THE WE-CAN IMPACT STORIES-12
Taking Command of Our Own Resources
The Council of Canadians (qathet Chapter)
By Tara Joan Nyhan, WE-CAN Volunteer
This March marked the 40th anniversary of the Council of Canadians (CoC). Founded in 1985 by a group of outstanding citizens, the CoC is a national organization dedicated to social and ecological justice. In total, the CoC has 38 chapters across Canada, and 10 in BC, including one in qathet (a coastal town otherwise known as Powell River).
We sat down with chapter member Patrica Cocksedge to talk about the qathet chapter’s ongoing projects, the CoC’s national campaigns, and the value of collective action.
What separates the CoC from most organizations is that they are, first and foremost, a public justice organization. Their mission isn’t just to safeguard the environment; it is to fight for the integrity and lives of Canadian people, advocating for a brighter future. Due to their notable history and consistent donations, the CoC is one of the few larger organizations that has the advantage of being financially and politically independent. They can afford to uphold their own principles and anti-capitalist stances without losing funds.
The CoC recognizes that the Climate Crisis is the biggest threat to quality of life and must be treated accordingly, in tandem with other important issues. This framework, and the CoCs national size, allows for a variety of ongoing initiatives, involving people’s right to clean water, publicly funded single payer pharmacare, and corporate accountability.
In addition to their nationwide campaigns, each chapter has its own local initiatives. As Cocksedge puts it, “We each have an area where we try to focus in, but we work with others (chapters) on their projects as well… it depends on what’s happening at the time.”
The qathet chapter’s local activities are geared towards the town’s needs, one of the most important being transportation. As a community only accessible by plane or ferry, qathet struggles to serve its citizens who need care from further down the coast. Advocating for reliable, regular bus service from qathet to Vancouver is another significant local issue that came about recently as a result of the closing of the mill. Having been built in 1911, the mill had been qathet’s historical source of industry, and was closed down by its corporate owners permanently in 2021. Besides the loss of employment for the west coast town, the closing of the mill left a hole in qathet’s energy management.
After supplying the mill with power for years, the owners of the water license for two dams, Powell River Energy Inc. (PREI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P. (Brookfield), which owns and operates two hydroelectric generating stations, requested to be exempt from certain BCUC regulations that would treat it as public utility, as the dam energy was now being sold through Brookfield subsidiaries to U.S. buyers, and not benefitting qathet itself. After several arguments submitted both from the qathet chapter and Energy Democracy BC, their request was denied.
This brings us to the topic of BC’s distribution of its resources to other parties, particularly the U.S. The qathet chapter has focused on, as Cocksedge puts it, “how communities can take command of our own resources.” The PERI dam is just one of many instances that prove that corporate greed does not benefit Canadian citizens, and is at the heart of what the CoC’s campaigns hope to tackle, including its threat to water management and protection.
Cocksedge says water management is what got her involved with the CoC in the first place. They are a well-documented supporter of it, both as a human right and as a resource that needs to be protected. In addition to their major educational campaigns within their Blue Community Schools initiative, their “We Have No Water To Waste” and “Safe Water For First Nations” campaigns are ongoing with no sign of slowing down.
In terms of BC specific initiatives, the qathet chapter was involved in a provincial water survey, meant to gather information on multiple facets of conservation.
“Just short of 2000 responses,” says Cocksedge. The variety of concerns BC residents have about their water was surprising, “everything from water drawing, to fracking, to golf courses.”
With the global watershed at risk in the Climate Crisis, water is a huge priority for supporters of eco justice like the CoC.
In terms of safeguards, the most ideal one is conservation and equitable distribution of our ecology and water being enacted into law.
In 2023, BC published a paper titled the Draft Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework. The stated purpose of the paper is to “guide and inform the future development and legislation policies and actions required to support the ongoing transformation of land and water stewardship approaches…”
The promises outlined in this paper have yet to be fulfilled in a visible and meaningful way. As Cocksedge puts it, “We keep reminding them of the paper they put out in 2023 – we need to have that moved into law.”
The CoC recognizes that eco-justice is often inhibited by a lack of political will. In addition to their own campaigns, such as “Unite for the Canada We Want,” the CoC also publicly endorses the Sue Big Oil movement.
Despite known challenges, one thing we all should know about climate work is that, simply put, no amount of action is inconsequential. Cocksedge remarks on her time with the CoC with great fondness: “I love the people in our chapter because they are so committed to moving ahead progressively, working towards a sustainable future for our ecosystems and all of their inhabitants (…) We always seem to see the negative, but in the middle of it, there’s so much positive.”
