CASE 1
Sunshine Coast land owner George I. Winkler hired workers to alter sections of Stephens Creek, a waterway so small it cannot be identified on Google Earth. Winkler was trying to mitigate flood damage to his property following an atmospheric river.
DFO said that fish habitat had been affected and at least 80 salmon eggs destroyed. Winkler was charged and pleaded guilty.
Last week, Provincial Court Judge Steven Merrick imposed a fine of $70,000 on Winkler.
CASE 2
“Poor practices” by Mount Polley Mine Corporation before August 2014 spilled toxic mining waste into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek, and Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water and major spawning grounds for sockeye salmon.1
Failure of the Mount Polley mine tailings storage facility (TSF) released about 25 million cubic metres of water and solids, one of the world’s largest-ever TSF spills. Over 18 million cubic metres was delivered to Quesnel Lake. …To date, most spills following the failure of TSFs have been into river channel and floodplain systems, and consequently, impacts have usually affected such systems for tens to hundreds of kilometers downstream of the breach…2
Every winter since the tailings pond breach at the Mount Polley mine in 2014, copper-laden sediment from the bottom of Quesnel Lake has been re-suspended in the water column and has flowed into the Quesnel River affecting aquatic life in the watershed, according to a new paper by UNBC researchers Phil Owens and Ellen Petticrew.3
The British Columbia government chose to lay no charges and halted a private prosecution filed by Indigenous woman Bev Sellar. After ten years, there will certainly be no federal charges.
BC Taxpayers were saddled with tens of millions of dollars in cleanup costs.
CASE 3
For the past 67 years a small, oozing sore has leached untreated heavy metals into the Taku River. The abandoned Tulsequah Chief mine in B.C. sits on the Tulsequah River about 10 kilometres upstream from its confluence with the Taku River. Cominco, now part of Teck Resources Ltd., opened the copper, lead and zinc mine in 1951.4
No person or corporation was charged and the public is paying mitigation costs.
The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child. — George Bernard Shaw
1 The Narwhal — News and Information on the Mount Polley Mine Disaster
2 P.N. Owens, E.L. Petticrew, et al — Annual pulses of copper-enriched sediment in a North American river downstream of a large lake following the catastrophic failure of a mine tailings storage facility.
3 Castanet 2022 — Mount Polley tailings pond breach still affecting aquatic life in Quesnel River
4 The Narwhal — British Columbia’s multimillion-dollar mining problem
Categories: Justice
in-sights.ca 
mount Polley. I remember that well. It was a huge disaster. Thank you for the update. It just dropped off the news
the government of the day wasn’t too interested in the impacted people. At the time I thought they aren’t interested or care because they’re destroying The environment of the Indigenous community. We’ve seen more than enough of that
so one person tries saving their property and is fined $70k and a big corp walks away
your line about one law for the rich and another for the poor—our Mom used to use that line a lot when we were kids
nothing has changed in 74 years except the rich got richer and the poor got poorer
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So a private attempt at laying charges was stayed.
Is there any chance another , cloud sourced, attempt might succeed?
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Nope. Zero possibility. Of course, that was apparent early on.
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