new. At one point, conservation officers had the authority to retain evidence for up to 12 months from a day of seizure. And in the course of updating legislation, as we all know often happens, sometimes a detail, a consequential reference is omitted. And what we all understood to be the case — and intended to be the case and knew needed to be the case — all of a sudden, if you look at it carefully with a strict legal eye, is no longer absolutely clear. Of course, the administration of justice and the enforcement of laws by those people, like conservation officers, charged with upholding and enforcing the laws needs to be absolutely clear and explicit.

This amendment will return the previously held authority of conservation officers that evidence can be retained for up to 12 months from the day of seizure. Returning this authority will alleviate time in the courts. It will alleviate time spent by conservation officers seeking an extension and other affected parties that need to take part in hearings for time extensions. It will, in short, ensure that conservation officers can do their job, that the public interest is protected and that court time and resources are used appropriately and well spent.

Let me talk a little bit about the process here. For instance, after seizing electronic devices, conservation officers require forensic experts to extract data from those devices and provide it to the court in an acceptable manner. We all know that when people see anything in the course of the administration of justice that calls into question acceptable process — whether all of the procedures were followed, whether all of the aspects of the law were properly addressed — they have the ability to call into question how that court proceeding takes place and whether evidence should be allowed and whether the proper administration of justice can, in effect, be redirected through administrative error or technicality.

That’s why it’s so important for conservation officers, for our system, for forensic experts to take the time necessary to do things right — to extract data that could be important evidence, to provide that data to the court in an acceptable manner. And we know that these methods take time. In fact, for probably most members of this House — except those of us who may have extensive background in technology, particularly information technology — the process of extracting data from hard drives or electronic devices, whether they be mobile ones or computers, is kind of a mystery.

I know that I am gratified that there are people who specialize in this, who are expert in this — and, I should add, expert in this on the right side of the law — and that they are using these skills and talents to ensure that where there is evidence of wrongdoing, evidence of potential harm to people, to communities, to the environment, they’re able to go into these devices and dig for the kind of evidence that conservation officers know they need to provide the court in order to make their case.

What happens currently, because this work…. First of all, there is high demand for forensic experts. It’s not like conservation officers can snap their fingers and get somebody they need to do the work immediately.

[3:05 p.m.]

These people are in high demand, and often there is a queue, a wait for their services. So it can take longer than three months to get the data. It can also depend on the amount of data that’s stored and whether and how it’s been stored and whether it has been hidden or masked or encrypted in some way. So this process takes time.

Currently with the three-month limit that we’re seeking to amend to 12 months, near the three-month marks, conservation officers have to notify the party who the item was seized from that there will be a court hearing. Conservation officers have to apply to the courts for an opportunity to be heard and then provide evidence at the hearing as to why a continued detention of a seized item is required, because the specification, in reading the act in its current form, as amended, leads one to believe that three months is the limit, because that was an extended reference that was inadvertently missed.

This takes time. It takes time to notify the party. It takes time to prepare the case for an extension. It takes time to prepare for…. One might expect, from someone whose devices have been seized in order to find evidence that they are guilty of a violation of the law or a crime…. They certainly would, I expect, have an interest in not seeing those devices held for longer because, potentially, the retention of those devices and the further examination of them could in fact lead to their acquittal or to the charges being dismissed or not heard.

So it is important that conservation officers, in preparing a case for an extension, do it thoroughly, which takes time — that they anticipate and lawyers anticipate the case or objections that might be raised to holding this material for a longer period of time. And then they, of course, have to go to court, and they have to provide the evidence that’s required of the court.

They have to do all this work to prepare for court, to anticipate what they might face in court, to consult with lawyers and to go to court to achieve the extension, which, fortunately, is granted in all cases, to my knowledge. The conservation officers are good at their jobs. They do a thorough job. They ensure that when they go to court, they provide the evidence that’s needed.

My point here, and I think it’s a point that all members of this House would agree with, is: wouldn’t we rather have conservation officers focusing on interacting with the community, protecting people from dangerous encounters with wildlife, protecting wildlife from dangerous encounters with humans, educating children and parents and community members about the dangers of having food attractants that aren’t properly secure, that lure bears into habitable areas and then habituate them to these food sources and ultimately lead to their destruction?

That’s not through the bears’ fault or any animal’s fault but because people often aren’t aware of the consequences of their actions or their carelessness. That’s an important role played by conservation officers, to which I’ll return in some time.

Those aren’t the only duties performed by conservation officers, but that’s what we want them to focus on, as well as enforcing our laws around wildlife, as well as enforcing our laws about pollution, as well as investigating incidents of pollution, particularly where there may be some thought that there was negligence or wrongdoing in accor­dance with the law and that the conservation officers should therefore do a thorough job of that investigation, protecting our environment and protecting the public interest and upholding the laws that they are sworn to administer, laws they take very seriously.

[3:10 p.m.]

All members of this House and all members of the public would likely agree that what we really want and need to see from conservation officers is to prepare their material for a court case, particularly if it involves the examination of electronic devices or other equipment that has to be seized and held, in order to gather the evidence to present before a court so a court can properly ascertain whether there is guilt or innocence and, if there’s guilt, what the degree of it is.

We want them doing that once. We don’t want them doing that four times when once is good enough. We want to ensure that their time, as well as the time of the courts, is used properly and effectively.

As I’ve said, our system of justice is fair. It provides accusers and officers of the law, as conservation officers are, the ability to make a case, the ability to arrest, the ability to seize material, the ability to go to court to talk about what they believe has happened and to provide evidence to support that belief and to let the court determine.

In addition to that, the person who has had items seized, the person who is being investigated, the person who has been charged and who is likely to go to court, of course, can make arguments about whether their rights are being unnecessarily infringed upon with further holding of devices or evidence. That’s why it takes time. Those rights are now available to people, essentially, every three months. Justices might decide to, for instance, only order one three-month extension or no three-month extension.

The justice may wonder why it is taking so long. Every time a conservation officer and our justice system have to consider whether an extension needs to be granted for the holding of evidence, it detracts from the work of the conservation officer service. It detracts from the time and attention of the courts to other pressing matters. It runs the risk that an investigation, which has entailed sometimes many, many hours….

For instance, an investigation into alleged poaching might involve hundreds of hours of investigation. Part of that investigation, of course, is an examination of evidence that’s been seized. It may be an examination of devices. All of those are entailed. To run the risk of having that case never heard because a justice has been convinced that an extension is unreasonable or something slips up in the administrative process of preparing the material and the case for an extension…. It’s dangerous, frankly, in my opinion, to the protection of the public interest that conservation officers are sworn to and attempting to perform every day.

Once an investigation is completed, the conservation officers submit a report to Crown counsel recommending charges. Until a decision is made on a charge approval by Crown counsel, conservation officers are required to hold seized evidence.

We know the court systems…. As much as we want them to be a just-in-time system, we know that can’t be. There are many people before the courts. There are many demands on public services.

While it’s important for the administration of justice to be timely, timeliness takes some time in many instances. So it’s important that conservation officers have the ability to hold seized evidence.

[3:15 p.m.]

The timelines for completing an investigation and preparing a report to Crown counsel and then Crown counsel making the decision on a charge approval regularly exceed a three-month time period for environmental offences. This is not uncommon. This is, in fact, common. It’s the experience. It is the way things work.

Therefore, to have a three-month time limit on the holding of evidence and a requirement to suspend other work on an investigation or other investigations or protection of the public interest in order to go back to court and seek an extension really is problematic. It’s not in the public interest. It’s not in the interest of justice. It’s not in the interest of protecting the environment. It’s not in the interest of conservation officers who are already stretched thin. Again, hon. Speaker, I’ll talk about that in a few moments.

It’s difficult for them to have to turn their attention to duties that are required under the laws that exist now, which we are seeking to change with this bill. But it is difficult for them to turn away even temporarily, even for a short period of time, from the many, many pressing issues they must deal with on behalf of the public of British Columbia.

To have to go back to court potentially three times before the 12-month mark to apply for further detention of seized material and evidence simply makes no sense. It’s not in the public interest. Fairness to the accused does not hang on this. The system provides fairness, but the public interest provides that cases and investigations on which those cases are based go forth, go forward.

People can be assured that when conservation officers are working, based on their tax dollars, to investigate violations of the law or to protect the environment, the work they put in will be fruitful and that it won’t be derailed on administrative technicalities. It won’t be derailed because something had to be prepared to meet a time limit, and it wasn’t possible to do that, or it was missed. Or the court made a decision for whatever reason that does not allow that investigation to be completed in the sense of a case for charges being presented and then the charges going ahead if that is the decision of Crown counsel.

Some justices may give a three-month extension. Some may give a six-month extension. Some may give a nine-month extension. It is possible a justice could extend on the first request for the full 12 months, but it’s certainly not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that having to return to court takes court time. It takes the time of the affected party who’s being investigated, which may also not be fair. Of course, it takes the time of conservation officers.

Restoring the legislation back to the 12-month initial detention period relieves all of the preparation time, the notification time, the application time, the hearing time that’s involved in the justice making their decision. Their decision about whether to grant an extension that under the old legislation and many other pieces of legislation is routinely set at 12 months. That’s frankly a delay and an amount of time that’s just simply unnecessary and not warranted. It interferes with the administration of justice. It’s undue infringement on the important time and the role conservation officers play in our communities, and it just doesn’t work.

[3:20 p.m.]

That’s why it’s important to make this amendment. But in making the amendment and in talking about the amendment being needed so conservation officers can play the important role in their community, I think it’s also important to talk a little bit about the importance of the conservation officer service in British Columbia — the kind of work they do to protect the environment, to protect wildlife and fish, to protect British Columbian people as well as the safety of people. That’s actually the work that we’re talking about ensuring that conservation officers can maximize without having to do unnecessary administrative work in preparation for court.

The conservation officer service has been doing that work — protecting the environment, looking after the safety of British Columbians, ensuring that poaching doesn’t take place and that if it does take place, people are held accountable. There’s a range of other duties that conservation officers perform now in terms of investigating all kinds of environmental pollution or other acts that threaten the environment, whether there are spills, whether it’s illegal dumping, whether it’s any form of unlawful act on the land base.

Over 115 years ago in 1905, the conservation officer service started as the game warden service. As I said, there’s been a tremendous evolution over the years. Our conservation officer service is a leading natural resource law enforcement agency. It specializes in public safety related to human-wildlife conflict. Responsibilities include managing complex commercial, environmental and industrial investigations, and compliance and enforcement services.

I will offer one example of this, among many. We all remember the tragic collapse of the Mount Polley tailings dam almost ten years ago now. There was a huge impact on the lake and river system. There was a huge impact on fisheries. There was a huge public outcry at the horror of the visual images of this slurry of toxic tailings that escaped the tailings dam and moved into the river and lake system.

People wanted accountability. There was a long and complex investigation into this, conducted by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans federally and the conservation officer service of British Columbia.

In this case and cases like this, the conservation officer service effectively functions as a form of what is a police service. They are public safety officers. They function, they investigate, they’re trained to investigate, they gather evidence, they sift through evidence, they consider evidence, and they have as important a role as the police do in municipalities around B. C. in preparing a case for Crown counsel consideration.

The conservation officer service of British Columbia put more than two years into this. The decision was made because, in order to gather enough evidence, British Columbia’s statute of limitations of two years was not enough time to create all the evidence needed to make a case. Further to that, of course, federal legislation provided for greater penalties, more meaningful penalties as both deterrence and a message, if those are warranted in a court proceeding. And there is no statute of limitations for those federal charges.

[3:25 p.m.]

The conservation officer service focus…. Many people at the time, in 2017, said: “Why were charges not pressed?” There were a variety of reasons for that in British Columbia, but it was always the intent of British Columbia and the conservation officer service to work with federal authorities to prepare the most comprehensive, thoughtful, fair — obviously fair — package of material that could be considered by federal justice authorities to decide whether that case should proceed to court. It’s such a complex investigation that the federal authorities are still considering that. We all, of course, eagerly await a decision being made on that.

I know that the work put into preparing the case, the evidence and the material so that British Columbians and other Canadians could be assured that an event of that magnitude, an event of that severity, if it were caused by negligence, to whatever degree…. There would be a case created and evidence gathered that would allow our justice system to make that determination. And the very fact that we have a conservation officer service that will do investigations like that, I think, speaks to the importance that our conservation officer service has and plays in protecting the public interest on every level.

Most people, and I would say this probably included myself before spending time talking to conservation officers about their work and learning more about their work as the minister responsible, think of conservation officers that we see in our community, conservation officers we’ve met, and conservation officers we see on the news, if there are animals that are habituated and creating dangerous conflict or potential conflict situations for humans and communities, whether it be the stories we heard of coyotes in Stanley Park or bears that become habituated to garbage in forest interface communities. That’s what we think of.

