BC Lags Behind Other Provinces in Life Satisfaction

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

which ironically makes the land value worthless and so makes claiming it pointless, I suspect that will be the get out of jail free card, value will have to be assessed as if the land was never colonized

Market price != value, land has the potential to produce value irrespective of the sales market evaporating under this legal сock-up. Unless it is practically unusable land, if all you have to do to effectively claim ownership of the land is say "mine!", you do it.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by combustiblefuel

You think that's ####ed up? Don't look up what a guy did in Qualicum Beach. That story will mess you up.

Made the mistake of reading it....goes into detail of the aftermath that is just totally unnecessary to the report in any way.

[calgarygeologist]

BC is not going to create a law to hold corporations accountable for environmental cleanup at industrial sites.

Port Alice is a “symptom of a wider problem,” provincial officials admitted internally in a 2021 briefing note. The province has no powers to compel companies to close and clean up their industrial sites or to collect funds to compensate taxpayers if they go bankrupt.

The Public Interest Bonding Strategy was designed to fix that, then-environment minister George Heyman said in 2023.

“We’re long overdue to reduce unnecessary environmental cleanup liability to the government, also known as the taxpayers of British Columbia,” Heyman told the legislature as he introduced the strategy’s first legal amendments in the legislature. The amendments would allow the government to require cleanup and collect bonding insurance from industrial sites for the first time.

The new laws required regulations to take effect, but those regulations never arrived.

Last week, the province told official interveners that it had indefinitely paused the strategy. The government has not announced the pause publicly, but in an email to The Tyee, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment and Parks confirmed that work had been halted.

“We are not in a position to move this work forward,” the spokesperson wrote. “The decision reflects the need to balance multiple priorities and ensure the best use of public resources at this time.”

With work on the strategy halted, the problems it set out to address remain.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/02/03/B...s-Pay-Cleanup/