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

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

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

Information uncovered:

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

View all the documents released under the freedom of information act to The Vancouver Sun: http://www.vancouversun.com/pdf/response-records.pdf [8]