Appendix 1. Strategic Context

Vision, Mission and Values

Vision

A vibrant economy supporting the social and environmental values of British Columbians.

Mission

The mission of the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management is to provide provincial leadership, through policies, planning and resource information to support sustainable economic development of the province's land, water and resources.

The Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management is the lead provincial agency responsible for strategic policies and plans concerning sustainable management of Crown land- and water-use, pricing, registration of private land titles and other tenures, strategic policies concerning property assessment and the provision of information concerning all natural resources.

Values

The ministry's values are consistent with and enhance the government-wide corporate values. These value statements shape and guide the development of our strategies, our decision-making and the daily work of each staff member.

Excellence: We excel as leaders in sustainability. We strive to improve our performance and reward our progress.

Innovation: We encourage an entrepreneurial spirit by providing the tools for staff to make decisions to take risks and get results.

Respect: We treat each other and those we serve with fairness, dignity and compassion.

Integrity: We exemplify the highest standards of dedication, trust, co-operation, pride and courtesy in the work environment.

Teamwork and Collaboration: We support each other and work together, across divisional and geographic boundaries.

Diversity: We value our diverse workforce and create a work environment that is welcoming and inclusive.

Communication: We listen to each other and remain receptive to ideas regardless of their origin. We engage people at all levels of the ministry as we communicate our expectations and decisions.

Balance: We balance personal and workplace expectations and strive to keep both in mind as we meet the demands of public service.

Governance principles for sustainability

The ministry is using the following governance principles for sustainability to guide its activities and delivery of public services. An earlier draft of the principles was endorsed by Cabinet in May 2002. The draft principles have been revised based upon feedback from a focused stakeholder consultation program. The revised principles are now being applied in the development of key policy initiatives and planning processes led by the ministry. The principles are organized under three themes.

Theme 1 — Certainty is about improving access to Crown land and resources; streamlining decision-making; seeking to accommodate First Nations interests; improving Crown land tenure management; improving the investment climate; and ensuring access to markets. Supporting principles include:

Certainty — Making timely and clear decisions within a predictable and understandable framework.

Competitiveness — Ensuring that British Columbia remains internationally competitive by removing barriers to investment and promoting open trade.

Efficiency — Focused and efficient delivery of government services and maximizing the net benefits arising from the allocation, development and use of natural resources.

Theme 2 — Accountable and Responsive Government is about setting clear standards and ensuring those standards are being met through monitoring, enforcement, auditing and reporting. Supporting principles include:

Accountability — Enhancing performance management through effective compliance, enforcement, auditing and public reporting activities.

Continual improvement and innovation — Learning from the past, adapting to changing circumstances, encouraging innovation and being entrepreneurial.

Science-based decision-making — Making justifiable decisions informed by science-based information and risk management.

Transparency — Establishing open and transparent decision-making processes that consider First Nations, the public and other key interests.

Theme 3 — Shared Stewardship is about working cooperatively to achieve a sustainable future by shifting towards results-based approaches, providing incentives and taking into account economic, environmental and social objectives.

Supporting principles include:

Inclusion — Including the interests of First Nations, and their desire to participate more fully in the economy of the province.

Integration — Ensuring that decisions integrate economic, environmental and social elements, while considering the limits of each, for the benefit of present and future generations.

Shared responsibility — Encouraging co-operation among First Nations; federal, provincial and local governments; academics; industry and non-governmental organizations in developing and implementing policies.

