A trip to Kwikwetlem territories  At the beginning of spring, I took a trip over to Coquitlam where the incredible volunteers with the Tri-cities Force of Nature Alliance organized a film screening of Fracking the Peace. I was joined by Ben Gormley, from Neighbours United, and former Port Coquitlam city council member, Laura Dupont, on a panel discussing the impacts fracked gas has on peoples’ health both in Northern B.C., where I grew up, and even in kitchens everywhere.             Attendees shared that they were deeply moved bythe film and ..read more

B.C. crown prosecutors say they will seek up to 90 days in prison for a Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief. Dtsa’hyl was arrested and convicted of criminal contempt after impounding Coastal GasLink pipeline equipment. Dtsa’hyl warned the company it was trespassing on Fireweed clan territory. If granted, it would be the harshest sentence yet in the long-running jurisdictional dispute. The Wet’suwet’en say the Crown has no legal claim to their land and is resorting to force rather than negotiate with the traditional government. The TC Energy pipeline is protected by ex-military contractors and police ..read more

Last month, B.C’s Lieutenant Governor unveiled B.C.’s new Human Trafficking Prevention Network with an unlikely ally: the President of Shell Canada, Susannah Pierce. Pierce was the executive who, in 2013, was picked by Shell Canada to lead its LNG Canada project – the $40 billion LNG export terminal fed by TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink, a 670-kilometer fracked gas pipeline that was punched through Wet’suwet’en territory without the consent of the nation’s hereditary chiefs. “When we think about working with TC Energy and CGL, yeah, it was a pretty huge accomplishment,” Susannah Pierce bragged in ..read more

What’s B.C.’s most precious natural resource? It’s not oil or gas, timber or gold, farmland or hydroelectricity. It’s water, which everything else relies on. The province’s Peace region is the epicentre of a growing crisis that shows how fragile our society becomes without water – and how poorly our leaders have managed water until now. B.C.’s entire northeast is experiencing a level 5 drought (the worst on the scale) and has been since Fall 2022. Regulators are now warning the region’s powerful oil and gas companies of “possibly limited water supply” by summer. A showdown is looming between t ..read more

It’s called the “revolving door” and it’s been a problem in B.C. for years, with corporations hiring former cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats as lobbyists. These government insiders go back to the same offices where they used to work, only now they’re paid to influence policy decisions in favour of industry. Thanks to a new database, this back-and-forth is now easier to track and quantify. Earlier this month the Investigative Journalism Foundation published their “Revolving Door” database, allowing the public to check which companies employ former government employees and elected offici ..read more

At least four different members of a controversial RCMP unit laughed about police brutality, people with disabilities and the campaign for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in recordings played for a Smithers courtroom Wednesday. “That big fuckin’ ogre-looking dude, he’s actually like, autistic,” one officer said, describing an Indigenous man arrested on Wet’suwet’en territory in November 2021. Another C-IRG trooper can be heard laughing. “The fuckin’ guys just beat the shit out of him, and then he started crying. I felt bad for him,” the officer continued to more laughter, descr ..read more

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In my last blog post, I introduced myself to readers and I spoke about who I am, where I come from, and why I’m excited to lead Dogwood’s fossil gas campaign. I shared a little bit about my experiences growing up in Fort St. John, B.C. and what it was like to live in a place where toxic gas coloured our skies with pollution at 3 am and fracking seemed like a normal part of life. One thing I didn’t mention before though was what it is like to grow up in a place where the only economic opportunities available for people were in the oil and gas industry. Fort St. John, like many resource towns, h ..read more

Hi! My name is Ashley Zarbatany and I’m excited to announce that I’m Dogwood’s new fossil gas campaigner! You might know fossil gas as “natural gas” or LNG. But there’s nothing natural about it. It’s that stinky stuff heating most of our homes in B.C., aka methane or fracked gas. It’s also heating our planet at an unfathomably scary rate. I’m going to spend the next couple of years helping you fight back against the companies selling it. But first, I want to tell you about myself, why I am thrilled to be leading this campaign, and why I need you in it. Minnow Trapping Like many Canadians, I’ve ..read more

In less than a year since energy minister Josie Osborne was sworn in, she, her staff and related crown corporations have had 600 meetings and other interactions with oil and gas lobbyists, new data compiled by Dogwood shows. That represents the bulk of the 1,032 conversations between oil and gas lobbyists and the B.C. government captured by lobbying records since Dec 2022. Meanwhile the climate crisis reached new levels of intensity, fuelled by ongoing fossil fuel expansion in B.C. and around the world. Osborne, the former mayor of Tofino and a longtime environmental advocate, was sworn in as ..read more