As Mike Holmes would say, minimum code is just that

Armchair Mayor column for Saturday, March 13, 2010

Now that we’ve all vented, it might be a good use of time to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned about the process in which the Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. project went sideways.

If the process had been better, could we have avoided the don’t-confuse-us-with-the-facts mentality among so many (not all) of the project’s detractors?

Could we have resisted the temptation to demonize a well-intentioned man who has a potential solution to a serious environmental problem?

Would we have found it unnecessary to treat bright, dedicated Ministry of Environment staff as though they were aliens come to experiment on our children?

Could we have entertained a more balanced discussion about a plant that will emit as much pollution as the truck the mayor drives to work every day?

I like to think so. To begin, let us acknowledge that ACC should have consulted early and often. Even ACC president Kim Sigurdson admits that. He turned down several opportunities to meet with a variety of stakeholders, and it was a mistake.

What he did do was play by the rules as laid out in permitting and funding guidelines, but I’m reminded of one of my favourite TV reno guys, Mike Holmes, who often says minimum code is just that — bare minimum. If you want a better house, you have to invest in a higher standard of construction.

Ministry of Environment also followed the rules, which allowed it to provide a generous extension to the public in responding to ACC’s application. Nevertheless, its rules have come up short in this particular case.

If we look at the way things went down, we can see where those rules worked and where they didn’t. On June 15 of last year, a Ministry of Environment legal ad first appeared in The Daily News, and was repeated in the B.C. Gazette, notifying the public of ACC’s application.

Not a single inquiry was received by the MOE in the standard 30-day window for response. As much as I believe in the power of newspaper advertising, I’m not convinced readers go straight to the “Legal” ads every morning, or anxiously scour the B.C. Gazette to see what they should be concerned about, unless they have a specific reason.

Unlike City council, which has a natural podium by virtue of its weekly meetings for making the public aware of what it’s doing, and a routine public-hearing process, Environment has no such means.

However, when The Daily News published a front-page story about the project Aug. 22, public comments — as the ministry puts it — “commenced.”

In response, the ministry used its discretion to extend the 30-day public consultation period, and anybody who didn’t know about ACC at that point just wasn’t paying attention to the media. On Sept. 1, City council responded to a delegation of opponents by voting unanimously to oppose ACC. (Had ACC been present at that same meeting, or lobbied beforehand, one wonders if that pivotal result might have been different.)

The MOE estimates that 100 Kamloops residents provided concerns directly to the ministry, to ACC or via the media. “Many of their concerns were highlighted in a letter that MOE sent to ACC on Sept. 11, 2009 that requested extensive additional information from ACC to support their application. That information was provided by ACC to MOE on Oct. 13, 2009.”

For all intents and purposes, the consultation period ran until the permit was granted Jan. 7. After the initial flurry, though, things settled down, even after the Interior Health Authority revealed in early December that it had concluded the ACC gasifier posed no health problems.

I suspect the Christmas season proved a distraction, because it wasn’t until after the permit was approved that all hell broke loose. Opponents can’t reasonably claim there was no consultation and that they weren’t given an opportunity for input — they had six months to come forward before the permit was issued.

There’s a big ‘but’ to this, however. The consultation was indirect or, at best, impersonal. Write a letter to MOE or ACC, and an answer would come back. And MOE would, and did, consider it in issuing the permit.

What the process lacks is a live public vetting, which ACC could have held on its own, just as Domtar held an open house to explain its plans for changes to mill emissions. But ACC didn’t.

The ACC project is too small to trigger an environmental assessment, and too small to raise major concerns during consideration of the permit. But maybe MOE should be given the discretion to force a more public process — open houses, meetings and such — if it feels there is or will be significant public concern despite the scope of the project.

That’s a judgment call, and the argument against it is that it would be open to outside pressure and uneven application — the current system is designed to remove politics from the process. Though a lot of politics is being played on the ACC file, the final authority currently rests with independent analysis.

Given the lessons of ACC, though, it would have been preferable to what we’ve been experiencing since last summer. With minimum code, you get minimum public willingness or ability to sort fact from fiction. With minimum code, you get a less-than-minimum standard of politics. And with minimum code, you often don’t get the best result.

Mike Holmes would tell you that.