BUY CANADIAN ON THE PODIUM — SHIP THE JOBS OVERSEAS IN THE FINE PRINT

 

BUY CANADIAN? THEN BUILD CANADA’S SHIP-RECYCLING INDUSTRY

Ottawa has made another oil-export pipeline a national priority. Canadian ship recycling, manufacturing and lasting coastal jobs deserve the same urgency.

By John R. Roe
Veins of Life Watershed Society / Dead Boats Disposal Society
October 21, 2026

“We will build Canadian.”

Those were Prime Minister Mark Carney’s words on October 1, 2026, while promoting Pacific Link, the proposed oil pipeline his government has designated a project of national interest. He spoke about using Canadian steel and employing Canadian workers. [1] Prime Minister Canada

That is a promise worth holding him to.

Building Canada should mean more than building another route to send crude oil overseas. It should also mean building industries that recover valuable materials, manufacture useful products, protect our waterways and keep skilled people working here.

Ship recycling belongs in that conversation—not as an afterthought, but as a serious Canadian industrial opportunity.

Buy Canadian in the speeches. A foreign option in the paperwork.

The federal government’s Medium/Large Vessel Recycling Services procurement, EVC01-202003/C, normally requires recycling work to be performed in Canada.

But its published notice also allows the contracting authority to consider bids involving recycling in another country when Canadian suppliers cannot perform the work, or when it cannot be done here in an environmentally sound and efficient manner. The destination must meet the notice’s international hazardous-waste conditions. [2] BidMaple

The clause does not prove that a particular vessel has been sent abroad. It does establish that the government has provided a route for that to happen.

And that raises an obvious question:

Why are we accommodating the shortage instead of putting equal effort into fixing it?

B.C.’s Economic Future Is Bigger Than Oil and Gas

British Columbia Canada — Economic Future
 Is Bigger Than Oil and Gas

British Columbia's, Canada -  Economic Future Is -  Bigger Than Oil and Gas

B.C.’s Other Resource Economy Is Already Here

The jobs beneath our streets and along our coast may be one of the biggest economic opportunities we are overlooking

For most British Columbians, a big economic project is easy to recognize.

A new mine is announced and we hear how many billions of dollars will be invested. An LNG project gets approved and we hear about thousands of construction jobs. A pipeline is expanded and governments talk about exports, workers and economic growth.

Those jobs are real, and they matter. British Columbia needs miners, welders, mechanics, electricians, engineers, truck drivers, equipment operators and the industries that employ them.

But there is another resource economy already operating around us that receives remarkably little attention when we talk about B.C.’s economic future.

It is the ocean.

$15,720 in Victoria FOI Fees for Water and Stormwater Records

 

$15,720 in FOI Estimates — CITY OF VICTORIA - for Records About Your Money and Your Water

$10,935 + $4,335 + $450 = $15,720.

Those are the original search-and-preparation estimates attached to three City of Victoria Freedom of Information requests about stormwater, sewer infrastructure, pollution, public spending and the health information behind swimming at Banfield Park.

Not a new engineering study. Not a new environmental investigation.

Access to existing records.

Among the records sought are publicly funded reports, consultant studies, appendices, monitoring results and the accounting behind municipal infrastructure work.

The $450 request concerns something any parent standing beside the Banfield dock can understand: who was consulted about the health risks, what advice was received, and what assessment supported opening or promoting the area for swimming?

The City estimated 11 hours searching and seven hours preparing those records. Its letter required a $225 deposit before processing could continue. The request covered consultations, reports, risk assessments and related correspondence—not simply one named report.

Before another child jumps into the water, shouldn’t that information be straightforward to find?

This started in the water, not in an FOI office

Canada Wants Europe to Trust Its Environmental Standards — While Cutting the Machinery That Proves Them

 

Canada Wants Europe to Trust Its Environmental Standards — While Cutting the Machinery That Proves Them

Prime Minister Mark Carney went to Europe with an attractive offer.

Canada has energy. We have critical minerals. We have LNG and hydrogen. We have fish, forests, freshwater, Arctic access and enormous natural resources.

Europe has something Canada badly needs: a massive market and an opportunity to become less dependent on the United States and other increasingly uncertain trading partners.

There is nothing wrong with Canada looking east across the Atlantic.

