The province billed its Public Interest Bonding Strategy as a key step to protect the public from massive cleanup bills. Now it’s on hold.

by Zoë Yunker

B.C. has halted work on a strategy aimed at ensuring taxpayers don’t bear the massive cleanup costs arising from abandoned industrial sites and disasters like the Mount Polley mine breach.

The province initiated its Public Interest Bonding Strategy amid an unfolding environmental catastrophe at the Port Alice pulp mill on northern Vancouver Island. The mill’s owners abandoned the site with toxic waste flowing directly into a sensitive estuarine inlet. After $170 million in public spending, the site remains dangerous and unstable.

Port Alice is a “symptom of a wider problem,” provincial officials admitted internally in a 2021 briefing note. The province has no powers to compel companies to close and clean up their industrial sites or to collect funds to compensate taxpayers if they go bankrupt.

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