Those who have been fortunate enough hear from conservation officers in schools and get some education about the work they do and about the risks that are faced by humans if we don’t ensure that we don’t think or act like it’s somehow a favour or a good thing to feed wild animals. I think we’ve all seen the signs that say: “A fed bear is a dead bear.” People don’t initially start out doing these things out of ill will, although they may well start out of a lack of information and a form of ignorance.

Conservation officers have an important educational role to play in ensuring that people have the knowledge they need to protect themselves, to protect their communities, to protect their children and, of course, to protect the animals who have a right to exist in their natural habitat. We have moved, as we have to when we establish communities, into areas that at one point were completely wild. They’re wild, and they’re available for the animals to roam in freely.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

When that changes, we need to ensure that enough of their habitat is protected. They can live, they can hunt, they can feed themselves, and they can feel free from threat. When we engage in behaviors that invite them…. And sometimes it’s not even a matter of inviting animals. If there’s a scarcity of food, they will go looking. If one of the places they go looking is people’s backyards with unsecured garbage, that’s where they’ll find food, and that’s where they’ll get used to food. That’s, of course, where there will be a potential threat to humans and children and others, for a variety of reasons. That’s why the educational role of conservation officers is so important.

[3:30 p.m.]

One of the things I do as minister…. It’s why it’s so important to me to ensure that we amend this act with this bill to ensure that we are not essentially demanding that conservation officers spend large amounts of administrative time returning to court to have an order that should be for 12 months in the first place. This bill seeks to make 12 months constantly extended, and all the work that has to be done to prepare that material.

One of the reasons I feel strongly that we need to do this is what I hear regularly when I go every year to the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention. One of the things my ministry does…. There are a number of functions that are integral to local government, whether it is approving waste management, whether it is helping municipalities deal with a number of the challenges they have with remediation and remediation approvals as they seek to expedite housing or economic development — but also, in rural communities, the conservation officer service.

It’s one of the things people identify as a key government service, for a variety of reasons, whether it is the interaction of the conservation officer service with members of the community; whether it is the education provided by conservation officers in the school system; whether it is the sense of security people have when they know a conservation officer can respond quickly to a threat or a danger from wildlife, from human-wildlife conflict; whether it is people’s frustration that polluters are going unchallenged, uninvestigated or unticketed if they believe that because there isn’t a conservation officer in the area, they can get away with stuff.

What I hear from local government is: why isn’t there a conservation officer in our town? It’s an important question because conservation officers provide so many services, some of which I’ve outlined and others of which I’ll talk about.

We do our best. The truth is that it would be great to have a conservation officer in every small community in British Columbia, but as members of this House know, despite the fact that I’m very proud of the fact that we have raised the budget for conservation officers, we’ve increased the number of conservation officers, we’ve trained more people to be conservation officers, and we’ve built a better service, we’ve had to go to a regional response model. We constantly assess that against the number of calls received by the conservation officer service for assistance, and we adjust as necessary.

We place our conservation officers in the communities where there is the highest risk. In other cases, we locate them strategically on a regional basis and, hopefully, so that when there is a call, they are able to respond as quickly as possible and respond with support. Not every situation in which a conservation officer inserts themselves is a safe one, and we want to ensure they’re safe.

The message that I get from local government…. They accept that. They’re reassured that we don’t make arbitrary decisions about where officers will be stationed, that if the number of calls to the service goes up in an area, we will notice it, and we will prioritize and rank that and respond to it. But the message I constantly get is that conservation officers are valued members of the community.

People will tell me stories about a particular conserv­ation officer and how they’ve interacted with children in the community and what it’s meant to the community, the educational programs that the conservation officer has undertaken with members of the community to ensure that people know what it means when they’re careless with their garbage, their food or their fruit trees that they’re not harvesting — that people understand that there is a consequence of that. It may be a consequence for the animals that they love to watch and see, that they don’t want to hurt, or it may be a consequence for their children or their pets or their community.

[3:35 p.m.]

What we want to do in these cases is protect people while protecting the rights of the animals to live in their natural habitat and not to have their habits and what they’re used to in terms of gathering food, in a sense, perverted by easy access to inappropriate food that is simply too close to human communities and creates a risk.

I want to just tell a little story from my past weekend, the end of last week and this weekend. I had the opportunity to take a trip to the Central Coast to view some of the conservancies that were part of the Great Bear Rainforest and to meet and talk with people in Indigenous communities, people who worked in the area of conservation as well as the B.C. Parks employees who are administering these areas.

I was very glad to be reconnected and reintroduced to one of our outstanding park rangers, who is also currently an acting area supervisor and plays a tremendous role in the area. His name is Steve Hodgson. One of the things that is so incredible about Steve is the relationships that he’s built with the nations in the area — the Heiltsuk, the Kitasoo/Xai’xais, the Nuxalk Nation — in working with them and their guardian programs to ensure that we are managing conservancy areas in traditional Indigenous territories with great sensitivity and collaboratively and we’re recognizing the knowledge, the experience, the values, the deep sense of cultural connection that Indigenous peoples bring to these areas.

Steve is well regarded by the Indigenous people in the area because he has taken the time over many years to engage with them, to listen to them, to deal with them respectfully, to look for solutions. But because the Central Coast is a large and disparate area, people have to do a number of functions. Steve actually also functions as a conservation officer, or as he says: “When I get home from my park duties, I’m on duty as a conservation officer if people make a call because there’s an incident or there’s a threat or they feel that the services of a conservation officer are needed.”

Steve and I were on the boat. We had a chance to have a conversation, and we were talking about the many reports that we hear about “problem bears” in Bella Coola and the surrounding areas and how he actually deals with people who have properties where bears are being attracted to fruit that falls off the trees — plums, apples. I mean, if you were a hungry bear and you saw a lot of fruit lying on the ground, you’d want to go get it. That’s what they do, and that’s why we have laws that say that people are responsible for managing animal attractants. What that actually means is you either have to fence off your property, preferably with an electric fence, to keep the animals away, or ensure that the fruit isn’t a ready attractant for them.

In talking to Steve, he talked about the process he goes through with people who may initially call and say: “Well, you should shoot that bear. That bear is a threat to me. That bear is going to come back.” I said: “So do you just take out the ticket book and write them up and say, ‘It’s your fault. You’ve got this fruit here. It’s falling on the ground’?” He said: “Well, I could do that, but I probably wouldn’t have a very good relationship with them. They’re my neighbours. I talk to them one day, and that night, I look out my front window, and they’re driving down the road in front of my house. They’re talking to me. They’re talking to my kids. They’re interacting with my wife. So what I want to do is be effective.”

[3:40 p.m.]

He talked about…. He may start by saying, “Well, why do you think the bears are attracted to your property?” and pointing out the fruit and talking about the things that can be done to keep the bears from the fruit and from being a threat.

We know. I’m sure members of this House have received correspondence or had conversations that are not dissimilar to many of the ones that I’ve had in two forms. One is: “Kill those animals that are threatening me and my family, and kill them quick.” Then there’s another tranche of emails that I get, which is: “Why is the conservation officer constantly killing these animals? Why don’t you address the issues and the people that are attracting them?”

I want to be clear. When there is a real threat to humans or to communities or to families, the conservation officers will take the action necessary, if it’s not practical to consider rewilding a bear or relocating a bear or another animal. At some point, they’ve become too habituated to break that habit, so the goal is to protect communities.

But the broader goal is to prevent animals from getting habituated in that way. That is by taking action with people who are leaving their garbage loose, who have properties that have lots of attractants in them that aren’t being properly managed or protected. That’s best done by education. It’s best done by establishing relationships.

For all of us who have spent any time at all living in rural communities — and this is not untrue in neighborhoods in urban communities; I’ve lived in both — relationships are important. If you want people to listen to you, if you want people to consider a behaviour change, they have to trust you. They have to feel respected by you. They have to believe that you are a member of the community, just like them, and that you care about many of the same things they do, irrespective of the fact — if in fact — you have certain authorities as a public safety officer.

The approach that Steve talked about was, I believe, the right one. It takes time. It takes time to connect with people. It takes time to change people’s habits. It doesn’t happen with one conversation. It doesn’t happen by writing one ticket. It happens by being a member of the community, by showing people alternatives, by convincing them there are other ways to behave that are better for them, better for their families, better for the environment, better for wildlife, and that these things are possible.

Steve also talked to me. He gave me some colourful and funny examples of people who took some time to change their habits and the way they interacted with nature but did so nonetheless. He also told me some quite moving stories about…. He gave an example of a restorative justice process that was offered in place of a court hearing with someone who had violated some environmental rules in Indigenous territory, with the Indigenous people, and the emotional moment when the person really realized the impact on other people of what they had done and how that had led to very significant behavior change over two generations of that person’s family. That resulted in a very lengthy, constructive, supportive and mutually beneficial relationship with the nations.

That’s why it is important for conservation officers to do all aspects of their job, not to be stuck at desks, filling out paperwork every three months to return to court to seek an extension on the holding of evidence. It’s because there are very important things for these people to do.

[3:45 p.m.]

In 1905, we have game wardens concerned with inci­dents of poaching, concerned with safety of citizens, concerned with protecting people and communities and the resources of British Columbia. That evolution has hap­pened over decades.

There are three units in the conservation officer service. There are the uniformed officers, who are in provincial operations. There’s the provincial investigations unit, which undertakes the kind of investigations that we’ve been talking about. That may result in the seizing of evidence, the holding of evidence, the presenting of material for the courts, to support a decision about whether or not to proceed with charges and then to support those charges in court, if that’s where they go. Then, of course, there are a variety of people who provide program support throughout the system for both the investigations unit and the operations unit.

We have conservation officers located in 45 communities throughout British Columbia, many of whom, as I mentioned previously, work on a regional basis. They will move throughout the region as needed. They will respond to calls. They are not fixed in one place, and they cover as much territory as effectively as they can. Headquarters, of course, is here in Victoria.

They’re trained. They’re dedicated. They’re responsible for enforcing 33 federal and provincial statutes. They hold special provincial constable status under the Police Act, and they have an unrestricted appointment to enforce acts and statutes and to protect the public and to preserve the peace.

That’s why it is very important that they have the same abilities as all other people who have status under the Police Act and who serve as public safety officers to hold evidence for a reasonable period of time. That both protects the rights of an affected party from whom evidence has been seized but also ensure that the public is confident that the public interest is being upheld, that people who break the law will be held to account and that the system won’t stumble or fail because of administrative failings.

Conservation officers work with many private and public partners. They work with compliance and enforcement officers in the Ministry of Forests. They work with the RCMP. They work with Environment Canada. They work with the department of fisheries, with First Nations and with local and provincial stakeholders. They do this to reduce human-wildlife conflict. They do this to prevent pollution. They do this to prevent environmental catastrophes. They do this to ensure that environmental laws are upheld and that people follow them. They, of course, investigate where these transgressions take place.

Their motto is: “Integrity, service and protection.” I think that really sums up, in pretty simple terms, how this agency, B.C.’s conservation officer service, deals with the many complex challenges of modern-day environmental law enforcement. It is not easy. Law enforcement in any jurisdiction is not easy.

We see that every day on the news. We see people who have to make, often, very quick judgments under extreme pressure, trying to do the right thing and, of course, subject to review by independent oversight agencies, by the courts, by their peers, by the public. Nonetheless, they play an important role in protecting the public. It’s not easy.

Every year I have a chance to meet with and talk with conservation officers. I have a chance to see the young people who are recruited to be conservation officers, who either are on their way to the training school in Alberta or have recently returned, who are beginning their first months of fieldwork in preparation to becoming fully authorized conservation officers. They are enthusiastic. They are also very, very serious.

[3:50 p.m.]

When you consider that you’re applying for and entering a job where you’re uniformed, where you’re a symbol of the law, where you’re armed, where you might have to potentially use those arms, where you may, in faraway, isolated areas, have to encounter and address people who are also armed, who may or may not welcome your presence or your opinion that they’re conducting themselves in a way that is unlawful and which they should cease doing…. There’s a lot of potential stress and tension.

I look at these young people. I see their pride in what they’ve learned, their pride in the work that they’re committing to doing, their desire to do a good job. Of course, the response to the considerable rigours of the training that they undertake…. It’s not easy.

Increasingly, over the years, I’ve noticed more women joining the conservation officer service. We’ve made a conscious effort to reflect a far greater diversity of British Columbians and, particularly, to recruit Indigenous people to be conservation officers as well as to develop collaborative and intertwined relationships between conservation officers, park rangers and officers and Indigenous guar­dians, both in the Interior and on the coast. This is work that continues.