In fact, it probably makes sense.

But there is an uncomfortable question buried underneath all the talk of trusted partners, strategic autonomy and regulatory cooperation:

If Europe is being asked to trust Canada's environmental standards, who in Canada is going to do the science, monitoring, inspection and enforcement needed to prove those standards are actually being met?

That question matters because while Ottawa is promising Europe reliable Canadian resources produced under a strong regulatory system, Ottawa is also cutting and restructuring the departments responsible for fisheries protection, pollution control, environmental science and human health.

At the same time, Canada is speeding up approvals for major projects.

That is where this story gets interesting.

Carney's Offer to Europe

Speaking to the European Parliament on September 17, Carney laid out an ambitious vision for a much deeper Canada-European Union relationship.

CRD STORMWATER: Esquimalt — The Place of Shitty Waters?

 

Esquimalt — The Place of Shitty Waters?

The CRD keeps finding sewage indicators and High-rated storm drains beside Esquimalt’s shoreline. At this pace, “When can we swim?” begins to sound like “Never.”

“The Place of Shitty Waters” is a deliberately blunt description of what we are allowing to happen around Esquimalt. It is not a translation of Esquimalt and is not presented as an Indigenous place-name.

Picture a family walking down to the water on a warm summer day. The children are carrying towels. Someone has brought a paddleboard. The water looks inviting, and from the beach there is no obvious sign that anything is wrong.

Now look a little closer.

At Kinver, two storm drains beside beach access have been rated High for Public Health Concern for three consecutive years. At Sturdee, another High-rated drain sits about seven metres from beach-access stairs. Around the same shoreline system, the Capital Regional District has recorded sewer odour, murky water, macerated paper, biofilm, bacterial mats and extraordinary concentrations of E. coli coming from stormwater discharges.

None of that is visible from a postcard.

It is buried in the technical appendices of the CRD’s 2025 Core Area Stormwater Quality Program Report, published in 2026. The report identifies six Esquimalt stormwater discharges as High for Public Health Concern:

744B, 781, 805, 806, 812 and 814.

Those six pipe numbers tell the real story of Esquimalt’s shoreline. Not the plans, promises, studies or council presentations—the water still coming out of the pipes. The CRD confirms that this is its current 2025 Core Area report.

What Does “High” Mean?

CRD’s High rating is a prioritization tool. It is not a beach-closure order, and it does not mean every litre of water around Esquimalt is unsafe at every hour of every day. CRD expressly says the system is not a complete human-health risk assessment.

Saanich Stormwater: Would Council Swim in This Water?

 

CRD 2025 Stormwater Report — 

Would Saanich Mayor and Council Swim in This Water?

From Tod Inlet to Cordova Bay, Cadboro Bay, Elk and Beaver Lakes, the Colquitz, Portage Inlet, Cecelia Creek and the Gorge, few municipalities affect as many different receiving waters as Saanich. So why are we still finding sewage indicators, contaminated creeks, algae warnings and beaches under advisory?

Here is a simple question for Saanich Mayor, Council and senior staff.

Would you swim in it?

Not on the perfect sunny afternoon after three clean samples.

Would you swim beside the storm drain when CRD has measured thousands of E. coli?

Would you put your grandchildren into a creek where bacteria have reached 12,000 with no rain?

Would you swim downstream of a watershed where CRD has recorded sewage odour, contaminated sediment, metals and tire chemicals?

Would you tell your family not to worry because the polluted pipe happens to be listed under another municipality?

That is where this story begins.

Because Saanich is not just another municipality with a few storm drains.

Saanich drains almost everywhere.

East toward Cadboro Bay, Cordova Bay and Haro Strait.

West toward Tod Creek, Tod Inlet and Saanich Inlet.

North and inward through Elk and Beaver Lakes, O'Donnell Creek and Haliburton Brook.

South through the Colquitz River into Portage Inlet and the Gorge.

Southeast through Bowker Creek toward Oak Bay.

And through the huge buried Cecelia Creek watershed into Selkirk Waters and the Gorge.

The research record identifies all of these as receiving systems Saanich either drains into or materially affects.

That makes Saanich's stormwater story different.

You cannot judge it by counting the handful of pipes sitting neatly inside a municipal column in a CRD table.

You have to follow the water.

