British Columbia is on fire again. Summerland and the surrounding communities have been emptied. Thousands are displaced. At least one person is dead. The Bald Range fire moved with a speed that shocked even experienced crews. And once more the official narrative leans hard on climate while soft-pedaling the decisions that left the landscape so ready to burn.
I sat down with John Rustad this week. He is the MLA for Nechako Lakes, a former Forests Minister, a former Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, and the man who took the BC Conservatives into official opposition. He has spent decades in the Interior. He has mapped historical fire regimes. He has watched the policy failures accumulate in real time.
His assessment was direct: more than half of the current wildfire problem is the result of management decisions, not just the weather.
In the 1990s the pine beetle epidemic was still containable. The ministry wanted a large prescribed burn in Tweedsmuir Park — the source of much of the outbreak — under near-perfect conditions. Politicians stepped in and ordered it delayed until cooler weather. The burn failed. Harvesting was never fully redirected to the dying pine. Fuel loads kept building. At the same time, British Columbia had become very good at suppressing fire. Starting in the late 1940s and 1950s, aggressive control allowed forests to grow far older and denser than the historical regime would have allowed. Pine cones are built to open in extreme heat. Douglas-fir developed thick bark because fire was a regular part of the landscape. We interrupted that cycle for decades and then acted surprised when the accumulated fuel finally lit. Add current restrictions that treat ordinary Interior stands as untouchable “old growth,” and the ability to do proper landscape-level work has been severely limited.
Even when the fire is already running, the system slows itself down. Rustad described experienced private crews and heavy equipment left sitting for days while the ministry completed assessments and wrote plans. He recounted 122 firefighters waiting hours on the roadside for a porta-potty because the crew size required one. The best window to fight many of these fires is early morning, yet the operational rhythm often puts people out later when conditions are worst. “It’s all about the process,” he said. “As long as the process is being followed, nobody is held accountable.” He called it a cover-your-ass culture that has grown especially pronounced under the current government. Follow the rules and you are protected even when the outcome is catastrophic. Take initiative and something goes wrong — however remote the chance — and you become the liability. Initial attack crews still do good work on small fires. Once a fire escapes that early window, the system is slow, risk-averse, and still operating with approaches that have not kept up with the scale of the problem.
The same preference for process and secrecy shows up in the treaty file. The Public Accounts recently disclosed roughly 135,000 hectares of Crown land committed for transfer under various agreements. No detailed public maps have been released for the larger packages. Rustad’s reading is straightforward. The government treats these as pure government-to-government negotiations. The broader public has no role except to be informed after the fact. If backlash is intense they pause, wait for attention to move on, then proceed. He pointed to the Cowichan/Callahan case as an example of a deliberate decision to keep affected landowners out of the process. When he was minister he signed multiple Section 35 agreements that protected the public interest and generated little controversy. The claim that modern deals somehow require DRIPA is, in his view, false. DRIPA has raised expectations and made practical resolution harder.
The economic consequences follow the same pattern. Interfor is shifting corporate support functions from Burnaby to Georgia. Nutrien is building export capacity in Washington state rather than expanding through Prince Rupert. British Columbia has become a high-cost, high-uncertainty, and often hostile jurisdiction. Companies go where they are wanted and where the numbers work. Rustad was particularly critical of the idea of putting critical minerals on the table as leverage against U.S. tariffs. The Mining Association of B.C. has already warned of severe escalation. American retaliation could hit diesel, jet fuel, or power supplies. More importantly, the threat itself creates investment uncertainty for the very projects the province claims it wants. Under the NDP, trade with the Americas has actually increased while Asian trade has declined — the opposite of diversification.
On energy security he returned repeatedly to diesel. British Columbia refines only about 35 percent of what it consumes. A meaningful share of diesel still comes from the United States. Diesel moves food, timber, and goods. It is not optional. He argued for additional refining capacity outside the Lower Mainland — Terrace or Kamloops — paired with a northern pipeline route that stays north of the major salmon systems. The goal is simple: reduce vulnerability, keep more value in the province, and generate revenue that can actually fund the services people need. The world has spent roughly $15 trillion on wind and solar for about 3 percent of global energy supply. Hydrocarbons are not disappearing on any timeline that matches the political rhetoric.
Toward the end of the conversation the themes converged. Housing costs that make family formation nearly impossible in the urban centres. A public service that has grown 50 to 60 percent in a decade without clear improvement in outcomes. Municipal processes that require dozens of desks for a single housing approval. A political culture that prefers managing decline to reversing it. Rustad’s consistent thread was that process has replaced results, and ideology has replaced practical judgment. Whether the issue is a fire running up a valley, a treaty negotiation conducted in the dark, or a company deciding British Columbia is no longer worth the risk, the pattern is the same.
The public is not imagining the frustration. They are living the consequences. British Columbia still has the resources, the people, and the geography to prosper. What it currently lacks is a government willing to put results ahead of process and the public interest ahead of ideology. That is the real emergency.
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