I look forward to meeting some of these conservation officers again, after they’re a couple of years out from graduation, when they’ve been in the field and they’ve been doing the work for some time. They can tell me some of the stories about their best days as well as their worst days. There are worst days. It can be dangerous work. I referenced that.

Let me talk about a couple of officers who died in the course of carrying out their duties. Officers, of course, have to deal with wild animals, and that can be threatening. They’re managing human-wildlife conflict.

I want to talk about two conservation officers who died while carrying out their duties, one of whom was shot and killed on this day in 1932, game warden Albert E. Farey, as well as another game warden, Dennis Greenwood, who died in 1930.

On October 3, 1932, game warden Albert E. Farey was shot and killed in Lillooet while inspecting an illegally possessed deer hide. Albert Farey was a decorated World War I veteran. He obviously served the country, protected people, placed himself at risk. He was also described as a popular officer with not only a splendid war record but a splendid peacetime record.

There’s a history to the killing of Albert E. Farey. In 1929, in the course of carrying out his duties, Albert Farey charged a person named Frank Gott with illegal possession of a deer carcass and issued a fine of $25. In today’s dollars, that would be around $300. I’m not suggesting the amount of money is meaningless. That’s the cost of a deterrent to illegal activity. Nonetheless, Frank Gott held a grudge against Albert E. Farey for the next three years.

[3:55 p.m.]

On October 3, 1932, Frank Gott had set up a hunting camp along the north fork of the Bridge River. Shortly after setting up the camp, Game Warden Farey made contact with Gott and the hunters that were accompanying Gott. He had a brief conversation with Gott, and he decided to search the camp and its surrounding area. Who knows what motivated Albert E. Farey to do the search, but he found and uncovered a bag containing a deer hide. The hide did not have the proper species tag attached, which made its possession illegal.

At some point, during his questioning of Gott, which was his job and his duty — and obviously, he would have had to handle with sensitivity — Warden Farey turned away to inspect the deer hide more closely, and Frank Gott shot him twice in the back, and he killed him instantly. A witness said: “I saw Frank bring the rifle up about halfway and fire. Mr. Farey fell at the first shot.” After shooting the warden, Gott handed the rifle over to one of his companions and walked calmly into the bush.

I’m trying to imagine. I never worked as a conservation officer, but I did work as a compliance and enforcement officer in the Ministry of Forests, and not everybody that I was talking to about complying with the Forest Act and the requirements of the Forest Act and the regulations was perfectly thrilled to have me explain the law to them and instruct them that they’d be really better off, and we’d all be better off, if they followed the law. Sometimes they understood and got it; sometimes they grumbled and were cranky. And sometimes they were kind of hostile and intimidating.

I try to imagine what it would be like to walk into a situation, isolated in the bush, doing my job, enforcing it with somebody that I knew had held a grudge against me for several years, who was armed, and then to pay for that with my life. It’s pretty incomprehensible, but I assume that most, if not all, conservation officers have wondered about that at various points in their career, and that it’s, in fact, a real threat.

The story goes on about Frank Gott and Albert E. Farey. As I mentioned, Gott walked into the bush, fairly calm, after killing a man. After a two-day manhunt, he was confronted by game wardens at a crossing on the Bridge River. He refused to surrender. He ignored several warning shots and was shot and wounded in the leg as he tried to escape. He wasn’t killed. He was wounded in the leg as he tried to escape. He never stood trial for the killing, because he died enroute to the hospital from a combination of shock and advanced tuberculosis.

We remember today Game Warden Albert Farey for his work to enforce poaching laws, his work to protect and uphold British Columbia laws, his work to be part of the community. As was said, an honourable person in peacetime and then, of course, his service to all Canadians during a period of war.

It’s honourable work. It’s hard work. It’s potentially threatening work. It’s potentially dangerous work. We, I think, owe gratitude and support to the women and men who choose to do that work. I’m really happy to have this opportunity to talk about the nature of that work and why it’s so important that we maximize their efforts and keep them as safe as possible.

[4:00 p.m.]

One of the really great honours that I have each year is getting to present the Conservation Officer of the Year awards. This past year my colleague, the Minister of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship, stood in for me to meet with the family of Sgt. Steve Ackles, who passed away in March 2021 after an illness. Sergeant Ackles was named Conservation Officer of the Year in 2020, and the Minister of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship got to meet with his family. His son Kyle Ackles, who followed in his father’s footsteps, became an inspector with the conservation officer service, general investigations section.

I think Sgt. Steve Ackles — I will assume — did his job with dignity. I know that, or he wouldn’t have been Conservation Officer of the Year. He did it effectively. He did it with honour, but I assume he also did it with a great sense of joy and dedication that he communicated to his family and his children, including his son Kyle, who, faced with all of the opportunities for how to spend one’s life in gainful employment for the rest of our remaining years, chose to join the conservation officer service just like his dad.

Sergeant Ackles had a lot of relevant experience. He’d worked in logging. He’d worked in construction for many years before he looked for a career change. And when he did a career assessment — this is interesting — it was suggested to him that a conservation officer job might be better suited for him. I assume there might be a number of reasons for this. He might have had a great love of the outdoors, a great love of wildlife, a love of nature and a desire to be able to bring that together with his day-to-day working life as well as to provide the kind of service that British Columbians rely on to protect our natural heritage, our wildlife — and to uphold our laws, of course.

Not in his 20s or even his 30s but in his 40s he returned to university to train for this new role, and he became a conservation officer in 2005, and he was proud. I’m told he was the epitome of a good conservation officer. He was passionate about protecting the environment, fish and wildlife, and he had a work ethic second to no one. He was respected. He worked hard. He was dedicated to his job. He wanted to do it effectively, and he wanted to do it to protect British Columbians.

His son Kyle said that coming to his career with the conservation officer service later in life gave Steve a bigger, better appreciation for the job. He would often say something that many of us sometimes get to say and probably wish that we would get to say every day of our lives: “I can’t believe I get paid to do this.”

That’s not a bad way to feel about your job. And frankly, for the public of British Columbia, paying for the work of Steve Ackles and other conservation officers with our tax dollars, we want them to feel that way, not because we want them to work for free — I want to be clear about that; they earn every cent they get paid — but because we want them to be dedicated to their job and love their job.

Steve’s career took him to various postings throughout B.C. — Nanaimo; Port Alberni, close to where he raised his family in Parksville; and his last position was as a sergeant in the Omineca region. He was a predator attack team specialist and a valued member of his community.

He made a huge difference in the lives of his colleagues — who learned from him, who enjoyed working with him, who could rely on him, who are probably inspired by him; I mentioned his reputation for having a strong work ethic — and of course, in the lives of his friends and family and his community. He was known for his humour as well as a sometimes blunt speaking style.

I talked earlier about how important it is for conservation officers to be able to connect with people in the community, not to simply be the tough cop or to write the tickets or to come in and just hammer people for transgressions or behaviour. Obviously, the job is to enforce the law, and they take that seriously, and we want them to.

[4:05 p.m.]

We also want them to see where there’s an opportunity to change people’s behaviour, to educate them, to inspire them, to engage them, and that sometimes involves a blunt speaking style, a sense of humour, a sense of community, a sense of connection.

Steve could swap field stories with fellow officers. He could speak passionately to the media about bear conflicts and human actions that resulted in them. He knew how to connect with people. He knew how to educate. He knew how to do his job, not just in a narrow bandwidth of: “This is the law. I’m out in the field. If I see somebody breaking it, this is what I do to enforce it.” He understood that there were a number of ways to get to a good result. And getting to a good and permanent result sometimes requires bluntness, both in action and speech, and sometimes it requires connection.

I’m told that no matter how busy he was, Steve always made the time to help others. He would share his knowledge with students, particularly students who were interested in joining him on the career path to be a conservation officer. He spent countless hours mentoring students at Vancouver Island University.

I know that Steve’s son Kyle carries himself with the same professionalism, the same appreciation for our natural environment, the same thoughtfulness that his father did. I’m pretty sure that all the conservation officers who worked with Steve took the same message, that they learned from him, and I’m pretty sure that the people in the communities in which Steve worked also learned from him and appreciated him.

I’m pretty sure that the students that were mentored by Steve listened to him carefully and took good lessons. I’m sure those who were thinking of becoming conservation officers, or the possibility of becoming conservation officers or working in resource management or compliance and enforcement in some way, listened to him carefully. Some of them would have been inspired to pursue that dream.

Others might have thought, “That sounds like really important, fascinating and interesting work, but I’m probably not cut out for it, given what I’ve heard,” and would have made other choices but also would have come away with the appreciation that I have — and that I hope we all have — for the role that conservation officers play in protecting our environment, in educating British Columbians, in protecting wildlife and in protecting humans from human-wildlife conflict and incidents.

That’s, again, why it’s so important that we, through this bill, amend the act to ensure that we support conservation officers, that we don’t effectively tie their hands behind their backs or chain them to a desk or force them to do unnecessary — not necessary but unnecessary — administrative work when they could be out in the community helping people, protecting people, protecting the community and protecting the incredible wildlife that we have in British Columbia that is one of the things that makes our beautiful province so unique.

Part of that ensures that wildlife is managed appropriately, a job shared with the natural resource officers in the Ministry of Forests — that when people hunt for food, it’s done in a way that’s in accordance with regulations and laws that are set out to ensure that wildlife is sustained, that animals are not hunted to the brink of extinction or to a dangerous state. We all know that collectively, as human beings, we haven’t always done that as effectively as we now know we should and want to do.

[4:10 p.m.]

I mentioned my trip to the Central Coast. I think it’s probably the all-time best trip I’ll ever have taken as a minister because of the conversations I had with the Indigenous people and leaders about their culture, about what the land meant to them, about what the conservancies meant to them, about the collaboration that they wanted to do with other people who had entered the territory, some of whom set up a variety of enterprises to make a living.

They wanted to collaborate with them so there was room for everyone to live well, with well-being, but in a way that was consistent with traditions and Indigenous laws as well as protecting the beauty and the habitat and the values and the food sources that are the basis of Indigenous life and culture for millennia.

I said it was a great trip. That was part of it, having those conversations. Part of it was learning about the work of park rangers and conservation officers in remote areas from Steve Hodgson, hearing some colourful stories about interactions with people locally.

But it was also just incredibly beautiful to be on the ocean, to be suddenly surprised by, in the first instance, the sound of humpback whales, because it was very foggy and misty, and as much as I would have loved to see them, I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see more than five feet from the edge of the boat, but I could hear them. I could hear the blow, and then later, when the fog lifted the next day, I was able to see a humpback whale with its feeding rings.

I was able to see orcas, and I was also able to go for a hike through the bush with the chief councillor of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais,down a river with chum salmon spawning and dead chum salmon on the side of the river, and wait patiently and see a couple of grizzly bears come to do some fishing.

It’s an incredible experience. I know ensuring that in the future, I and others and many generations of British Columbians have the opportunity to have that experience and that Indigenous people have the opportunity to see the foundations of their way of life for millennia maintained…. Conservation officers are part of the fabric, along with our laws that they enforce, that makes that possible.

Of course, we are changing the way we work. I’ve mentioned the collaborative work of park rangers with Indigenous people on management. One of the agreements we signed with the Nuxalk and the Kitasoo/Xai’xais was to give, after years of working side by side with them and talking about managing activities in conservancy areas, through a memorandum of understanding, the coastal guardians of those two nations full authority of park rangers in their territories, their traditional territories, within B.C. Parks conservancy areas.

We are also looking at and have been doing similar kinds of work with Indigenous people in collaboration with the conservation officer service. I’ve talked to people both in B.C. Parks and the conservation officer service who have learned so much from that engagement with Indigenous people, from the collaborations that they’ve undertaken, from the history, from learning about the culture, from learning why a particular area is so important, why it has cultural meaning to the nation, why it’s not just another place among many places and why we can and should work together in areas of resource management and environmental management and wildlife management and protection of conservancies in a way that actually forms a constructive basis for reconciliation.

[4:15 p.m.]

There’s so much more work to do, and I know that the conservation officer service is changing. It’s learning. It’s growing. It’s welcoming these interactions, and everything we can do as legislators to support that is welcome to them. But I think it’s an addition to our province, to our culture, to our history and to reconciliation and to building a better future where we live together to gradually replace — not obliterate or make us forget, but to replace — the actions of the past, which we know now were actions that should not have taken place with respect to managing land without any reference to the original inhabitants, without any reference to their laws, without any reference to their rights and title and, in fact, ripping apart families by taking their children away.

