Non-profit reaps millions in fines paid by environmental offenders
A non-profit foundation established to improve fish and wildlife habitat across the province has received a windfall of more than $3 million from court fines levied against environmental offenders since 1993.
“It’s a growing area of revenue for us,” says Brian Springinotic, chief executive of the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. “It’s because the courts like how we treat the money … and, in my view, are imposing ever greater penalties.”
Since 1993, the courts have had the option of ordering that fines under certain provincial laws — including the Environmental Management Act, Wildlife Act and Water Act — be directed to the foundation to fund various conservation projects offsetting environmental damage.
Springinotic says the cash has been coming faster and more furious in recent years compared with a decade ago, especially under the Environmental Management Act.
“That’s far and away the biggest growth area,” he says.
Teck Coal recently received a court order to pay a $15,000 fine plus $285,000 to the foundation as a result of sediment discharges into the Elk River in the East Kootenay region.
“We’ll now reinvest that money back into the Elk Valley,” Springinotic says.
The foundation, which was once part of the provincial government but now operates independently, never knows when the money from these court awards is coming or how much.
“It’s a paradox, isn’t it?” Springinotic says. “In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be getting this money because these things wouldn’t happen. But that’s not the world we live in.”
Court awards can be restricted, meaning the judge directs how the foundation must spend the fine, or unrestricted. By policy, the foundation spends the latter within the region in which the environmental offence occurred.
Springinotic says the prosecutor generally needs to raise the foundation as a sentencing option, and the judge can follow through with an order. Without a specific recommendation, fines go to general revenue.
The foundation’s annual revenues range from $5.5 million to $7 million, he says, most of that from surcharges on hunting, fishing, guiding and trapping licences.
Sometimes judges can be too specific when ordering how the money should be spent, Springinotic says. One case involved a fine of about $4,000 on the Sunshine Coast to be spent on salmon enhancement on Sliammon Creek in co-operation with the Sliammon Creek Watershed Society.
The problem is, the society is defunct — and the money has not been spent. Springinotic says it’s more desirable to the foundation if a judge make a more general order, such as for a watershed to benefit from a fine.
Recent conservation projects funded by the foundation include $13,300 for conservation of waterfront habitat for the western screech owl on the Fraser River, $27,412 for the City of Surrey’s salmon habitat restoration program, and $12,469 on a bear awareness initiative in Chilliwack.
As a result of a 2007 oil spill into Burrard Inlet, Kinder Morgan and two other companies — B. Cusano Contracting and R.F. Binnie & Associates — each paid $149,000 to the foundation, money that went to improve urban estuaries such as Seymour River, Mackay Creek, Mosquito Creek and Lynn Creek.