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Vaughn Palmer: When wildfires are out, fossil fuel development talks could flare up

Once the fires are out, the wisdom of continued fossil fuel development will be back on the table — along with many other concerns.

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VICTORIA — B.C.’s long-standing way of estimating the annual budget for fighting wildfires is “laughable,” an exasperated Premier John Horgan said Tuesday.

“Chose an arbitrary number, then put it in the books and hope for the best,” was the way Horgan described the process during a media stopover in Prince George.

The process entails averaging the cost of managing wildfires over the previous 10 years, then slotting the amount into the budget for the current year. B.C. governments have done it that way for decades. Still, Horgan’s impatience is understandable.

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The funding for fire management in the current budget is $64 million, up from $63 million last year.

But in last year’s record wildfire season, actual costs exceeded budgeted dollars by a factor of 10.  The running tab for this year has already surpassed $200 million and could double by the end of the season.

One billion dollars in fire suppression and related costs over two years against budgeting funding of $127 million? No wonder Horgan finds the process to be wanting.

Still, it is not as if the province would free up more resources for fire suppression were it to plug a higher estimate into the budget.

For as Horgan conceded, irrespective of the number in the budget, the province will pay whatever it costs to put out the fires. That’s why the budget-makers in the finance ministry tuck away additional amounts in contingency funds, forecast allowances and surpluses.

Together those total just over $1 billion in the current financial year. Hence Horgan’s assurance Tuesday that “I am confident that this will not disrupt the balance of our budget this year.”

Probably not — leastways not all by itself.

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But the province is only a few months into the budget year which started April 1. The New Democrats are a month late releasing the financial statements for the last year and as Rob Shaw reported in The Vancouver Sun, the holdup is connected to differences of opinion with the auditor general. (The belated release is set for next Tuesday.)

Coupled with the prospect of declining revenues from a slumping housing and real estate sector, the second bad wildfire season in a row has already reduced the safety margin in the NDP’s balanced budget.

Going forward, Horgan did concede the province needs to do more to reduce the risk of forest fires.

“Over the decades, I don’t want to blame anyone, but we have not been cleaning up our forests,” he told reporters. “There is too much fuel being left behind and we need to address that.”

Fuel mitigation, as it is known, has long been recommended as a way of reducing the wild fire risk to communities. The objective was given high priority in the report by former Manitoba Premier Gary Filmon on the disastrous 2003 wildfire season.

But as former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister George Abbott and Indigenous leader Maureen Chapman noted in their post mortem on last year’s season, “despite earnest efforts, B.C. has made disappointingly little progress on the goal of enhanced community safety since 2003.”

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The Horgan government got a start in this year’s budget, putting up an additional $73 million over three years for “wildfire recovery activities” and to “improve wildfire resiliency.”

The commitment of roughly $25 million a year is relatively small compared to the scale of the challenge.

Fuel removal and related treatments to reduce wildfire risk runs to an average $5,000 a hectare. A recent report from the auditor general put the untreated backlog at well over one million hectares of forest, meaning it would cost billions to fully manage the risk.

The option of prescribed burns generates controversies from folks objecting to the smoke — ironic, in light of current air conditions around the province — to complaints about releasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

On the latter concern, Abbott and Chapman provided a useful point of perspective. “We believe there are limitations to the current way of counting carbon, which includes prescribed burning, but does not consider the impact of wildfires,” they wrote in their report released earlier this year.

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“In 2017, wildfires emitted approximately 190 million tonnes of carbon into the environment, six times the total from all other sources.”

After Horgan acknowledged this year’s season may be “the new normal” for wildfires, he was asked why his government would nevertheless be touting the development of liquefied natural gas for export.

He replied that B.C., with its carbon tax, has been a leader in terms of climate action. But he also said British Columbians should maintain a proper perspective on anything they might do or not do on the fossil fuel file.

“We have to remember that we’re 4½ million people here in B.C. on a planet of seven billion,” said Horgan. “We have to be realistic about our impacts.”

Perhaps he was rehearsing his lines for a session with his partner in power sharing, Andrew Weaver, who is already on record as doubting LNG development can be reconciled with the province’s target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Green leader has so far avoided repeating that view during the current crisis.

But once the fires are out, the wisdom of continued fossil fuel development will be back on the table — along with many other concerns in the post mortem on another discouraging year in B.C.’s increasingly combustible forests.

Vpalmer@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/VaughnPalmer

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