We have many areas in which we can work to make a difference, many areas in which we can advance reconciliation. Every time I have a chance to talk to Indigenous leaders or sign an agreement with Indigenous leaders that acknowledges their history, their role, their knowledge and what we can gain from their knowledge by working together with them, I’m inspired. I am impressed by the grace with which they accept the fact that a change, which should never have been necessary because we shouldn’t be changing from behaviour we now recognize was inappropriate and wrong, but the pace of that change…. They will focus on: “We may be impatient, but we’re moving forward, and we’re happy to be working with you.”

I want to talk a little bit about some of the meetings I’ve had with conservation officers over the years. Back in February 2020, just before the pandemic — before we had two years of not seeing people or meeting with people or talking to people face to face — I was in Prince George, and I had a chance to visit the conservation officer service office in the region and talk to the staff.

I met with a number of the inspectors and officers who are in the field each day, who are working on the investigations. This takes us back to the importance of ensuring that we amend the act with this bill to not tie them down unnecessarily or allow them to hold evidence only for three months, unless they can convince a court to give them an extension, but to hold it for a reasonable period of time so it can be useful in preparing the recommendations for charges.

I also had a chance to meet some of the incredible support and administrative staff that keep the office running. They enable the officers to do their work in the field.

Just as a side note, I’ve talked to park rangers and conservation officers who, particularly when we’ve had some trouble filling administrative jobs in remote regions — I remember this from my own past as a compliance and enforcement officer — will say: “You know, it’s not a very good use of my time to be stuck at a computer and the desk when I should be in the field. There are other people who could be doing that work and be happy to have that job.”

The administrative staff and the support staff who work in the conservation officer offices keeping the office running, enabling the officers to focus on what they do best, on what their skills and training have equipped them to do, are an incredible part of the backbone of the conservation officer service.

We got together to take a photo at the end of the meeting, and a couple of officers thought twice and decided they shouldn’t be in the photo if it was going to be posted online. The reason was that some of their work involved a high degree of confidentiality. Like other law enforcement officers, they will sometimes work undercover, and they didn’t want their faces to be recognizable as being conservation officers.

At first, we were just sort of: “Oh come on. Let’s all have a picture. We’ll show the conservation officer family. We’ll show your work. I’m proud to be here with you.”

[4:20 p.m.]

When they said that, it made me just take a step back and think about what so much of their work involves, whether it is out in the field, out in the bush, in uniform; whether it is approaching people who are armed as hunters to whom they need to talk, or when they have reason to believe they should do some investigation to ensure that the animals that are being hunted or taken are in accordance with all the proper permits and tagging and limits, etc., and not knowing for sure what sort of reaction they’re going to get or what sort of state of mind the people will be in that they’re encountering and whether, in fact, it’s a threat to them. That would be an incredible amount of tension to live with.

It’s work that needs to be done, and it’s work they do. It’s work that all public safety officers do. I often think that we think of people in uniforms with arms and equipment, and we think: “Well, they’re well set up to withstand any threat.” But I think the truth is that it’s a vulnerable job. It’s a stressful job. Any time anyone I’ve talked to who’s had to take action in a position like that has talked to me about it, it’s clear that they’re proud of their work. They know it’s important. But it’s stressful, and there are often personal consequences that result from confrontations.

Then, I thought, when these officers explained why they didn’t want to be in the picture, how difficult it would be to be under cover. I mean, you go under cover for an investigation, for a reason. You are trying to figure out who did what, where to get some evidence of it. It’s certainly quite possible that the people you’re investigating, especially if you’re doing it under cover, are going to be threatened by your actions. When you’re off the job, leaving the office, going back to work in your community, going back to be with your family and kids, you want to feel safe, and you want your family and kids to feel safe.

People do this work because they believe in justice. They believe in fairness. They believe in upholding the laws of our province so that our natural environment and the species in our natural environment — whether it’s flora or fauna, fish or wildlife — are kept whole, continues, are sustained and that what we call beautiful British Columbia remains beautiful for generations to come.

Through this amendment to the Environmental Management Act, we’re working to help support conservation officers. I want to be clear. It seems like a simple administrative amendment. We’re correcting what was an oversight, frankly, but it gives us the opportunity to think about what it means as legislators to allow the people who take these important jobs as conservation officers — enables them to be effective, enables them to be efficient, enables them to believe that every hour of every working day is being used as effectively as it can be, not simply doing something that they shouldn’t have to do and they don’t need to do or they wouldn’t need to do and won’t need to do after we amend this act.

Let me just take a couple of moments to talk about some of the recent work that the conservation officer service carries out each day. These are just a few of the recent fines that have been handed out to help protect our environment and uphold our laws to protect fish and wildlife in our province.

I talked about my trip to the central coast in September. Five individuals who were fishing near Bella Coola were each handed a $575 fine for fishing using barbed hooks, which happens to be a contravention of the B.C. sport-fishing regulations.

People go out, and they fish. Some people think, “You know, the rules don’t apply to me,” or “I don’t really see the purpose of them, so I’m just going to give myself the best chance to get this fish.”

[4:25 p.m.]

It’s not in the best interests of our fishery. It’s not in the best interests of the health of fish in British Columbia. It’s not even in the best interests of other sport fishers. That’s why we have these regulations, and that’s why we need conservation officers to enforce them. And every minute, every hour that a conservation officer is tied to a desk, preparing a repeat application for holding seized evidence, is a minute and an hour that they’re not spending out in the field doing the other things we want them to do.

At the end of August, the B.C. conservation officer service joined in a roadside checkpoint with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the RCMP on Highway 118. They issued $2,200 in fines, and they seized dozens of salmon due to improper transportation, im­proper licences and being over limits.

We know that we used to have a hugely abundant salmon fishery in British Columbia. It’s iconic. I’ve never met a British Columbian who wasn’t awed by a photo of a salmon, by seeing a salmon — those who eat fish, by eating a salmon — and who don’t think that salmon are part of our identity. We also know that we have tenuous salmon fisheries in many parts of British Columbia, and we’ve taken incredible actions in our government and spent a lot of money to rebuild the salmon fishery to try to protect salmon, both their habitat and their ability to survive in the wild and to spawn and to reproduce and to have abundant runs in the future. Sometimes, in some places, those runs surprise us, and they are abundant and welcome.

Other times we stare wide-eyed at the media reports that tell us that the fishery is collapsing. We don’t have to think: “That can’t be true” or “It won’t happen.” We know it happened with the cod fishery on the east coast. So when we hear stories that the return of fish is far under what was projected, that we’re not sure there’s enough salmon to sustain commercial, Indigenous food or sport fishery and then continue to have runs in the future to ensure a healthy and abundant replenishment and rebirth of our salmon populations, it is a real threat.

It is important to all of us that our government, working with the federal government, fund salmon restoration strategies that will build up our stocks and protect our fish and protect the habitat on which they depend.

When we find people who are exceeding limits, improperly fishing, don’t have licences, flouting the law, it’s conservation officers — along with, of course, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and sometimes the RCMP — that will make a difference, that will actually punish people for that behavior and that will send a message to other people that you can’t do it. You can’t get away with it. We need conservation officers as an integral part of all of our efforts to protect and restore our wild salmon fishery.

Just last week we had an enforcement blitz in the Lower Mainland, and it resulted in upwards of more than $7,000 in fines. There were more than 200 angler compliance checks across a number of rivers. There were altogether 25 violation tickets issued — angling without a licence, fishing with prohibited gear and overretention among the most common offences.

[4:30 p.m.]

[S. Chandra Herbert in the chair.]

It’s another example of conservation officers going out and ensuring — where people think that the law doesn’t apply to them, although it’s hard for me to imagine people could think this, and-or that nothing they do will really make a difference in the survival of salmon or our fishery in British Columbia — that we have people who will enforce the law, who will send the message, who will do the investigations, who will issue the fines, who will bring things back into check.

Everything that we can do that puts people in the field, boots on the ground, rather than filling out forms in an office to get an extension, is part of that.

Let me talk a bit about the kind of long-term investigations this amendment to the Environmental Management Act will impact. There was a court case that was recently wrapped up in Port Hardy provincial court. A man from Calgary received a $2,875 penalty and a two-year hunting ban for using a B.C. resident licence to hunt, despite living in Alberta. It was clearly illegal. The incident occurred in October 2019, near Woss on Vancouver Island.

Conservation officers were conducting hunting compliance checks. Hunting big game in B.C. as a non-resident — without being accompanied by a licensed guide, an assistant guide with written authorization or a person with the required permits — is an offence under the B.C. Wildlife Act. It’s another example of investigation, of being on the ground, of correcting illegal behavior and of sending a message to others, whether they’re from outside British Columbia or inside British Columbia, that you can’t flout the law.

The law is there for a reason. The law is there to protect our wildlife. Laws are there to protect the environment. That’s why we have them, and that’s why we have a conservation officer to conduct them.

Let me talk a bit about the Environmental Management Act generally and the role it plays, seeing as we’re amending the Environmental Management Act to ensure that conservation officers have the greatest ability to conduct thorough investigations, retain evidence required for those investigations and to create, if it exists, a compelling, provable case for counsel to take to court. EMA, or the Environmental Management Act, helps implement a shift to risk- and results-based regulation of waste management in B.C. It’s designed to reduce the amount of waste discharge permits in the province.

By eliminating the requirement of permitting to low- and medium-risk activities, more focus can be given to those activities of the highest risk. That’s not to say low- and medium-risk activities aren’t monitored and action taken, but there are codes of practice that govern them. We try, through the Environmental Management Act, to protect our natural environment, our water, our soils, our wildlife and human health.

EMA creates the power to correct detrimental environmental impacts and environmental emergencies. It allows research and investigative activities to occur. It’s helping to prepare policies, objectives and standards for the protection and management of the environment. It’s built to provide help with preparing environmental plans for flood control, drainage, soil conservation, water resource management, waste management and air quality management. It regulates certain environmental assessments.

I mentioned some time ago about the number of meetings I have with local governments, at the Union of B.C. Municipalities, around the activities of my ministry and the importance of conservation officers. I also talked about people’s desire to enhance the economy of their community and region by finding ways to clean up contaminated sites to ensure that they’re addressed, but to also get effective and efficient permitting that allows that to take place as the site is prepared to be developed.

[4:35 p.m.]

There is an advantage to redeveloping on a brownfield site, because part of redeveloping involves cleaning it up. That’s why we have requirements for purchasers to clean up the sites if they haven’t been cleaned up by the people selling them. It’s also why, by the way, we’re working on a public interest bonding strategy to ensure that the people who pollute an area in the first place are the people who are responsible for cleaning it up — not the taxpayer.

We have taken some, I think, important measures to work with municipalities to ensure that these brownfield sites can be cleaned up — in some cases, where it’s appropriate, where the contamination isn’t widespread, section by section — to allow the development to occur, encourage new developments and new investment to come to the area, to grow the economy, provide jobs for people, revitalize the community and, of course, clean up the sites that were polluted.

All of these things are required by EMA, but we’re also working to modernize the Environmental Management Act and work collaboratively with local communities and governments to ensure we actually apply these requirements to protect the environment, public health and communities in a sensible, effective way, a way that isn’t so rigid that it stands in the way of housing development or industrial development.

Of course, where do conservation officers come in? People have heard about the RAPP line, report a poacher or polluter. When people see activities taking place that are harming the environment, we encourage them to call the RAPP line. What happens when they call the RAPP line? At the end of that line, they’re going to end up getting a conservation officer in the conservation officer service who’s going to go out and investigate, who’s going to go out and follow up.

If there is a guilty party responsible for pollution, for dumping, for anything prohibited by law that negatively impacts the environment, the conservation officers will investigate. They will seize evidence if they need it, including electronic devices. With this amendment, they’ll be able to hold that evidence for a full 12 months as they carefully build the case, if there is a case there to be built, toward taking the polluter to court.

Also under the Environmental Management Act, environmental protection orders can be issued. Environmental emergencies and allocating required resources to control emergencies can take place. Money spent during an emergency can be recovered from the responsible party if they are still accessible and can be reached.

We have the notorious case of the Neucel pulp mill abandonment by foreign owners, where we weren’t able to do that, which is one of the reasons we’re now building a public interest bonding strategy: so we don’t have to go back after the fact to ensure that British Columbians are compensated for damage. We can do it through appropriate bonding.

It’s also important that we can regulate the confinement, storage, disposal and transportation of hazardous waste; that we approve discharges that require a permit; that we regulate spill prevention, reporting and response activities; that we regulate the production of regional solid, liquid and biomedical waste management plans; and that we designate sewage control areas. We delegate waste management powers to the greater Vancouver regional district and other eligible regions. We regulate contaminated sites. We issue pollution abatement orders. We establish and administer the conservation officer service as well as the Environmental Appeal Board.