And when you do, the picture gets considerably dirtier.

---

The CRD report says Saanich has one High outfall. The water tells a bigger story.

Victoria Stormwater: How Many More Generations Must Inherit Pollution?

 

Victoria Stormwater: 

We Know the Pipe Numbers. 

Fix Them.

CRD’s 2025 report documents sewage indicators, chemical hot spots and long-running problem drains entering Victoria Harbour, the Gorge and Oak Bay. Our children should not inherit another generation of reports and excuses.

The Capital Regional District has released its 2025 Core Area Stormwater Quality Program Report.

It does not uncover a new problem.

It confirms that governments have spent decades measuring many of the same polluted pipes.

The drains are numbered. The catchments are mapped. Sewage indicators have been measured. Industrial and business discharges have been found. Cross-connections between sewage and stormwater systems have been identified.

CRD monitors, investigates and helps trace contamination. But CRD is clear: municipalities own and operate their storm drains and are responsible for remedial work where possible.[1]

In plain English:

CRD can identify the sick pipe. The municipality still has to fix it.

---

Fourteen years. Four fewer high-rated discharges.

SOURCE CONTROL BEFORE RESTORATION Offsets, Remediation and Bioremediation Are Different Tools — and They Must Be Used in the Right Order

 

SOURCE CONTROL BEFORE RESTORATION

Offsets, Remediation and Bioremediation Are Different Tools 

— and They Must Be Used in the Right Order

Across Canada, governments, industries and community organizations spend millions of dollars restoring fish habitat, rebuilding shorelines, creating wetlands and compensating for habitat lost to development.

Much of that work is necessary and worthwhile.

But there is a basic problem in the way some projects are planned and described:

A habitat offset, a remediation project and a bioremediation project are not the same thing.

They can happen at the same location. They can support one another. A remediated industrial shoreline can eventually become excellent fish habitat. A constructed wetland can treat polluted runoff while also providing habitat.

But each tool begins with a different purpose:

• An offset compensates for unavoidable new environmental damage.

• Remediation corrects or manages an existing environmental problem.

• Bioremediation uses living systems to help treat that problem.

• Restoration rebuilds ecological function.

The trouble begins when these separate jobs are bundled together and the whole package is called an offset.

Part Two — When Enhancement Becomes Replacement Are Hatcheries Saving Wild Salmon, or Replacing Them?

Part Two — When Enhancement Becomes Replacement

Are Hatcheries Saving Wild Salmon, 

or Replacing Them?

Part One followed the money.

Part Two follows the fish.

And the question is much simpler than fisheries science sometimes makes it sound:

After decades of producing salmon in hatcheries, are we rebuilding wild salmon populations that can eventually sustain themselves — or are we permanently replacing natural production with artificial production?

That does not mean hatcheries are bad.

Some hatcheries may be absolutely necessary.

If a salmon population is approaching extinction, a carefully managed conservation hatchery can preserve its genetic line and buy time while the problems that caused the decline are addressed.

But that is very different from operating a hatchery for 40, 50 or 60 years with no clear biological point at which the river should begin taking over again.

A legitimate recovery hatchery should contain the seeds of its own retirement.

---

Not Every Hatchery Has the Same Job

Part One — A Hatchery Is Not a River - Follow the Fish, Follow the Welfare System, Follow the Money

 

Part One — A Hatchery Is Not a River

Follow the Fish, Follow the Welfare System, Follow the Money

On August 25, 2026, Ottawa announced more than $53 million in construction contracts for three new salmon hatcheries in British Columbia.

More than $38 million for a new Upper Fraser hatchery near Prince George.

More than $7.5 million for a Tŝilhqot’in hatchery in the upper Fraser watershed.

More than $7.5 million for the Wilp’Ho Dix Hatchery on the Kitwanga River.

These projects involve First Nations with legitimate cultural, food-security and stewardship interests in salmon. Their concern about collapsing salmon runs is real.

Our concern is with the federal system that presents permanent fish-production infrastructure to the public as though it were the same thing as restoring a river.

It is not.

A hatchery manufactures fish.

Reclamation repairs the natural system that should be producing those fish.

BYE BYE TARIFFS - The Smart Route to Canada Part Four — Stop Waiting. Build the Route.