Planning Context

Issues and Trends

The following issues and trends are likely to be of key importance to the ministry over the next three years:

• Resource sectors continue to be impacted by major demand changes, global competition, trade disputes and international scrutiny. British Columbia's reputation as a higher-risk jurisdiction for investment returns is only now being turned around;
• Short-run increases in commodity prices in US dollars are being offset to some extent by the rising Canadian/US exchange rate;
• Significant changes in relative expected commodity prices (e.g., natural gas prices relative to forest products) is a major factor giving rise to pressures for tenure change;
• Major structural change is taking place in the forest sector driven by a variety of factors;
• As a consequence of these and other trends, the rural areas of the province are facing particular economic challenges relative to urban areas;
• Business has emphasized the need for continued regulatory reform and streamlining with a preferred focus on targeting the key regulatory impediments to investment and growth by sector as well as a shift to results-based regulation; and
• A number of major events affecting BC over the last year — such as SARS, BSE, mountain pine beetle, forest fires and drought — have raised awareness of the impact such events can have on communities and the economy and questions about how our society manages its natural resources. This is likely to increase demands for resource information and for effective government policies to guide resource development.

Opportunities

Opportunities exist for the ministry to improve certainty in resource management and to help ensure the optimal use of Crown land and resources. This will contribute to investor confidence, improved global competitiveness, economic growth of the province and the diversity and resilience of regional economies. The ministry is committed to working with other government agencies and the private sector to implement the following five-step plan to improve certainty.

Step 1: Access to Land — improving access to Crown land and resources. There are major opportunities for investment and business development in the forestry, mining, oil and gas, tourism, recreation, aquaculture and other sectors. Critical for these developments is the provision of certainty of access to land and other resources. Completion of land and resource-use plans under Goal 1 and the improvement of information provision under Goal 2 will be the principal means by which the ministry capitalizes on these opportunities.

Step 2: Meaningful First Nations Consultation and Accommodation — assisting First Nations to achieve economic and social development goals will reduce the economic impact of uncertainty related to aboriginal rights. The completion of strategic-level land and resource management plans and economic opportunity plans involving First Nations under Goal 1 will be an important tool for achieving this result.

Step 3: Tenure Security — ensuring that investors and businesses have sufficient land-use certainty to invest in the future. There are opportunities to improve this security through further development of policies covering areas such as tenure compensation and free Crown grants, through identification and clarification of overlapping and multiple tenures and through the integrated registry of all tenures and the rights of tenure holders. These are strategies under Goals 2 and 3.

Step 4: Improved Business Climate — making it easier to do business in BC and ensuring that businesses are competitive in the world markets. Major opportunities exist to improve the quality, speed and convenience of decisions and client information services in areas such as resource information, decision support and tenure registration. These services enhance the confidence of resource investors concerning the net returns they are likely to receive and the regulatory hurdles and other risks they might face. Improving these services also contributes to public engagement in the development of safe, healthy communities, as well as confidence that resources are being managed in a sustainable manner and overall trust in government. As a consequence, there is growing demand for accurate and timely resource information that is impartial, science-based and easily accessible from the electronic web. There are also significant opportunities to develop partnerships in this area. These opportunities will be realized through Land Information BC.

Step 5: Access to Markets — meeting environmental stewardship and First Nations responsibilities. Without this level of integrity and transparency, BC will lose the confidence of customers and access to markets. Access to markets in many developed Western economies is increasingly dependent on firms and governments being able to demonstrate continued effective sustainability, both through the existence of effective government planning, consultation, regulatory and monitoring processes, and through private independent certification of products and services. All goals will be important in capitalizing on these opportunities.

Challenges and Risks

The ministry faces the following challenges to the achievement of its goals, objectives and performance targets.

• Rapid changes in the nature of the demand for ministry services and the proposed methods for supplying these services have created a challenge to meet some client demands and make it more difficult to predict what can be delivered. This applies particularly to information services. For example, implementation of e-service delivery is resulting in both unplanned investment costs and growth in demand for services. The core businesses of some clients have also been shifting with resulting changes in their demands for information. On the supply side, the ministry has also shifted the role of resource information collection to industry and other partners according to data quality standards set by the ministry.
• Resource allocations and the speed of change impacts on the ministry's ability to deliver on service plan targets. While many of these impacts are internal to the ministry, others flow from the ability of other agencies to respond in a timely manner.
• External factors pose risks to the achievement of ministry performance targets and the costs of their delivery. Economic conditions, trade disputes and other market conditions will continue to affect the interest of firms in entering into partnerships for the delivery of ministry services. In addition, there are uncertainties around the clean-up costs, human health impacts and environmental risks associated with contaminated sites management. There are also challenges to meet specified time frames for strategic land-use plans and to find an enduring consensus across a wide range of environmental groups, resource sectors and communities. In addition, First Nation groups are being stretched to complete meaningful consultation and obtain support from their communities in time frames set out in this service plan.