[4:40 p.m.]

Overall, that’s the role of the Environmental Management Act in British Columbia, in protecting our environment, managing activities on the land base and the water, and regulating, within the bounds of our jurisdiction, those things that would pose a threat, whether it is the transportation of hazardous waste, the transportation of petroleum products or the transportation of chemicals. We then ensure that people are complying with the regulations and requirements about how to carry this work on and that if there is a violation, it is investigated, as I said, by many people, not the least of which are the conservation officers.

I mentioned that the conservation officer service had a proud history. It’s over 115 years. It’s gone through many iterations. It’s received many new responsibilities and duties. I’ll talk about one of the most recent ones, with respect to invasive species, in a moment. The service is always updating its methods, its training and its ability to do its job.

In 1905, the Department for the Protection of Game and Forests was established. A few years later the Game Protection Act was amended, and forestry was no longer a responsibility of the newly minted game department. The focus shifted from game and forests to a focus on game and wildlife.

In 1918, an amended Game Act abolished the game department and saw the B.C. Provincial Police assume responsibility for game laws enforcement. An advisory game enforcement board was set up to develop provincial policy and direct game management.

In 1926, a separate game laws enforcement branch was established within the B.C. Provincial Police.

You can see, through this development, that there’s always been a public safety officer component. What we now know is the conservation officer service was, in fact, part of the provincial police, and it assumed responsibility for game laws enforcement.

When the game department was re-established in 1929 after the game laws enforcement branch was established within the B.C. Provincial Police, the B.C. Provincial Police and Game Conservation Board were no longer responsible for the administration of fish and wildlife laws.

In 1934, the B.C. game commission was set up within the game department to direct game management and game laws enforcement.

Fast-forward 23 years. The fish and game branch was established and the B.C. game commission was disbanded.

In 1966, the fish and game branch was renamed the fish and wildlife branch.

The conservation officer service was established as a separate branch within the Ministry of Environment distinct from fish and wildlife in 1980.

In 1988, the conservation officer service began operating under the enforcement and outdoor recreational safety program.

In 1990, the enforcement and outdoor recreational safety program was renamed the enforcement branch. Sorry, it was…. In 1988, the conservation officer service, as I said, operated under the enforcement and outdoor recreational safety program and then, in 1990, was renamed the enforcement branch.

In 1994, the enforcement branch was merged with the environmental emergencies branch to become the en­forcement and environmental emergencies branch.

In 2002, the enforcement and environmental emergencies branch was split. The conservation officer service, which had previously operated under the larger branch, was confirmed in legislation as a separate and distinct government program. There is, of course, an environmental emergencies branch that continues.

[4:45 p.m.]

We have seen, through the evolution of the conservation officer service, going all the way back to the Department for the Protection of Game and Forests, becoming focused only on game, then on game conservation, game laws enforcement, with the B.C. game commission; a fish and game branch; the fish and wildlife branch, the first establishment of the conservation officer service, or the CO service; the breaking off from fish and wildlife; the adding of environmental emergencies; some period of time with outdoor recreational safety incorporated; and then to the modern-day conservation officer service, which, of course, continues to evolve.

While many people think of the conservation officer service solely as focused on game management or catching poachers or ensuring that people don’t exceed their limit; or whether it’s fish or wildlife, that people don’t fish or hunt with illegal equipment, there is, in fact, so much they do.

So much they do to protect the public. So much they do to educate people about the dangers of habituating wild animals to human sources of food that lead to human-wildlife conflict and, ultimately, lead to the reluctant decision, the difficult decision, the tragic decision to kill animals that should not have to be killed — if we, as humans, understood the role that we play in the interface between wildlife and our communities, and if we took the relatively simple precautions of securing our waste, securing our garbage, taking care of our fruit trees, taking care of our gardens, using electric fencing where appropriate, educating our children and not giving hungry animals an easy source to food that will give them sustenance in the short term and a short life in the long term.

Some people simply need education. Some people are careless, and the conservation officer service plays a role with both.

The conservation officer service is an important part of the community. It’s an important part of our community for many reasons. It is there to enforce a range of laws. It is there to assist with a range of investigations. It is there to ensure that where there is wrongdoing, it is corrected, that people are held accountable and that an appropriate case is built for counsel to consider whether or not to proceed with charges through our justice system.

They are there to gather evidence. They are there to examine the evidence. They are there to connect the dots, just like any police service, and to do that, of course, they need the evidence to be held for an appropriate period of time that allows them to do the work.

I mentioned the important role that the conservation officer service plays in preventing pollution and preventing poaching. I believe that most British Columbians want to protect our environment for our own well-being, for the well-being of our children, for the well-being of the future.

There’s an increased focus on living in harmony, on the important role sustaining ecosystems plays in ensuring that those aspects of the natural world that support our health, our well-being, our connection with nature, which has unbelievable spiritual and emotional value to people, mental health values…. People have rediscovered during the pandemic that the support for our economy depends on healthy ecosystems. And the conservation officer service has a role in enforcing our laws and conducting education programs about how to comply with the laws and why it’s important to do so.

[4:50 p.m.]

I want to take a moment. I mentioned the RAPP line, the report all poachers and polluters hotline. That’s the opportunity for British Columbians who see a transgression to ensure that the conservation officer service and our enforcement bodies, who simply cannot be everywhere all the time, have the knowledge they need to act quickly, to go to a site while it’s fresh and collect evidence, perhaps even to get there in time to catch somebody in the act of a transgression.

The RAPP program is a toll-free tip line. It’s also an online service. It allows British Columbians to report a known or suspected violation of fisheries, wildlife or environmental protection laws anonymously and without risk of confronting the offender. Sometimes we see somebody doing something they shouldn’t do, and sometimes it’s important, because of timeliness, to intervene or to protect someone else. Not everybody is comfortable doing that, and in many cases, it’s simply not safe. In fact, in a lot of cases, it’s not safe.

The RAPP line allows people to report wildlife-human interactions, where public safety may be at risk, as well as violations of laws. It’s 24-7. It’s simple and safe. It’s effective. It’s based on the principle that someone, other than the criminal, has information that can solve the crime. Just like the police use Crime Stoppers, the B.C. conservation officer service needs the help of British Columbians in catching poachers and polluters. That’s why we have the RAPP line.

To British Columbians, I say: don’t confront or attempt to apprehend a suspect. There’s a range of environmental violations that you could report. They include illegal waste disposal, whether it’s household or business waste, things that are dumped on Crown land.

We’ve all heard or seen the stories of people using nature as a dump for a used mattress. Another day we’ll talk about our extended producer responsibility and building out the program to recycle absolutely everything and creating, most importantly, the facilities and the infrastructure to allow us to do that and not simply collect it and dump it somewhere else, in somebody else’s land base.

We need to confront illegal waste disposal. We need to deal with unlawful open burning and dense smoke. It could be backyard burning. The number of emails and letters I get from people talking about and reporting air pollution problems, which are damaging their health or their children’s health, through asthma, because of open burning is quite considerable. We’ve taken measures to measure air quality and restrict open burning in places where the smoke will not clear quickly and will pose a threat to human health.

When people see an accumulation of smoke or illegal burning, they can use the RAPP line to report that. People may see somebody discharging or disposing of chemicals or sewage in lakes and rivers. It might be an illegal boat dump. It might be somebody who doesn’t know what to do with their waste, and they simply take it and throw it into a waterway or onto the land. It could be damage to fish and wildlife habitat. It could be people, for whatever reason, simply….

There was a recent story about ATVs and truckers racing through gravel beds on the Fraser River, which are spawning beds for threatened salmon and sturgeon. Finally the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which has authority, worked with the province and put in some mea­sures to prevent that. But the news reports were frightening.

Quite often people only become aware of these actions because somebody has phoned the RAPP line. It may be that you just simply know that somebody is exceeding their daily bag or catch limit.

[4:55 p.m.]

We have a conservation officer service to investigate, to charge, to issue tickets, to collect evidence. How do they know where to go, when there is just not a million of them on the ground? By citizens who see something that disturbs them, that they don’t like, and who will call the RAPP line, the report all poachers and polluters line, 1-877-952-7277, 1-877-952-RAPP.

Let me close my remarks by saying…. I mentioned new conservation officers and how inspired and inspiring they are. We have new conservation officers joining the service. Six new officers completed their training this past summer and are beginning to serve in communities across B.C. They graduated, at the end of August, from the Western Conservation Law Enforcement Academy, which is a joint recruit-training initiative between B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Yukon.

These new recruits will now go on a 12-month field training program with a veteran conservation officer, a mentor, as they refine their knowledge, their skills and their experience that they gained at the Western Conservation Law Enforcement Academy.

I want to welcome and thank the new recruits, who are headed to communities across B.C.: Katie Britton going to Kamloops, Blake Knibbs going to Vanderhoof–Burn Lake, Katelyn Dyck going to Port Alberni, Evelyn Robertson going to Mission, Stephanie Peeling going to Prince George and Sasha Zukewich going to Squamish.

Congratulations to you. It was a pleasure meeting you. You’re embarking on an exciting new career, a career that British Columbians, and British Columbia communities, value. You will be rewarded by this work. By passing the amendments to the Environmental Management Act through this bill, we are seeking to make your job easier, to make your work more efficient, to make it more effective and to remove any possible administrative impediments from you performing your work effectively.

I look forward to hearing from colleagues on both sides of the House about how they value conservation officers. Of course, your support for these amendments. I look forward to any questions at committee stage.

I welcome everyone celebrating B.C.’s conservation officer service.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Minister.

Just for our friends at the Table and at Hansard, can you confirm that you are moving second reading.

Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you very much, hon. Speaker. I confirm that I am moving second reading of this bill.

R. Merrifield: Wow. We were taking bets to see if you were going to actually take the full allotted time.

That was quite incredible. The minister did a great job, taking it right to the hour, especially…. This bill is actually, as rightly stated by the minister, a rewording, taking us back to 2019, to where the wording was previously. So there wasn’t a lot. I mean, this is really quite simple.

The minister aptly said that things take time. I’m kind of wondering why this took so much time, why it took three years to figure out that these changes that had been made were creating such inefficiencies for the conservation officers.

I will join the minister in celebrating our conservation officers. They are absolutely the unsung heroes of our environmental protection. In getting to know them and meeting them around the province…. They have an in­credibly difficult task. The minister mentioned the regionalization of their areas. This has added incredible amounts of travel and jurisdiction to their work, and it has become more difficult for them.

They are being slowly overworked. Their areas are larger, duties expanded without, really, more money or more staff. Lots of replacements but not necessarily an increase in the overall number.

[5:00 p.m.]

In fact I, too, want to celebrate one of these conservation officers, Joe Caravetta. He served in Bella Coola, Castlegar, Dease Lake, Grand Forks and Fernie. He started in 1977 with the fish and wildlife branch, and in 1997, he was the B.C. Conservation Officer of the Year. He has received his 30-year Long Service Award as well as Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. He’s done over 40 investigations, and he just recently retired.

It’s quite incredible what our conservation officers have to do. And if they are so important to us, which I wholeheartedly agree that they are, why is this the only bill that we’re actually debating? Why is this the only amendment that we’re actually making to make their jobs more efficient and easier? This isn’t just related to a three-month or 12-month…. We’ve got a bigger issue at hand.

Yes, this bill appears to correct a previously missed omission that occurred when the act was amended in 2019, but after three years, we’re just now getting around to fixing it.

At face value, this seems like a pretty straightforward, cut-and-dried bill, but there are some other omissions that may give the House pause. You see, the minister has yet to correct what was missed with his CleanBC roadmap to 2030 — namely, the lack of details as to how his government plans to reduce B.C.’s emissions. You know, it’s not just me that noticed this. The Sierra Club of B.C., an organization that the minister used to lead, noted that “the agreement does not provide the level of ambition and detail needed to ensure that B.C.’s 2030 targets are met or exceeded.”

It’s not just the details that are missing; the numbers keep changing. In the original CleanBC document, which was released in 2018, we have 18.9 megatonnes of reduction by the measures that were described. In 2021, noted in the accountability act, those exact same measures were only going to reduce now by 12.2 megatonnes. Then when the roadmap was released in 2021 to much fanfare, the same measures noted in the original CleanBC document were only now going to amount to a reduction of 10.5 megatonnes.

While we can celebrate the conservation officers that are going to get this three-month to 12-month alleviation, which is really just a restatement of the 2019, I think there are a lot of other things that we could be covering.