 

BYE BYE TARIFFS

The Smart Route to Canada

Part Four — Stop Waiting. Build the Route.

Canadians are angry.

They have every right to be.

Tariffs did not create Canada’s economic weakness. They exposed it.

For too long, we built an economy around one dominant customer, one dominant transportation system and far too many supply chains that depend on an American port, warehouse, distributor, broker or political decision.

We were told this was simply geography.

It was not.

It was habit.

It was policy.

And it was a failure to build alternatives while times were good.

In Part One, we looked at the tariff wake-up call.

In Part Two, we followed the box, the worker and the money through the brokers, warehouses and repeated markups.

In Part Three, we put the accountant on the dock and asked whether direct trade could actually save money.

Now we come to the final question:

What are we going to do about it?

Bye Bye to Tariffs Canada’s Pacific Front Door — Part Three - Put the Accountant on the Dock Lower Costs, Better Supply and Canadian Jobs

 

Bye Bye to Tariffs 

Salut to Tariffs

Canada’s Pacific Front Door — Part Three 

Put the Accountant on the Dock

Lower Costs, Better Supply and Canadian Jobs

Parts One and Two dealt with the problem and the opportunity.

Part Three is about the money.

Can Canada move more of its trade directly through British Columbia, cut unnecessary costs out of the supply chain, create Canadian jobs and still make the numbers work?

That is the test.

No speeches. No wishful thinking.

Put the accountant on the dock and follow the money.

---

Start With One Box

Take a Mexican electrical component made for a Canadian customer.

The simple route should be:

Mexico → British Columbia → Canadian customer.

Yet in 2024 Canada imported about C$47.3 billion in Mexican-origin goods, and roughly C$19.4 billion of those goods arrived in Canada from the United States after first entering the American commercial system.

That is more than 40%.

That number does not tell us exactly what every middleman charged. We would need individual invoices to know that.

But it tells us something else very clearly.

A great deal of trade between Canada and Mexico is being handled, stored, financed, distributed or transported through another country's commercial system before reaching Canadians.

That work has value.

And Canada should be asking a very simple question:

How much of that work can we bring home?

Canada’s Pacific Front Door — Part Two Tariffs Were the Warning: Stop Paying the Middlemen — Follow the Box, Follow the Worker, Follow the Money

 

Canada’s Pacific Front Door 

— Part Two

Tariffs Were the Warning: 

Stop Paying the Middlemen — Follow the Box, Follow the Worker, Follow the Money

A trade corridor does not move only containers.

It moves money, jobs, knowledge and people.

That is the bigger idea behind Canada's Pacific Front Door.

Canada already buys tens of billions of dollars of products from Mexico, Central America and South America. Those countries already buy billions from us. They already have container ports. South America is building roads across the continent to reach Pacific ports. Canada already has railways reaching British Columbia, two major Pacific gateways, embassies throughout the region and more than 1,000 Trade Commissioners around the world.

And yet we still have not connected those pieces into one Canadian trading system.

That needs to change.

---

Start With One Box From Mexico

Canada’s Pacific Front Door — Part One The Tariff Wake-Up Call: British Columbia Already Has the Doorway — Now Canada Has to Use It

 

Canada’s Pacific Front Door — Part One

The Tariff Wake-Up Call: British Columbia Already Has the Doorway  Now Canada Has to Use It

Canada woke up on August 22, 2026, to another lesson about depending too heavily on one customer.

The latest United States tariffs impose an additional 50% duty on roughly $28 billion worth of Canadian goods. The affected products reach well beyond a few large industrial sectors and include everything from clothing and hockey equipment to cement and beverages. Canada has announced that it will respond with matching tariffs.

We have already written extensively about tariffs and about the economic and environmental consequences of constantly shipping raw resources away while buying finished products back.

We are not going to spend another three articles arguing about Washington.

Because there is a much bigger question.

Why can one foreign government still disrupt such a large portion of Canada's economy almost overnight?

The Tankers Are Already Here: What Are We Breathing?

 

The Tankers Are Already Here — Part 2  

If Canada Wants B.C.’s Coast, It Should Pay the Full Price

Canada is talking again about moving more oil to the Pacific.

Before British Columbians are asked to accept another pipeline, larger tankers or another major expansion of oil exports, we should finish the accounting on the system we already have.

