British Columbia

The B.C. Liberal government won’t win any forecasting awards for its predictions on natural-gas revenues. Two years ago, the province estimated that royalties from this fuel would reach $846 million in this fiscal year. In Finance Minister Mike de Jong’s recent budget, that was cut nearly in half, to $441 million. Three years ago, the spring budget pegged revenues from natural-gas royalties at $447 million. As that fiscal year ended, that figure was reduced to $367 million.

Since 2008, Warner Naziel has gone by his traditional name, Toghestiy. It means “man who sits beside the water”.  As one of the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, he takes neither tradition nor his duties lightly. On November 20, 2012, Toghestiy did what his ancestors would have done to people not welcome in their territory. Confronting surveyors for a gas pipeline planned in Northern B.C, he handed them an eagle feather in accordance with Wet’suwet’en law.

B.C. Premier Christy Clark was a partner in a lobbying firm that was contracted by Enbridge and lobbied the federal government on the company's behalf, according to documents obtained by The Vancouver Observer. The Premier's spokesperson, however, stated that Enbridge was no longer a client of the firm by the time she joined the company.  In a 2008 

A little-known bill that will drastically alter the management of B.C. parks became law this week, creating controversy among the province's most prominent environmental and conservation organizations.

With a deeply unpopular $6.5 billion Northern Gateway project at risk, Enbridge is betting heavily on ads and a door-to-door corporate campaign to sway residents in a small northern coastal B.C. community to "vote yes" for its oil sands pipeline project.  "It’s mind boggling how they’re pouring so much into [the Enbridge campaign]...

If Kinder Morgan knocks on your door and wants to run a pipeline through your backyard, there’s not much a resident can do besides negotiate reasonable compensation, according to an expropriation lawyer. Ted Hanman, a lawyer with Victoria firm Cox Taylor, says once the planning has been done and the alignment chosen for a particular infrastructure project, residents are usually at a loss to keep their land intact if they sit on a proposed right of way.

When Joy Mancinelli and her neighbours received a hand-delivered package from a land agent hired by Kinder Morgan, it was their first inkling that the proposed new twinned Trans Mountain Pipeline could rip through their backyards. They got even more bad news on Sunday when the land agent returned and told them Kinder Morgan could take even more land than it had initially mapped out.

A University of Washington study has found residents near rail lines face increased exposure to harmful microscopic particles from diesel emissions. The study also found residents are exposed to larger particles, possibly from coal trains.

A large group of people packed into UBC Robson Square to listen to Cullen's 'Take Back the Coast' tour, which has taken Cullen to six different cities across BC so far. High school and university students, as well as seniors, were at the edge of their seats, listening to Cullen's arguments about why the Northern Gateway pipeline was so heavily opposed in BC.

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