How are we to actually trust any of the numbers or the predictions at all? This ministry has the jurisdiction covered over 15 different ministries. During estimates, when I had asked the minister specifically about the accountability report and whether it creates confidence for the public; whether it’s in our conservation officers, who are front-facing to the public; or in the numbers, the minister answered with how achieving the numbers that are used in the report provincially, nationally and internationally is very complex and measuring is very complex.

We can all agree climate change is a complex issue, which is why the public is having a hard time trusting. But it’s trust that we need in order to actually have conservation officers that can create their jobs and do their jobs really well.

We have billions of dollars allocated to our initiatives in the CleanBC plan that span over 15 ministries. Without knowing exactly what the reduction of emissions will be for, those billions…. What is it going to get us?

Our emissions have gone down in 2020, but the whole world stopped. I heard the deer down on the end of my cul-de-sac. You could literally throw a baseball down Bernard in the middle of the day and not hit anyone. We went without seeing our families or our friends for months or years. Travel essentially stopped.

The prediction by most environmental groups was that emissions would go down significantly, and they went down in Canada. They went down in B.C., but B.C.’s only went down by half of what they did everywhere else in Canada — only half as much. So while we’re debating this bill that literally is just an alteration or an adjustment of a time frame that was what it proposed to be in 2019, I think we have more serious issues to talk about.

[5:05 p.m.]

We need some more decisive action that reflects tackling climate change. Instead, what we have is this record of reluctance or unwillingness on the part of this NDP government to take strong action on many critical issues, such as our broken health care system or the rising cost of living in this province or the mental health and overdose crisis that’s overwhelming communities large and small across our province.

Yes, let’s laud our conservation officers. Let’s absolutely support them in their roles. Let’s make their roles more efficient. Let’s stop the paperwork and bureaucracy that weigh them down. Absolutely. But let’s do so to make monumental change in actually preserving our environment.

We continually hear from this government that there’s more work to be done. Well, let’s not delay this work any longer. While I was really pleased to hear the minister’s support of conservation officers and I was really pleased to hear that we’re going to make their jobs more efficient, this is three years later. Three years later of having our conservation officers go to judges every three months to get extensions? Surely, this was drawn to someone’s attention much before this.

While we just heard the minister talk about things taking time, I have a hard time understanding why these changes have taken this much time. Look, this legislative amendment is necessary. Our conservation officers are working harder, longer hours, with less resources in larger areas than ever before.

We in British Columbia love our outdoors. We love to be in and amongst nature. While, as the minister pointed out, for some people, it’s an error of just not knowing what the rules are, for others, it’s outright unlawful, so we need our conservation officers to be out there. As the volume of people grows that are utilizing our forests and our rivers and our lakes, we also need our conservation officers to grow in their numbers, not just in their regional areas.

This bill is a drop in the bucket for them. I mean, at least it’s something, but it’s not everything that we need.

M. Dykeman: It is an absolute pleasure to rise today in the House to speak to Bill 26, the Environmental Management Amendment Act.

As we’ve heard from the minister, the role that conservation officers play is so important in our province. The B.C. conservation officer service began in 1905, and during the early days, policy was really minimal and training was virtually nonexistent. It wasn’t uncommon for new wardens just simply to be given a copy of the game laws and a badge and just sent on their way.

The modern conservation officer service, though, as we’ve seen, has evolved so much in that time. Over the years, we’ve seen the leading natural resource law enforcement agency just grow, specializing in public safety as it relates to human-wildlife conflict. The responsibilities include managing really complex commercial, environmental and industrial investigations and compliance and enforcement services.

The conservation officers are so highly trained, and they’re really dedicated individuals and are responsible for enforcing 33 federal and provincial statutes. I’m not sure if the House knows, but it’s really interesting that they hold special provincial constable status under the Police Act and have unrestricted appointment to enforce acts and statutes and protect the public and preserve the peace.

[5:10 p.m.]

This amendment is so important, because after seizing evidence, conservation officers really do need the time to properly process and provide information in a court-acceptable manner. By returning this authority, this will allow and alleviate the time needed on the courts and conservation officers and all the affected parties in hearings for time extensions.

The Environmental Management Act really covers important areas in protecting our environment and creates the power to correct really detrimental environmental impacts like allowing research and investigations to occur; helping prepare policies; helping prepare environmental plans for flood control, drainage, soil conservation, regulating certain environmental assessments, issuing environmental protection orders, approving discharges, regulating spill prevention…. It really has a wide range that it covers.

One of the things that I found as a farmer is that the roles that the B.C. conservation officers play are so important in the area of agriculture. We have a beautiful province with gorgeous scenery and a range of wildlife and a range of beautiful environmental assets that we are so proud of, and people around the world very much are envious of everything that we have to offer in this province.

With that, what happens when you farm is you have many situations where our beautiful wildlife and our farm life don’t necessarily belong in the same space, and it can create issues. The role that conservation officers play really is important to agriculture, in addition to all the other important roles that they play — providing information on how to protect your farm, how to create a wildlife management plan to deal with the challenges that can come from that.

As I was reading through the changes, I started to think a little bit about how important that role is. One of the conservation officers was in the paper recently talking about how they work to be front-line protectors of the environment. Sgt. Scott Norris was talking about how he really views his role as the best job in the world. In fact, the role of a conservation officer really is like an amalgamation of a lot of roles in the natural resource and law enforcement area: managing human-wildlife conflicts, complex commercial environmental and industrial investigations.

One of the stories he was talking about was related to bears. He says that bears are the source of a lot of funny stories. They’re incredibly smart. Sometimes they’ll get a call that a bear has been hanging around for weeks, but: “The second we step out of the truck, they see our uniform, and they hightail it into the bush. We’ve had to disguise ourselves,” Scott says, “wearing a civilian coat or jacket over a uniform and parking the truck a long way away and walking in, just to fool them.”

Bears, very much on a farm, are quite problematic. I was thinking back to many, many years ago when I first started farming. We had a bear that used to come. I think it was a little bit of an older cub, and it would come onto the farm.

We had this really large dog. This dog — I’m not sure if he was brave or if he was more brave than he was intelligent — would chase this bear down this farm, like just right to the back. This bear would run away every time. I think probably the bear was thinking: “If this dog is crazy enough to chase me down this farm, I probably have a reason to be concerned.” It would just, out of sheer confusion, leave the property.

Bears can live for 30 years. Their overall lifespan basically spans from 20 to 25 years. They actually possess a sense of smell five times better than a bloodhound or 250 times better than a human, and they have really great eyesight. They can sprint short distances at 50 kilometres an hour and climb trees and fences at nearly half that speed. You can imagine on a farm, that’s quite problematic. I mean, bears are lovely, but they’re lovely from a distance.

[5:15 p.m.]

The work the B.C. conservation officers do in providing support for farmers, outreach for people to understand and become educated in how to farm and how to be cautious about things like leaving food out when you’re camping and things like that to protect yourself and others around with that…. That’s really important work when you live in such a beautiful province, as we do, because we do encounter so much different wildlife, and that is a risk for our livestock.

I have a horse background, and one of the things that we encountered quite a bit in South Langley were challenges with cougars, which I believe are related to the puma. I’m not sure. But as I understand it, they are, and they are the largest feline predator. They’re highly adaptable and, actually, found in all sorts of habitats. That is a real risk with horses.

One of the things that’s interesting about the cougars is that they actually have hind legs that are longer than their front legs, and this gives them really incredible leaping power. They can actually leap up to 24 feet, which is quite shocking. That would be the length of a small bus. They’re really excellent climbers, but they move at 70 kilometres an hour — a shocking speed.

Being able to plan your farm and have a wildlife management plan and get help from something like a conservation officer is really the only way that you’re going to effectively deal with that, because you’re simply not going to outrun a cougar. That’s for sure. You’re not going to build a fence that’s high enough, unless you’re building a massive fortress with a moat — which might be pretty cool, actually, but probably not very practical.

Actually, you can’t build a moat, because they also swim. They can swim up to five kilometres, so really, your only option is just to build a very large fence. No, you need to plan better than that.

All joking aside, that’s why the work of the conservation officers and wildlife plans and support to help farmers protect their livestock and people who live in areas where you have that type of wildlife conflict is so important. You can’t even make the place dark, because they have night vision which is six times better than humans.

Why do I know that? I know that because of the support the government and wildlife conservation provides in creating literature like this that farmers can access, Living with Wildlife literature. Allowing you to access B.C. wildlife management guides gives people the tools they need to improve their farming practices and to ensure they can protect their wildlife and set up a plan that works.

We have some pretty impressive conservation officers in B.C. Every day they work around the province to protect the environment and ensure public safety in challenging and often dangerous situations. They are really the unsung heroes of the environment. They tirelessly work to protect and preserve our natural resources — fish, wildlife — for future generations, but their stories aren’t often heard.

Many of the conservation officers that served British Columbians…. They went into the role because they’re passionate about protecting B.C’s. pristine wilderness and everything that goes within our province. The role is diverse, and it’s really demanding. It’s something that is not well understood because the coverage of the work that these unsung heroes do is not as wide as it could be.

They really don’t have a typical day, either. I mean, if you think about it, there’s no way to plan what you’re going to encounter. The public isn’t aware of the many different tasks that they take on. They could be relocating a bear one day, tracking down a poacher and giving a wilderness safety talk to students all in the same shift.

Len Butler was named Conservation Officer of the Year back in 2018. He was stationed in Williams Lake. He’s an inspector for the Cariboo-Thompson region. He talked a bit about a story which tells you that conservation officers also need to have some sleuthing skills, apparently. He talked about preventing human-wildlife conflicts, and how passionate he is about that. He talked about an incident that he had during his career.

[5:20 p.m.]

He said that on one occasion, a grizzly and three cubs decided to make the town of Nelson their home. They led this conservation officer on a nearly one-month long chase as these animals were feasting on garbage and unpicked fruit.

Eventually Butler had figured out a pattern, and the four bears were able to be captured and released back into the wild. That shows you a whole month of the type of work that has to be taken on by our conservation officers to understand the patterns of animals, figure out the best way to intervene, ensure the public is safe and provide an opportunity to safely relocate animals. That’s the work that, really, they should be so proud of.

If you ask him, though, about his proudest accomplishment, he says the top of his list is putting together the agency’s defensive tactics program, so training new recruits and working with existing conservation officers. That’s really important work and really should be commended. It was really interesting to read that story. Conservation officers are integrally connected to their community. They care about it, and they deliver outreach services and public education. The work of that is so important.

What we know today is that B.C.’s conservation practice began in 1905. During those early days, really, the policy was minimal. Those modern conservation officers really have evolved over the years, and they have worked so hard to lead the natural resource law. The changes coming around today are so important to ensure that our conservation officers have the tools, are able to easily carry out their work and have a way to provide the services, undertake the enforcement they need in the most efficient manner.

Delaying an amendment like this would continue to put a burden on the courts for these application hearings, and it would also pose a risk to investigations. So I’m thrilled to be supporting this coming forward today and know that in British Columbia, we are so fortunate to have the conservation officers that we do, who are so dedicated and connected to the community. They are doing the work that needs to be done to make sure that our provinces are safe and our wildlife and our environment are protected for future generations.

In addition to the work that we see on the news, there is a whole bunch of other work that goes on in the background: regulating the confinement, storage, disposal and transportation of hazardous waste; regulating environmental assessments; ensuring that they provide literature, knowledge and resources for people to follow regulations while still protecting the wildlife in our region.

Hon. Speaker, I don’t have anything more to add but just wanted to say thank you for the opportunity to speak about my support for this act today.

With that, I will take my seat.

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Member for North Vancouver–Seymour.

S. Chant: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Nice to see you back in the chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of the Environmental Management Amendment Act of 2022.

Conservation officers. We’ve heard so much about them this afternoon. They are a remarkable group of people. They have a skill set that is well beyond that of the rest of us in a number of ways. They are comfortable with our wilderness. They are comfortable with our wildlife. They are comfortable in advising people what they can and cannot do, which is something that a lot of us are not very good at. They are a resource, as has been noted by my colleagues, to the farmers, to the householders, to the tourists.

I was very fortunate a while ago. We were up at Skagit Provincial Park. Skagit Provincial Park is a lovely park. We were up at Ross Lake camping ground. I didn’t have kids with me. My kids have grown up, and they go camping on their own now, but I did have my husband and my dog.

[5:25 p.m.]

My husband and my dog had gone off for a hike, and I had said: “That’s very nice, dear. I’m going to stay here, enjoy the sunshine and read my book.” I was doing that, and then I realized there was quite a crowd gathering over there. A group of people were gathered about, and there was a young woman holding court with this group of people, both adults and children.