The tankers are already here. The pollution is already measurable. The health science already exists. And perhaps most surprisingly, other jurisdictions have already shown that a government does not have to give away access to its land and coast for pennies on the barrel.

There is an old lesson from business that applies here: being the cheapest is not necessarily good business. In business, if what you provide is valuable, difficult to replace and comes with risk, you charge accordingly. You do not apologize for your price. You do not undercut yourself simply because the customer promises more volume. You charge enough to provide the service properly, protect yourself when things go wrong and put something aside for the future.

British Columbia should treat access to its Pacific coast exactly the same way.

Canada needs B.C. if it wants to move large volumes of Alberta oil to overseas markets. The pipeline crosses our province. The export terminal is in Burnaby. The tankers enter Burrard Inlet. Tugs assist them. Ships may wait at anchor. They travel through the Salish Sea and along our coast.

Bad News, Good News: B.C. Is Losing Homes to Wildfire — But We Already Have the People Who Can Help Rebuild Them

 

Missions and Service

The Missions and Service ministry provides leadership and ideas for teams that partner with our community and the world around us.

Bad News, Good News: 

B.C. Is Losing Homes to Wildfire — But We Already Have the People Who Can Help Rebuild Them

The next step in disaster recovery may not be another government program. It may be government making it easier for Canadians to help Canadians.

August 16, 2026

There is bad news coming out of British Columbia again this summer.

Homes have burned. Families have been evacuated. Entire communities are facing months and years of rebuilding.

But there is also good news.

Across Canada and the United States, there are already churches, charities, veterans, tradespeople, retired workers, cooks, truck drivers, equipment operators and ordinary volunteers who have shown that communities can do much more than wait for government.

The equipment exists.

The skilled people exist.

The volunteer organizations exist.

Factory-built housing exists.

And thousands of people are willing to help.

What appears to be missing is the infrastructure that connects all of those pieces before the disaster happens.

Government has an important role. But that role does not have to mean government doing everything.

Sometimes government's most useful job is to clear the road so communities can get to work.

BAD NEWS: The Housing Recovery Gap Is Real

Fraser River Part 3 Stop Restoring the Damage While the Pollution Keeps Flowing A PLAN

 

Fraser River Part 3 

Stop Restoring the Damage 

While the Pollution Keeps Flowing

A PLAN

For more than three decades, Veins of Life Watershed Society has worked around storm drains, creeks, shorelines, contaminated sediments and marine waters.

After looking at the Fraser River from its headwaters to the sea, reviewing decades of government studies, and comparing those findings with 32 years of our own field experience in Greater Victoria, we keep coming back to the same conclusion:

Source control has to come first.

Canada has spent enormous amounts of public and private money studying rivers, restoring salmon habitat, replacing culverts, rebuilding shorelines, planting riparian areas and creating environmental programs.

Much of that work is worthwhile.

But if pollution continues entering the water upstream, we are repairing habitat while allowing it to be contaminated again.

That makes little sense environmentally or financially.

And it is one of the biggest lessons we have learned from 32 years of working on the ground.

The Fraser Is the Watershed

Fraser River Part 2 — We Knew. We Studied It. We Promised. Then We Started Again.

Fraser River Part 2 — We Knew. 

We Studied It. 

We Promised. 

Then We Started Again.

A history of the Fraser River, pollution, government studies, plans and promises — from First Nations stewardship to 2026

Before talking about pollution, stormwater, salmon or government policy, there is something important to get straight.

The history of the Fraser River did not begin when Europeans arrived.

It did not begin when Simon Fraser travelled down the river that now carries his name in English.

And it certainly did not begin when governments started measuring water quality.

Indigenous peoples have lived beside, travelled on, harvested from and cared for the Fraser River system for thousands of years. The Fraser Basin Council places Indigenous occupation along the river back approximately 10,000 years, as the last great glaciers retreated and the modern river system emerged. (Fraser Basin Council)

Today, the Canada Water Agency says at least 100 First Nations across at least nine language groups have traditional territories within the Fraser River Basin. It also acknowledges that Indigenous peoples have stewarded these lands and waters since time immemorial. (Canada)

That is where this story starts.

For thousands of years, the Fraser was food, transportation, trade, culture, ceremony, habitat and one of the great salmon rivers of the world.

