Editor:
After reading the online BC Supreme Court decision about development permits for the George, it seemed to me the essence was that the ultimate responsibility to protect the public interest in site remediation lies with the Ministry of the Environment. Justice Baird found that the Town’s issuing the permits didn’t harm this interest because “the Permits themselves require site decontamination to the Ministry’s satisfaction,” and “the Petitioner’s valid concerns about the Developer’s plans and the Director’s approval of them are before the [Environmental Appeal Board] for determination.”
There’s an important nuance there that local media coverage missed. The judge knew his decision would be read by officials at the Ministry (which declined, he noted, to participate in the hearing before him), and he chose to put the word “valid” in front of “concerns.” While bureaucrats aren’t likely to concede anything they don’t have to, one can hope that in the coming weeks a more stringent plan for decontamination of the George site will be quietly discovered in someone’s desk drawer and retroactively become the conditions the Ministry had always intended to impose.
David Stow, Elphinstone