I thought: “Oh, doesn’t that look interesting?” So I pattered over, and there was this young woman, one of our conservation officers, who was talking about the different animals in that area and talking about bears — yep, we’ve got lots of them; talking about marmots — got some of them; and talking about all sorts of creatures.

She had a kit that allowed her to show a skull of this and a hide of this, of the various different creatures. You could see those creatures taking form for the kids that were there, and you could see the adults nodding in agreement. Here was somebody who really knew about these things and was able to pass on that information, that knowledge and — in my opinion, more importantly — the love and the care for the animals that we are so fortunate to have in our environment.

I come from a riding that has quite a significant interface with the bush. I say to many that when you look at my riding map, if you look up at the top of it, there’s this great, big green area. That big green area is inhabited by bears, and I consider bears to be part of my constituency base. Thank you very much. It’s true. I do.

Interjection.

S. Chant: Oh, you have moose. Very good.

So we have this constant challenge in our riding of, as our minister said earlier: kill the bear; take care of the bear. Preserve the bear; kill the bear. I was up at the top of my riding doing door-knocking, and a woman approached me and said: “You know, I’m very concerned about the safety of my children when we walk to school. We’ve seen bears.” And my inside voice said: “Wow, that’s magical. You are so lucky.” And my outside voice, fortunately, went, “Oh my goodness,” and I nodded wisely instead of saying some other things.

However, when you’re on the interface, it’s really, really important that you recognize that there are creatures there too. And our conservation officers are the ones that mitigate that interface many, many times and in many, many circumstances.

We recently had a situation where a skunk, bless its little heart, went for a month without eating anything of any significance because it had got its head caught in a Starbucks dome. So here we have the Starbucks dome — I don’t know whether I’m allowed; am I allowed a demonstration? — that’s about this big, and it has a hole in it that’s about this big, about the size of a toonie. And that skunk had managed to get its head and one paw through that hole, and it was caught in that for almost a month.

Now, there were a lot of concerned citizens following it around, at a distance, trying to figure out what to do — many people trying to figure out what to do. They did finally capture it. And again, who gets called? The conservation officer of the area.

Now, if that conservation officer is caught in the courts, following up on something related to some evidence that was confiscated awhile back…. It may be a computer that we’re still trying to figure out — what’s going on in the innards of the computer and what it can tell us — or it may be a cell phone that’s got photographs that somebody has submitted because they used RAPP and saw something going on. However, by the time it’s called in and somebody gets there, the deed is done. But the photographs are still there, and they are needed to pursue the response so that people understand that you can’t do these things.

[5:30 p.m.]

We had a situation, again in North Vancouver, where a bag was found. This is kind of gruesome. We’ve actually had several bags of bits and bobs found — bear parts, eagle parts — where folks are taking these creatures and selling various parts of them to people who want them for various reasons — totally illegal, but it still happens.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

Who is it that helps us to try and avoid that? That would be our conservation officers. They will come and meet with us. They meet with our parks people. They meet with our bear folks. They are flexible. They are accommodating, and they are hard-working.

This amendment act will allow them to use their time in the way they are supposed to use their time, not to work through administrative stuff that lots of folks could do, but to be out in our wonderful wilderness, taking care of our creatures, helping people to understand how to take care of those creatures, making sure they follow the laws about taking care of those creatures — hunting licences, fishing licences — making sure we stay out of riparian areas so that the creatures that are there can not only survive but thrive.

This Environmental Management Amendment Act also applies in the areas of pollution. Our conservation officers work very hard to try and teach us how to maintain the environment around us, how to avoid polluting, how to avoid doing things that maybe make sense to you but don’t make sense to the environment.

We’ve had things like, “Oh my goodness, let’s pour the paint down the sewer drains,” and we wondered why our creeks turned white. It was white paint. We’ve had situations where…. We’ve had an environment where there was some heavy smoking going on, and the butts were going down the drains. Well, nicotine isn’t good for fish. It isn’t good for the streams. It isn’t good for the other stuff that grows in those streams. Fortunately, we have streamkeepers who could track this back and then work with the conservation officer on a plan to make it better.

I don’t think that we could get very far at all without our conservation officers because of the type of province we have. We have amazing wilderness. We have amazing creatures. We have a constant interface between people and these folks. The people are very established. The animals have been there long since; however, they’re not winning the battle. Our conservation officers are critical in making sure that we have something to offer our kids down the road — that our kids get the chance to see creatures and see that magic.

I was up at Liard Hot Springs, and our vehicle got surrounded by bison. That was an exciting moment. There weren’t any conservation officers there. I would have really appreciated the help in understanding what to do next, because the construction worker told us: “Just edge forward” — we were in our car —”and they’ll move out of the way.” Not true — they don’t. Then they were behind us, as well, not just in front of us. They were behind us, kicking and bouncing and playing, probably about 40 of them.

I was a little anxious. However, I was also in awe of these creatures that are just remarkable for me to see. I hope that my kids and their kids get to see them too. My kids…. Maybe they’ve seen some of it.

We need the conservation officers. We need them doing the job that they trained for, the work that they are skilled at and good at. We don’t need to throw them into the courts. Particularly, we don’t need to do it because of an omission a while ago.

[5:35 p.m.]

This Environmental Management Amendment Act of 2022 allows us to correct that and correct it so that we can have our conservation officers doing the job that they trained for, doing the job that they are good at, doing the job that we need them to do and doing it in a way that is effective and efficient.

With that, Madam Speaker, I thank you for the time of the House, and I shall finish my comments.

D. Coulter: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and welcome to the chair. It’s wonderful to be able to speak in front of you again.

I’m speaking, obviously, in favour of this bill. I think giving conservation officers more tools to do their job is a good thing.

Chilliwack, the constituency that I represent…. A lot of people move there. We’re the second-fastest growing community in all of British Columbia, which is amazing. I believe Kelowna is the first. People move to Chilliwack, partially, because of our outdoor activities. We’re surrounded by mountains, the Fraser River, the Vedder River, lakes. It’s just a wonderful place to move. So many family activities you can do in the outdoors in Chilliwack, and that’s why a lot of people move there.

Conservation officers are key to making sure that they protect the environment that we have in Chilliwack and protect it for folks to be able to recreate in our wild areas that we’re surrounded by. Some very famous hikes, actually, in Chilliwack. You go up the Chilliwack River Valley, you have Flora Lake, you have Mount MacFarlane, and you have Lindeman Lake, Green Lake. I’m forgetting all the lakes, but there are many, many hikes up there. You have Teapot Hill, which is up near Cultus Lake. People fish in Cultus Lake. It’s very important for our conservation officers to be able to protect those areas and protect the wildlife that is in those areas.

Sadly, there’s dumping up in the Chilliwack River Valley. People dump their garbage, because they don’t want to go and pay tippage fees at our local dump, and it’s a shame. Giving conservation officers more tools to be able to stop that activity is a good thing.

I used to go hunting with my granddad. Some of my best memories with my granddad are of us going into the outdoors. He was really into the outdoors. He had horses. He made his own canoe once, made his own bow, and this rough character was really my hero when I was a young kid.

We used to go to many places around the province on horseback. We went to the Itcha mountains once, where we went caribou hunting. We went in with our horses for, like, three days. It was great, although my grandfather got kicked by a horse. We had to pack him out because he was quite hurt.

He used to actually set up our lives so that they were always in danger. He always bought substandard equipment, trailers, saddles. It was actually quite scary at times but also very fun — exhilarating, if you will.

We were always happy to meet up with a conservation officer, show them our licences. In many cases, the conservation officer made sure that we were transporting our firearms in a safe way, which is another great service that they have. We were very happy for conservation officers to check us out and make sure that we had the appropriate licences and stuff.

There were times when we came across poachers. We’d come around a corner, and there would be someone who’d poached a moose or something, and they just cut the antlers off and then leave, and it’s just such a shame. That’s another reason why providing more tools to our conservation officers is a good thing.

[5:40 p.m.]

Poachers, after they shoot a large animal or catch a fish illegally or whatever, are quite often likely to take pictures with their phones. This gives conservation officers the ability to forensically investigate cell phones, cameras, those types of things. That often takes longer than three months, so giving them 12 months, instead of making them go to court and constantly get extensions, is a good thing. Giving conservation officers more tools to do their job is a really good thing. You know, I’m talking about dumping. I’m talking about poaching.

The river that goes through Chilliwack — or one of the rivers, the Fraser River, for instance…. We have a great many folks…. I call it “combat fishing,” where people are shoulder to shoulder in the river trying to catch sockeye salmon when there’s an opening. Having a conservation officer there is really, really appreciated and an important thing to help make sure that we have salmon in the future, for people to enjoy in the future.

Salmon come up our rivers not just for people to use as food and enjoy in the future. These salmon go up into streams where they die. They become part of the environment. They fertilize the soil, so the cycle of life continues, if you will. The conservation officers protect that. Giving them more tools to be able to protect wildlife, our water, our trees, to stop people from illegally dumping, stop people from poaching wildlife, is a good thing.

Maybe I’ll tell a quick story. At one time, I was out with my grandfather — my granddad, as we called him — and he was notorious for falling asleep at the wheel. He used to have this pickup truck with a box on the back, and we used to put two horses in it, an old three-quarter-ton pickup truck. We had gone into the mountains for, like, I think it was a week or two. That time we weren’t hunting, actually. We were just enjoying the outdoors, which is something we often did.

We had packed up the horses, and we’re coming back down the switchback logging roads down the mountain. My grandfather fell asleep and drove off the road, rolled the truck with the horses in it. Amazingly, the horses were alive. But my granddad, in order to give me some autonomy and teach me some good lessons, let me ride out on horseback to the highway to get help. He stayed with the truck — I think because the food was with the truck. That’s what happened.

We used to run into conservation officers all the time in the forest, and they were always great interactions. If you’re following the rules, they’re great interactions, right? Giving them more tools is very important.

You know, the Environmental Management Act helps implement a shift to risk- and results-based regulation of waste management in British Columbia. It’s designed to reduce the amount of waste and discharge permits in the province. By eliminating the requirement of permitting to low- and medium- risk activities, more focus can be given to those activities of the highest risk.

As I said, we do have a problem with dumping in the Chilliwack area. Up Chilliwack Lake Road, there is all sorts of illegal dumping, so this gives conservation officers the tools in order to enforce the rules.

[5:45 p.m.]

We have a famous bar in the Fraser River called the Gill Bar, where there’s illegal dumping. People drive through a channel, a salmon-bearing channel. They drive their four-wheel drives to go out onto this bar, where they party and stuff. People in their teens and, if they haven’t grown up, some people in their 30s are there partying. Conservation officers are now monitoring that area and stopping people from driving through that area and messing up the salmon-bearing streams. This is a good thing.

Now they’ll be able to collect evidence from people’s electronic devices in order to prosecute people to make sure that we are protecting areas like Gill Bar. The gravel there in that small salmon-bearing stream is like pea gravel. It’s perfect for salmon.

I’m sure the member for Port Moody–Coquitlam would agree with me. I’m seeing some nodding. He obviously knows this famous Gill Bar.

If it weren’t for conservation officers, places like Gill Bar would be completely destroyed, and we wouldn’t be able to enjoy them in the future. As well, we wouldn’t have fish — or a lot less fish — because we would be destroying a back channel that salmon spawn in, which I’m sure is one of the reasons the member for Port Moody–Coquitlam really cares about it.

Another kind of sketchy thing my grandfather did…. I’ll tell you sort of the story because it relates to me hunting and coming across a conservation officer. We used to go up to Williston Lake, I believe in the member for Peace River South’s constituency. We used to go up there, and my grandfather had an old welded-aluminum boat. We used to load our gear in there, and then he used to put planks across the gunnels. We would drive an ATV on there and then try and cinch it down, then go up the lake for kilometres.

At Williston Lake, if some people don’t know, they barge in logging equipment. There are roads that can’t be reached by regular roads, so my granddad had this scheme of getting to these roads. Sometimes the water would be rough, with the ATV jumping around a bit, more than crushing our food. I believe it was endangering our lives, but my grandfather powered on. That’s how he lived his life — always one very close to death.

We went up there, and we were in this area where there was no one for miles and miles. We drove up 75 kilometres on a logging road and made camp there and stuff. We didn’t see anyone, and then we ran into a conservation officer who was up there just checking the area, doing his rounds around Williston Lake. He checked us, and it was a great interaction. It was nice to see someone else besides my grandfather, because we had been there for two weeks. Human contact is important.

There was a guy up there — we were talking to the conservation officer — who had shot a moose, and then he left the carcass there so that he could use it to bait grizzly bear and poach a grizzly bear, which he did. The conservation officer caught him, which is good.