It was already understood as an interconnected living system long before anyone used the modern terms watershed management, cumulative effects or ecosystem health.

Part 1 — Following the Fraser River: What Happens to the Water Before It Reaches the Sea?

Part 1 — Following the Fraser River: 

What Happens to the Water Before It Reaches the Sea?

A Veins of Life Watershed Society public-record review of stormwater, source control and accountability from the headwaters to the Lower Fraser

The Fraser River does not suddenly become an urban river when it reaches Greater Vancouver.

Long before the water reaches the Lower Mainland, the Fraser has already received water from cities, towns, highways, industrial lands, agricultural areas, roadside ditches, storm drains and major tributaries extending across much of British Columbia.

So we decided to follow the water.

For this first part of our Fraser River investigation, Veins of Life Watershed Society looked upstream from the Lower Fraser and asked essentially the same questions in every developed area:

Where does the stormwater go? What is actually in it? Who tests it? Who traces the source when contamination is found? What gets corrected — and is the water tested again afterward?

Our preliminary finding is not that communities along the Fraser do nothing about stormwater. That would be inaccurate.

Greater Vancouver: Stop Pretending the Fraser Carries Your Pollution Away

Greater Vancouver

Greater Vancouver: 

Stop Pretending the Fraser Carries Your Pollution Away

The storm drain outside your home is connected to something bigger. Roads, parking lots, industrial lands and neighbourhoods drain into streams and rivers. The Fraser carries water, sediment and contaminants into the Strait of Georgia and through the Gulf Islands. That connects Greater Vancouver's streets to shellfish beds, forage fish, salmon, birds, wildlife and endangered Southern Resident killer whales.

Greater Vancouver needs to have an uncomfortable conversation about its own backyard.

Not Alberta's pollution. Not somebody else's mine. Not tankers somewhere offshore.

Our roads. Our industrial lands. Our parking lots. Our construction sites. Our aging infrastructure. Our leaking vehicles. Our storm drains. Our outfalls.

A storm drain is not a magic hole where pollution disappears.

It is the beginning of a journey.

Rain falls on pavement. It picks up sediment, tire and brake wear, oil, grease, litter, metals, chemicals, pet waste and everything else we leave behind. Much of that water enters storm drains and eventually reaches creeks, rivers or the ocean.

And across the Lower Fraser, all roads eventually lead to one enormous receiving environment:

Why Is the Damn Beach Closed Again? Saanich Knows the Water Problems Are Bigger Than Bacteria — So Why Are We Still Waiting?

Why Is the Damn Beach Closed Again?

 Saanich Knows the Water Problems Are Bigger Than Bacteria  

So Why Are We Still Waiting?

You pack the towels.

You take the children or grandchildren down to the water.

Then you see the sign:

Swimming advisory. Stay out of the water.

Technically, the beach may still be open. But for a parent, swimmer, paddler or dog owner, the message is simple:

Don’t go in.

The first question most people ask is:

When will the beach reopen?

But there is a more important question:

Why is the beach contaminated again?

Help Us Rebuild the Memory of the Gorge Watershed Recovering the environmental record of the Victoria Harbour–Gorge watershed, 1858 to today

 

Help Us Rebuild the Memory of the Gorge Watershed

Recovering the environmental record of the Victoria Harbour–Gorge watershed, 1858 to today

For more than a century, people have studied, worked, fished, swum, farmed, built, dumped, dredged, filled, restored and cared for the waterways that eventually reach the Gorge and Victoria Harbour.

The Colquitz River, Craigflower Creek, Portage Inlet, the Gorge Waterway, Rock Bay and Victoria Harbour have all changed dramatically.

But much of the information describing those changes is scattered.

It sits in old government reports, university archives, newspaper clippings, engineering files, photographs, maps, museum collections, filing cabinets, private collections—and in the memories of people who have spent decades working and volunteering around these waterways.

We want to bring that record back together.

Why history matters

Environmental science should not have to keep starting over.

Before we commission another study of a creek, lake, shoreline, wetland or harbour, we should first be able to ask:

No More Tomorrows: Canada’s Economic Refugees Need a Place to Live Today

No More Tomorrows: 

Canada’s Economic Refugees Need a Place to Live Today

For years we have watched tents appear in parks, along roads, beside waterways and under bridges.