In relation to these risk categories, the ministry has reduced some performance targets as described in the section on Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Results. Under its human resources plan, the ministry is working on improving leadership qualities across the ministry and to increase the capabilities of staff to achieve the ministry's mandate in times of rapid change. The ministry is also developing risk management plans, beginning with the most significant risks, as it implements Enterprise-wide Risk Management (see the Related Initiatives section on page 36).

Highlights of Strategic Shifts and Changes from Previous Service Plan

The ministry's emphasis in this service plan is on consolidation, sticking to its charted strategic course and delivering on previously set performance targets. Priorities include the completion of strategic land-use plans, delivering on major changes to the processing and delivery of resource and registry information services, and completing key strategic policies and legislation to meet New Era commitments.

In this context, the ministry has led the development of Land Information BC to be the government's vehicle for providing access, products and services around a common and consistent base of land and resource information. Land Information BC involves a number of strategic shifts in the areas of client service, information integration, business processes, and governance. For example, service agreements are being forged with all major information clients of the ministry as foreshadowed in last year's service plan⁸.

However in addition to these Land Information BC changes, the ministry has made a small number of strategic shifts and consequent changes to performance measures. For example, two significant changes have been made regarding the ministry's role with respect to First Nations. Firstly, responsibility for leading the development of strategic First Nations policies concerning natural resources, including consultation policies and treaty mandates, has been transferred to the Treaty Negotiations Office. Secondly, the ministry will focus its limited resources in the land-use planning area on obligatory, basic levels of First Nations consultations and a limited number of First Nations economic development opportunities. Enhanced First Nations accommodation strategies and economic opportunities will be dependent on additional funding.

Responsibility for the coordination of resource-based tourism opportunities has been transferred to the Ministry of Small Business and Economic Development. However, resort opportunities associated with land-use has been added to the ministry's responsibilities under a new Minister of State.

Responsibility for management of contaminated sites on provincial land was assigned to the ministry in 2003/04 on the basis that the ministry is the nominated "owner" of Crown land and resources and to effectively separate resource ownership from regulation (performed by the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection). The ministry is in the process of setting up a management program for contaminated sites as a whole and for a number of specific sites.

The ministry has made a number of other changes to objectives, strategies and performance measures discussed in the Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Results section. None of these involves key strategic shifts. The key ministry strategies identified in last year's service plan are largely being continued but are now all covered under Goal 1 strategies. Please see section B of the ministry's 2003/04 – 2005/06 service plan at http://www.gov.bc.ca.

Consistency with Government Strategic Plan

The ministry's goals support government's three long-term goals as shown in Figure 1 (p. 18):

• a strong and vibrant provincial economy.
• a supportive social fabric.
• safe, healthy communities and a sustainable environment.

Figure 2 provides an overview of the ministry's accountabilities and supporting goals and objectives for the 23 government strategic actions in which it is involved. The ministry has lead or sole accountability for four strategic actions and shared accountability for another four under government's Goals 1 and 3.

		Figure 2: Relationship of the Ministry Service Plan to the Government's Strategic Plan 2004/05 - 2006/07

Through its governance principles and values, the ministry also supports government's core values of integrity, fiscal responsibility, accountability, respect and choice. In addition all ministry goals, including Goal 4, Organizational Excellence, operate under the government's management principles: high standards of accountability, consultation and ethics; focused and efficient delivery of government services; social and fiscal responsibility; open and transparent government; and an innovative and goal-oriented public service.