Now, this was back in the 1990s, when people didn’t have cell phones to take pictures of their illegal and nefarious deeds. Giving the conservation officers the tools and able to investigate this kind of stuff is a really good thing, because I’m sure this character who did this illegal deed surely would have taken pictures and bragged to his friends and stuff all the time.

[5:50 p.m.]

Also, the conservation officers can stop people from feeding bears. The feeding of black bears and the habitualization around people to black bears is actually quite a thing here in British Columbia. We hear about it every summer, about bears coming into people’s backyards and eating their garbage and stuff. I believe Coquitlam has quite a problem. But the reason that bears are coming there is because some people are feeding them. A fed bear is a dead bear, as I’ve heard said. People really have to not do that thing. The conservation officers now have a tool that they can help stop people from feeding bears.

I heard a story of a woman who use to feed bears grain and apples and all these things off her porch, and she’d get four or five bears to her porch. Tragically, she was killed by one of the bears. I guess she didn’t have enough grain that day or something.

Bear safety is very important. Conservation officers really help us be bear aware, as they say, and safe and able to enjoy bears from a safe distance. Admittedly, this story I just told was in California, but it could easily happen here in British Columbia.

My grandfather used to have, on his truck, a bumper sticker from the B.C. Wildlife Federation. It said: “Poachers are thieves. Report them.” I believe that bumper sticker still exists. I see it from time to time from folks who’ve obviously joined the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

Really, poachers are thieves. They deprive us of the ability to enjoy our wildlife, our fish. I would go on to say that illegal dumpers, if that’s a correct term, are also thieves, because they are polluting our environment and making it so that we cannot enjoy the natural world around us. Like I said, a lot of people have moved to Chilliwack to enjoy the natural world — the hikes, the lakes, the fishing, the rivers.

Did I mention that we have the Fraser and Vedder River in my riding? I just want to put a point on that and make sure that everyone knows, because it is a beautiful, beautiful area.I know the member for Peace River North has some great areas in his riding, and I’ve been there. I’ve been there, and there are some beautiful areas. I believe the member from North Vancouver was talking about the buffalo there. Where else can you see buffalo? I mean, you can see them in Alberta, sure, but where else can you see buffalo in British Columbia? It’s absolutely amazing. Yes, in Peace River North.

I think, the member for Peace River North should be very proud of the natural world that he has — in particular, the buffalo. Who protects these majestic creatures? It’s conservation officers. If it were not for conservation officers, I’m sure people would have poached those buffalo. Thankfully, to the conservation office, the member for Peace River North can continue to be proud of the buffalo in his riding. I’ve been there. I encourage everyone to go and look at the buffalo.

[5:55 p.m.]

I think I was talking about the majestic rivers in my riding, in Chilliwack. They are amazing. The Vedder River is absolutely picturesque, and people come every year from all around the Lower Mainland and other areas to fish in the Vedder River — salmon fish. It’s a very great fishing river, as well as the Fraser.

Chilliwack is a little bit, actually, the sturgeon fishing area. Its home base is my riding, the riding of Chilliwack. It’s a great tourist attraction. Every year we have people from all around the world come to Chilliwack in order to catch an amazing, possibly 1,000-pound monster fish, an ancient fish. Some of these fish, I believe, are 100 years old.

They are always using our hospitality industry. When they come to Chilliwack, they are using hotels. They’re, obviously, eating at restaurants. So it’s a great tourist attraction for the people of Chilliwack to be able to be part of this sturgeon fishing industry.

It’s too bad we can’t use props. I’d show you a wonderful picture of a sturgeon. They are a very interesting looking fish, a great, massive, flat head, quite long. They have little bony plates down the side of their body. Like I said, some of them can reach 1,000 pounds.

We have people coming from Europe and all over the world in order to enjoy sturgeon fishing. If it were not for conservation officers, we would not be able to enjoy sturgeon fishing. They protect these fish. Giving them more investigative tools is going to only help them protect these fish.

Allowing them to keep evidence for 12 months, instead of three months, gives them that extra tool. If someone is taking pictures with a phone or, I don’t know, I guess video with a phone or anything like that, it needs to be forensically examined. Quite often that takes much longer than three months. It takes up to 12 months. I really think that it’s very important to give these conservation officers these tools.

Maybe going back to the Chilliwack River Valley a little bit. Some of the hikes in the Chilliwack River Valley are absolutely amazing and picturesque. I used to hike, myself, quite a bit and go up the Chilliwack River Valley. There were some wonderful mountains to hike on up there.

It would always break my heart when I came around a corner on a trail. I would see a trash bag, or someone had thrown something away. Even more heartbreaking would be if it was half in a creek, which it sometimes was. A lot of people like to camp along creeks.

Giving conservation officers more tools to be able to intervene and stop these practices of illegal dumping is only going to benefit us in the long run.

Restoring the authority for conservation officers to detain seized items for up to 12 months in a warrantless search where delay to get a warrant could result in a loss or destruction of evidence…. It’s very easy to delete videos or pictures off your phone of your illegal deeds that you are very proud of and the reason why you took a picture and video of it.

Before, having to submit an application for further detention would create a significant administrative inefficiency for the courts and conservation officers during complex and protracted environmental investigations. Court time would be available for other matters.

[6:00 p.m.]

I think I’ve told a couple of stories about my grandfather. Maybe I’ll tell another. I think I said he was quite the character. He was a very interesting guy. He always followed the rules, which was great, and he really believed in conservation.

He used to join conservation clubs. Admittedly, they were hunting conservation clubs. He joined Ducks Unlimited and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, but he always really cared about conservation. Always, it was very important for him to follow the rules. So I know he would be heartbroken if he saw illegal dumping along a trail or someone poaching an animal.

Like I said, poachers are thieves, and we should report them. I believe the minister and the member from North Vancouver mentioned a RAPP line. I encourage people to use it, and then conservation officers can make sure to investigate that stuff.

My grandfather really liked the Stein Valley, and we hiked there. We had gone horseback riding there. We’d stay there quite a bit. Sometimes we would go back there, and we would hike for a week, doing the Stein Valley. Occasionally, we would see garbage or people…. I think in the regulations they call it molesting wildlife, but you know what I mean — interfering with their natural lives.

I’ve been talking about poachers and people who dump illegal things, but there are also people who chase deer with their ATVs or that sort of thing. People have grabbed baby deer and absconded with them, which probably isn’t a very good thing. Giving conservation officers more tools in being able to stop that practice is a really good thing.

One time when we went to the Stein Valley, we had horses. Like I said before, my grandfather bought very substandard equipment. He grew up in the Depression, and so he was always very frugal. As a matter of fact, he used to have five-gallon pails full of bent nails that he used to straighten to fix his fences with. He never wasted a thing, and when we moved him out of his home, he still had those five-gallon pails.

At this point, he had gotten rid of that horse truck I was talking about earlier, and he had bought a bread van, an old bread van that he converted to carry horses. The horse had kicked through the bottom of the bread van — because of course, it was quite rusty — and was creating quite a scene. The horse could have its head up in the front, where we were sitting. It was quite a scene, and we had to pull over. But that was an amazing trip, because we got to enjoy the natural world, thanks to the hard work of conservation officers.

I think I’ve touched on Chilliwack and how important this is for my riding, to be able to give conservation officers another tool in their toolbox to use to make sure that they’re protecting our water, our trees, our fauna, our flora and, quite often, our air even, because some of the pollution that goes out there becomes airborne after a while. But I think having these types of tools to give conservation officers is a great thing.

I used to have ten acres in my constituency there. We had some apple trees, and if we did not pick up the apples off the ground, the ones that had fallen on the ground, we would have bears come.

[6:05 p.m.]

A conservation officer who sees a bear in your yard all the time can give you a little heads-up: “Hey, don’t let the apples fall off the tree and rot on the ground for bears to come and become a danger.” Then, when they become a danger, like I said, a fed bear is a dead bear. So we really made sure that we picked up our apples so that no bears would come and be hurt — or that we would get hurt, for that matter.

I’ll just end here with: I am really excited about this bill because it gives conservation officers the tools they need to do their jobs.

F. Donnelly: I’d like to thank my colleague the member for Chilliwack for highlighting some of the stories that I’d like to actually incorporate in my few minutes.

I want to rise, obviously, and speak in favour of Bill 26, the Environmental Management Amendment Act. I think the Environment Minister did a great job of outlining very well the changes of the Environmental Management Amendment Act. What I’d like to add is the importance of making these changes to support B.C.’s conservation officers. Giving our small but mighty team of officers more power to better do their jobs is very much needed.

In my community in Coquitlam–Burke Mountain, our area borders Pinecone Burke Provincial Park. As you can imagine, many residents interface with wild animals — specifically, black bears. It’s very common that black bears are coming into the community, whether it’s through the river corridor, Coquitlam River, or down along some of the other river corridors, whether it’s Pinecone Burke directly or Widgeon Creek.

Many, many areas which the bears gravitate to are also where human habitat is growing. Lots of housing and wildlife interactions. There’s a constant need for those conservation officers, which, unfortunately, we do not have enough of. Better tools are mandatory to allow them to do their job.

The member for Chilliwack mentioned black bears in his community. That’s a very common thing, from the North Shore right up through the Fraser Valley, and my community is no exception.

Now, the member for Chilliwack also mentioned Gill Bar. I want to build on that. That’s in his riding. It’s a gravel bar, not to be confused with a drinking establishment. Some of my colleagues on this side were saying: “Oh, Gill Bar, I want to go to that place. That sounds great.”

Actually, it’s quite a concern. As the member outlined, it’s an attractive place to go. A lot of 4-by-4s and trucks head out onto Gill Bar, a gravel bar, a very important habitat for wild salmon and sturgeon. So you have, again, another human-wildlife interaction, this interface. Again, it’s where conservation officers are needed. This became a very public conflict on Gill Bar.

Luckily, conservation officers have intervened. They’ve done a great job. They’ve worked with the federal conservation office, the local cities, in Chilliwack, in the regional district and others to really come up with a solution that works. Again, our conservation office played a key role in making that happen. That area is also part of what’s considered the heart of the Fraser. It’s one of the most biologically rich areas in North America, not just in British Columbia but in North America.

[6:10 p.m.]

It’s important that we have tools that are able to help solve these real problems that we have with human settlement, with recreation and with folks enjoying the outdoors and recreating.

The member for Chilliwack also spoke about sturgeon, and I think he did a great job explaining how amazing these creatures are. He talked about the size and the length and how old they get.

I want to highlight an operator, the Sturgeon Slayers, who operate in the Fraser River in the Chilliwack to Hope area. Their owner, Kevin Estrada, has spoken to me on many issues, many times, dealing with poaching — a number of other issues, but he’s talked to me about poaching, mainly of salmon.

Again, this is where conservation officers are critical because the evidence that they collect has to be there in order to hold up in court to make the charges stick. Again, any tools that we can provide to help these conservation officers do their job is much needed.

I want to finish because I know I’m probably running out of time here.

There are a number of other related poaching issues I want to mention, because the member for Vancouver–​False Creek gave me a couple of examples that she’d like to get on the record. They’re really heartbreaking stories. Specifically, it was two heads of cougar kittens, plus their paws, taken in the Cowichan Valley on the Island. This has become highly public. The community is outraged over this and rightly so. This is highly illegal. Again, conservation officers are needed to document, to find and to stop this illegal activity.

She also mentioned to me another example of 50 bald eagles that were slaughtered in North Vancouver.

Here are examples from my riding, Coquitlam–Burke Mountain, to Chilliwack to Hope to North Vancouver to Cowichan Valley. In my short time here, I’m able to outline really what our conservation office is faced with — huge areas, many problems. They need all the tools that they can to try to do their job more efficiently.

These are examples. I’m sure there are so many others, but I’m unfortunately going to have to leave it there. I know we’re drawing near.

I think the minister would like to have some closing comments, so I’ll leave it at that.

Hon. G. Heyman: I want to thank all members of the House who participated in this debate on Bill 26, the Environmental Management Amendment Act, 2022, for their contributions. I look forward to any questions at committee stage.I particularly want to thank all the members who spoke and those who didn’t who’ve expressed appreciation for the many roles of the conservation officer service and the appreciation for the hard work these men and women do on behalf of British Columbians and our environment.

The bill, of course, as we’ve spoken, restores to conservation officers the authorities that existed prior to 2019 amendments but were lost due to an inadvertent drafting error, creating all the consequent problems that we’ve talked about. It’s a minor amendment, but it will create significant efficiency for both the conservation officer service and the courts.

With that, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. G. Heyman: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting after today.

Bill 26, Environmental Management Amendment Act, 2022, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Deputy Speaker: The House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 6:15 p.m.