Vaughn Palmer: In light of Friday’s tragedy, New Democrats can scarcely ignore Bamfield Road report
Credit to Author: Stephen Snelgrove| Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:32:54 +0000
VICTORIA — A dozen years have passed since B.C. forest safety ombudsman Roger Harris got an earful about safety on the forest road linking Bamfield to the outside world.
“Bamfield is no longer a logging town,” was the most telling comment from the anxious crowd gathered at a town-hall meeting in the remote Vancouver Island community in October 2007. “We have over 3,500 students participating in marine programs and 16,000 man-days used by researchers at the Bamfield Marine Institute. It scares me the thought of those school and tour buses on the road each day.”
Harris found himself reflecting on those words this weekend, when he heard about Friday night’s tragedy on the Bamfield road. A busload of students, bound for the marine station in Bamfield, rolled down an embankment on the precarious gravel road. Two students were killed, 17 others were sent to hospital.
“The province promotes places like Bamfield as a destination,” said Harris, with a sigh of regret when I talked to him Monday. “We promote it on one side, but then we want to avoid responsibility for the road on the other.”
The ombudsman flagged the growing risks on B.C.’s forest roads in No Longer the Road Less Travelled, the 31-page report he produced for the non-profit Forest Safety Council in early 2008. Harris was concerned that as forestry declined on the B.C. coast, logging roads, however narrow and rough, were being used more and more by tourists, campers and other travellers.
But the obligation to maintain the roads in good condition remained with the forest companies that built them, even though the incentive to do so declined with each mill closure and cutblock reduction.
“The Bamfield logging road is far more important, valuable and useful now to that community than when it was first constructed,” wrote Harris. “There are more than 400,000 kilometres of resource roads in the province and a small percentage of these roads connect directly with communities. These roads are either the primary or secondary access for communities to the wider world.”
For many First Nations communities, “the only connection they have to the public highways is through existing forest-service roads. A road open, usable and safe year-round is a priority — for their health care, education, economic and public-safety requirements.”
The safety ombudsman made 17 recommendations, the prime one being that the province should take over responsibility from the forest companies for critically important links like the one to Bamfield.
“The province should establish a new public highway designation for resource roads that serve as the primary or secondary access roads for communities,” he wrote. “The new designation would have clearly defined standards for construction, maintenance, enforcement and be funded/resourced similarly to the public highway system.”
Though Harris was himself a former B.C. Liberal MLA, his report was greeted with zero enthusiasm by the then-Liberal government. Especially dismissive was Forests Minister Rich Coleman. “It’s my option as minister to not always agree,” he told reporters, estimating that the government takeover of forest and other resource roads could end up costing $1 billion.
Instead, Coleman promised to bring in his own version of a Resource Road Act to regulate some of the concerns raised by Harris. The legislation died on the order paper after protests from industry, communities and other users. The Christy Clark government took a second stab at it in 2012 but the proposed Natural Resource Roads Act never saw the light of day.
A third attempt surfaced last spring, when the New Democrats sought “perspectives” from communities, industry and First Nations on “the planning, use, maintenance and deactivation of resource roads.” While that initiative continues at a glacial place, the problem, highlighted by the tragedy on the Bamfield road remains: What to do about safety in the interim?
Harris had scoffed at Coleman’s $1-billion figure in 2008 and he scoffed again Monday when I reminded him of the exchange. B.C. wouldn’t need to take over all the resource roads, never mind rebuild or pave most of them. Better upkeep with an eye to basic safety would be a good start in many cases, he advised.
As of last year, the province was spending less than half-a-million dollars maintaining the Bamfield Road. Responding Monday to the bus accident, the New Democrats said as little as possible.
“The situation is complex as this is a private, industrial road, operated and maintained by private companies for active forestry operation,” read the statement from Transportation Minister Claire Trevena.
Still, she had to admit that she had heard concerns about road safety from the local Huu-ay-aht First Nation and from her minister of Indigenous Relations, Scott Fraser, the NDP MLA for the area.
“Ministry officials have been looking into the issue to determine if safety improvements could be made,” confirmed Trevena.
There’s already a plan in the works to solidify the Bamfield road with a combination of asphalt and aggregate, a process known as chip sealing. The cost would be $50 million to $75 million, Fraser confided to a community meeting last fall.
When Harris released his report in 2008, Fraser, then an Opposition MLA, said the recommendations were “bang on.” He predicted that the government of the day wouldn’t be able to ignore the report.
The Liberals did ignore it. But in light of Friday’s tragedy, the New Democrats can scarcely do the same.