Last week, Williams Lake mayor Walter Cobb wrote a guest editorial in The Citizen, which started with the sentence: “Red tape and I don’t get along very well at all.”
It is a sentiment I would agree with, wholeheartedly. And I think most people would agree with the idea.
But I don’t think Mayor Cobb and I agree on what is meant by “red tape.”
If I am allowed to paraphrase his argument, red tape for him is the environmental assessment and approval process, which in his view is stifling the development of the proposed Prosperity Mine south of Williams Lake.
Prosperity is a huge potential project seeking to mine 5.3 billion pounds of copper and 13.3 million ounces of gold. With copper around $3.60 per pound and gold around $1,800 per ounce, the mining play is valued at close to $43 billion at today’s prices. With inflation, it could end up generating twice as much. That is a lot of money.
From the perspective of the local economy, it would result in the employment of 550 people for 20 years, create even more spin off jobs, and add $340 million to the GDP each year, according to Mayor Cobb.
It would appear to be hard to argue with those numbers.
But, in this case, the intent of the red tape is not to stop the project but to ensure it is carried out in an environmentally sound and responsible fashion. The original proposal included turning a local lake into a tailing pond, something many people in the area objected to. And it fell short in its consultations with the First Nations people on whose land the development would occur. As such, and given the amount of money involved, it is perhaps not surprising the bureaucracy has been extra careful in going forward.
Is this red tape?
My definition of red tape is bureaucratic road blocks put in place for no discernible reason. Asking a developer in Prince George how his project might impact those living nearby seems a reasonable question. But, to use hyperbole, asking how it might affect the polar bear population is not.
This is not to say the polar bear population might not be affected. If the development significantly increases the carbon footprint of Prince George and Canada, then its climate impact might result in a diminished polar bear population. But it would be almost impossible to tease the effects of one project out from all the data on climate change.
Such a requirement would be an unnecessary bureaucratic road block with little or no discernible benefit.
Balancing the need to protect people and the ecosystem on the one hand and allow developments that might generate jobs and revenue on the other is a tricky business. And it doesn’t make it easy that big projects have to meet different objectives at different levels of government. However, it likely can’t be helped.
Canadian confederation has resulted in different responsibilities falling to the provincial and federal governments. Health care is a timely example. British Columbia doesn’t operate the same way as Alberta or Quebec. At the level of pandemic response, this has been a good thing. We have a total case load of 70,000 while those two provinces are at 126,000 and 268,000, respectively. Our approach to COVID-19 has been different and, arguably, better than theirs.
At the federal level, the approach is different again. Our federal government is providing the medicine, albeit with some delays and false starts, but they are required to leave it up the provinces to decide how to administer the vaccines, how to set their priorities, and for that matter, how to address the pandemic as a whole.
Unlike, say, New Zealand, there hasn’t been a national shutdown nor mandatory mask wearing orders across the entire country.
Is this a result of red tape? No. It is because we are a confederation of provinces that constitute Canada and we all do things slightly differently. The federal government has limited capacity to impose its will onto the provinces.
When it comes to addressing the rights of First Nations or the concerns of environmental groups, the federal government has a larger role but, again, it is a distinct one from the provincial role or even the municipal role. Each level of government engages in part of the overall process in its own way.
So, is this really red tape? Or is it each level of government doing what it is supposed to do – look out for the public interest?
I suspect there are many people who would disagree with my interpretation of red tape. Red tape makes it more difficult to get the things they think important done. And I agree that if bureaucratic rules don’t serve a purpose, they should be undone. But not all government processes are red tape.
