The Forest Practices Board (Board) is British Columbia’s independent forest and range watchdog. On behalf of the public, it monitors and reports on forest and range practices on public land. One of the main ways it does this is through field-based compliance audits of forest and range licensees.
The purpose of this guide is to help licensees prepare for a Board audit and discuss how to conduct their practices to avoid issues most commonly found in past audits. This guide answers some frequently asked questions and provides potential auditees with background information on the audit process.
The Board is BC’s forest and range practices watchdog, independent from government, industry and special interests. A key mission of the Board is to encourage continuous improvement—and thus encourage public confidence—in forest and range practices and BC’s forest, range and wildfire legislation. To that end, the Board works to resolve concerns and complaints and to strengthen resource stewardship rather than simply investigate and report. Over the years, the majority of Board recommendations made in complaint investigations have been implemented.
This report reviews the results of 19 years of Forest Practices Board investigations of complaints from the public. Since 1995, the Board has responded to over 1000 public concerns and has formally investigated several hundred complaints.
One of the fundamental purposes of the Forest Practices Board is to encourage continual improvements in forest and range practices. The purpose of this special report is to provide independent observation, based on Board work, on how well the regulatory system is working and to identify opportunities for improvement.
The Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA), along with the Wildfire Act, regulates the activities of forest and range licensees operating on Crown land. When it was introduced in 2004, replacing a Forest Practices Code that had been in place since 1995, it was understood that adjustments would be necessary as circumstances changed and practitioners gained experience with the new approach. Now, a decade later, the Board finds that the system is generally working but that implementation is incomplete and some aspects need to be refined or adapted to changing circumstances. The Board decided to report on how well FRPA is working after nearly a decade of experience.
Drinking water is of paramount concern to British Columbians. Government regulates the safe and reliable supply of drinking water primarily under the Drinking Water Protection Act. However, additional laws are in place to protect drinking water while carrying out activities like mining, forestry, range use and oil and gas development on Crown land. The law that regulates forest and range activities on Crown land is called the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA).
This special investigation is about how well forestry and range use provides for the protection of drinking water as required under FRPA. The investigation focuses on how the requirements for drinking water are being met in a sample of 466 designated areas, referred to as community watersheds. These areas are designated because government decided the watersheds require special forest management for the protection of drinking water.
The findings of this investigation suggest that the designation of community watershed is inappropriate in some watersheds, and where it is warranted, the protection provided is inadequate.
Forest and range practices on provincial land in BC are regulated by the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act. One way these laws are enforced is through the use of administrative penalties, which are issued by government officials, rather than by the courts. They provide an efficient way to enforce legislation, if appropriately used. Compared to the court process, administrative penalties can be faster and are less formal. Also, decisions are made by officials who are familiar with the forestry context, rather than by judges, who may not be.
The purpose of this report is to provide information to the public, forest and range agreement holders and government officials about administrative penalties related to forest and range practices, including the size of penalties, statutory defences such as due diligence, and the types of activity that give rise to penalties.