We have watched people sleep in cars, doorways, shelters, abandoned buildings and derelict boats.

And we keep using the same word:

Homeless.

We believe it is time to change that language.

We prefer:

Economic Refugees

We are not using “refugee” in its legal or immigration sense.

We mean Canadians who have been economically displaced from normal housing and, increasingly, from normal participation in the communities in which they live.

The Tankers Are Already Here — Before Canada Adds Supertankers, B.C. Must Demand the Truth About What We Are Breathing Part 1

 

The Tankers Are Already Here — Before Canada Adds Supertankers, B.C. Must Demand the Truth About What We Are Breathing

What the existing Trans Mountain tanker fleet is discharging today, what another million-barrel-a-day pipeline could add tomorrow, and who should pay for the protection, monitoring and cleanup

When most people hear the words oil pipeline, they picture a steel pipe buried in the ground.

But the pipeline does not end at the shoreline.

The oil must be stored in tanks, pumped through a marine terminal and loaded onto ships. Those ships must travel through coastal waters, manoeuvre into port, wait at anchor, remain tied to a loading berth and then leave through the Salish Sea.

During much of that time, they are burning fuel.

Victoria Gets the Exhaust. GVHA Counts the Cash. Cruise ships, hidden pollution, conflicting emissions estimates, weak oversight

 

Victoria Gets the Exhaust. 

GVHA Counts the Cash.

Cruise ships, hidden pollution, conflicting emissions estimates, weak oversight and habitat restoration without source control

Every year, the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority issues another triumphant cruise-season announcement.

More ships. More passengers. More spending. More jobs. Another “successful” season.

What the public does not receive is the other half of the ledger.

We are not told, vessel by vessel, what fuel was burned while the ships sat beside James Bay. We are not told which diesel generators, boilers or gas turbines were running, how much fuel they consumed, whether exhaust scrubbers were operating in open-loop or closed-loop mode, how much wastewater was generated, what was stored onboard, what was transferred ashore and what was discharged after the vessels left Victoria.

The Lowly Sand Lance The Small Fish at the Heart of Our Fight to Save the Resident Orcas

The Lowly Sand Lance

The Small Fish at the Heart of Our Fight to Save the Resident Orcas

What we have watched disappear from Victoria Harbour, the Gorge Waterway and Portage Inlet—and why every beach, dock, storm drain and abandoned vessel matters

People sometimes ask why we have continued this work for so many years.

Why do we keep examining storm drains, walking shorelines, removing debris, documenting docks, reporting abandoned vessels, reviewing old reports, questioning governments and fighting for source control?

The answer is the Southern Resident killer whales.

We fell in love with these remarkable families long ago. Everything we have done since our swim event in 2000 has, in one way or another, been connected to their survival.

But saving Resident killer whales does not begin beside a whale-watching boat.

When the Gorge Stopped Turning Silver, Herring, Camossung, the broken Narrows and a restoration that was never finished

When the Gorge Stopped Turning Silver

Herring, Camossung, the broken Narrows and a restoration that was never finished

The decline of the Gorge herring was not inevitable.

There was a time when the Pacific herring returned to the Gorge Waterway in numbers large enough to change the colour of the water.

The schools moved beneath Craigflower Bridge and through Portage Inlet like a living tide. People stood shoulder to shoulder with fishing lines. Herring fed salmon, seabirds, seals and people. Their eggs covered eelgrass and other shoreline vegetation, feeding nearly everything that could reach them.

Older photographs show the crowds. Families remember the fish. Local residents remember water alive with movement.

Then the silver faded.

The decline of the Gorge herring is not a simple story about overfishing, pollution, one damaged rock or one careless government. It is the history of an entire estuary being altered piece by piece: first through settlement and hunting, then sewage and industry, then blasting, shoreline construction, docks, polluted runoff and the slow disappearance of eelgrass.

It is also a story of recovery. Community work helped bring life back to the Gorge during the 1990s and early 2000s.

But the recovery did not hold.

The fish returned before the governments responsible for the waterway had repaired the conditions needed for the herring to reproduce and survive.

That distinction lies at the heart of this story.

Who Stole the Gorge? How Four Municipalities Let Public Waterfront Become Private—One Dock, Hedge and “No Action” Decision at a Time

 

Who Stole the Gorge?

How Four Municipalities Let Public Waterfront Become Private—One Dock, Hedge and “No Action” Decision at a Time

Veins of Life Watershed Society — August 2026

We are not against docks. We are against public land quietly becoming private land in everything but name, sensitive habitat being occupied without proper assessment, and four municipalities managing one tidal ecosystem as four unrelated shorelines.

The Gorge Waterway, Selkirk Water and Portage Inlet do not belong to any one municipality, waterfront neighbourhood, government department or group of private landowners.

They are a connected tidal system linking Victoria Harbour with Craigflower Creek, Colquitz River, Hospital Creek, Cecelia Creek, Gorge Creek and the surrounding watershed.

They are also:

• public waters and public foreshore;

• fish and shellfish habitat;

• a migratory-bird sanctuary;

• an Indigenous cultural landscape;

• a recreational waterway;

• part of a working harbour;

• and the receiving environment for more than a century of urban and industrial pollution.

The Gorge does not recognize the boundary between Victoria and Esquimalt. Eelgrass does not change its legal status when the shoreline crosses from Saanich into View Royal. Fish do not stop at a municipal line to check which council is responsible.

Yet that is how the waterway continues to be managed.

Would You Swim Here? What routine beach testing does—and does not—tell us about Banfield Park, the Gorge Waterway and Victoria Harbour

 

Would You Swim Here?

What routine beach testing does—and does not—tell us about Banfield Park, the Gorge Waterway and Victoria Harbour

By John Roe, Veins of Life Watershed Society

On a warm summer afternoon, Banfield Park Dock looks like exactly what the City of Victoria says it is: a place to swim, paddle, sit in the sun and enjoy the Gorge Waterway.

The dock was substantially expanded in 2024. The City promotes it as a popular summer destination and a public access point for swimming and paddling. Families arrive with towels. Children jump from the edge. Paddleboards and kayaks move through the water. Houses and trees line the opposite shore.

It is a beautiful picture.

But a new dock does not create new water.

The water beneath Banfield Dock is the same tidal water connected to Selkirk Waters, Cecelia Creek, Rock Bay, the Upper Harbour and Victoria’s Inner Harbour. It moves past municipal storm drains, old industrial shorelines, contaminated sediment and places where sewage-related pollution has been documented for decades.

That history did not disappear when the ribbon was cut.

The public question is not whether the dock is attractive. It is not whether swimming in the Gorge should be encouraged as a long-term goal.

The question is much simpler:

What does routine beach testing actually tell a swimmer—and what part of the story is left out? 

I am not against swimming in the Gorge

More Conservation for the Money—and More Life in Our Waters - The Public Case for a Core Area Parks, Watercourses and Conservation Authority

More Conservation for the Money—and More Life in Our Waters

The Public Case for a Core Area Parks, Watercourses and Conservation Authority

Greater Victoria has heard promises of environmental coordination before.

Residents have watched plans, committees, strategies, studies and announcements come and go. Conservation organizations have survived by protecting their independence, building their own supporters and defending projects they have spent years developing. Farmers are accustomed to proposals that recognize the environmental value of their land but overlook the cost of keeping a farm productive. Industrial operators are understandably cautious when conservation proposals appear to threaten the future of the working harbour.

The Economy Is the Environment: How the City of Victoria Planned Away Its Working Harbour Pretty Condos, Vanishing Jobs—and a Harbour Reduced to a Backdrop

 

The Economy Is the Environment: How the City of Victoria Planned Away Its Working Harbour

Pretty Condos, Vanishing Jobs—and a Harbour Reduced to a Backdrop

Victoria likes to call itself a harbour city.

It likes the photographs, the floatplanes, the cruise ships, the marinas, the restaurants, the festivals and the expensive condominiums overlooking the water.

What the City appears much less interested in is the difficult, noisy, land-hungry work that made Victoria Harbour economically valuable in the first place.

For generations, the harbour supported shipbuilding, ship repair, commercial fishing, coastal shipping, tug and barge operations, warehousing, fuel handling, rail connections, metal fabrication, marine construction and thousands of skilled trades jobs.

The harbour was not scenery.

It was infrastructure.