Ministry of Environment — Continued

Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Results

Ministry of Environment Goals and Their Linkage
to the Five Great Goals

With its Five Great Goals, the government is poised to continue its work of the last four years and build on its accomplishments. The ministry has been assigned primary accountability for achieving the government's objectives under the following Great Goals:

Great Goal 4

To lead the world in sustainable environmental management, with the best air and water quality, and the best fisheries management — bar none.

Ministry linkage:

• Leadership role in sustainable environmental management using scientific and economic information in decision-making processes.
• Lead role in monitoring air quality, responding to climate change, and taking action to limit air pollution.
• Lead role in ensuring safe, high-quality drinking water, and reducing and removing toxins and wastes from the environment.
• Provincial responsibility for managing British Columbia's freshwater fisheries and fostering join decision-making related to marine fisheries, sustainable ocean industries and marine protected areas.

Great Goal 2

To strive to improve health care and lead the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness.

Ministry linkage:

• Responsibility for contributing to the health of British Columbians by maintaining the high quality of air and water in the province, and by providing outdoor opportunities through parks, fishing, hunting and wildlife viewing.

Great Goal 5

To create more jobs per capita than anywhere else in Canada.

Ministry linkage:

• Responsibility for contributing to the economy through sustainable environmental management, which fosters job creation and investment opportunities.

Ministry of Environment Performance Plan Summary

Performance Plan

This section presents the ministry's goals and outlines how specific objectives, strategies, performance measures and targets are helping to achieve them.

Clean and safe water, land and air support healthy communities and the economy in British Columbia. This goal reflects the ministry's commitment to developing results-based environmental standards and workable regulation, protecting air and water quality and enabling the removal of contaminants from land.

The ministry has been shifting from a prescriptive approach to environmental regulation to a results-based approach informed by science and is streamlining standards and processes to remove unnecessary impediments to business and foster economic development while maintaining strong environmental protection. The ministry is working to change some of its processes, clarify regulatory requirements and improve the use of science in the decision-making process.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: revising appropriate legislation and regulatory requirements to increase flexibility in methods used to achieve environmental standards; updating scientific information used to develop best practices, guidelines and standards for environmental protection; and improving systems used to monitor the achievement of air and water quality standards.

Performance Measures:

Reducing the backlog of contaminated sites applications: The ministry's efforts to eliminate the backlog have been facilitated by recent legislative and regulatory changes to the Environmental Management Act and approval processes. Currently, the April 2003 backlog has been eliminated. This performance measure will be reviewed for the 2006/07–2008/09 Service Plan. It is important to monitor the progress toward reducing the backlog because a delay in providing decisions for the applications, which are primarily for low- and medium-risk situations, may be preventing some development from proceeding.

Average processing time for permits: The ministry is streamlining, where appropriate, the regulatory requirements perceived as an impediment to economic development and diversification of regional economies in British Columbia. This will result in consistent processing standards, encourage greater compliance and enforcement, and result in lower costs to government and industry. This performance measure assesses average processing time for issuing similar permits in British Columbia compared to Alberta. Efforts to align environmental management approaches between British Columbia and Alberta are currently underway. As these joint harmonization efforts continue to move forward, base data for this measure will be established.

Processing time for pesticide certification: Applicators and dispensers of pesticides are required to be certified and candidates must pass the appropriate examination. In conjunction with the development of the new Integrated Pest Management Act, the process for examination was reviewed and a streamlined approach introduced. The target is to reduce the time people must wait to receive examination results.

Protecting the quality of air remains a key component of the ministry's goal to protect the environment and human health. The ministry is undertaking action in a number of areas related to air quality issues in the province and is leading the implementation of the government's climate change action plan.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: working in partnership with other levels of government to support the development of a climate change strategy to ensure the province's interests are addressed in a national strategy; and encouraging incorporation of environmental technology and clean energy by industries, businesses, households and government.

Performance Measures:

Air quality: The ministry's efforts toward achieving this objective include addressing province-wide and airshed-specific air quality issues. The outdoor air contaminants of most concern in British Columbia, from a human health perspective, are the concentrations in the air of fine particulate matter under 2.5 microns (PM_2.5) and low level ozone.

To measure the ministry's commitment to ensuring all parts of the province meet or exceed the Canada-wide standard for air quality, the percentage of monitored communities achieving the Canada-wide standard for both PM_2.5 and low level ozone is being tracked.

Greenhouse gas emissions: To assess performance in its lead role on addressing global climate change within British Columbia, the ministry is using an outcome measure of per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to that of other provinces. A per capita scaling improves comparability to other jurisdictions. The relative benchmark measures British Columbia's contribution to national efforts, while accounting for the largely unknown effects of future national GHG commitments and clean technology development that are likely to apply to all provinces.

The ministry is continuing to protect water quality and ensure clean and safe water. Two divisions are ultimately responsible for water — the Environmental Protection Division is responsible for water monitoring and reporting, and the newly established Water Stewardship Division is responsible for water protection, water planning, water allocation and regulation. A detailed set of objectives for the Water Stewardship Division are being developed and will be provided in the 2006/07–2008/09 Service Plan.

Key Strategy:

The ministry is working on activities that protect surface water and ground water from health-threatening contamination by implementing appropriate ground water regulations.

Performance Measure:

Water quality trends:This is an outcome measure of surface water quality in 30 water bodies monitored under a federal/provincial agreement. The measure monitors trends based on the presence of environmentally significant variables, such as metals and nutrients. Tracking such trends will indicate the cumulative effect of multi-agency land use activities and resource management activities in source watersheds. This information helps inform how performance standards, authorizations and further monitoring activities are established for water bodies in the province.

The ministry is continuing its efforts to protect the environment and ensure clean and safe land.

Key Strategy:

The ministry is developing a business strategy that enables producers to remove high-risk and/or high volume components from the waste stream and expand the number of products that can be recycled.

Performance Measure:

Industry-led stewardship: The ministry is using a performance measure based on the number of post-consumer product categories with industry-led product stewardship to track its progress toward achieving this objective. Industry-led product stewardships expand producer responsibility for the treatment or disposal of the toxins and waste remaining after product consumption. Since these stewardships tend to focus on reducing waste from product categories posing a relatively high risk to the environment (e.g., paint and used oil), this measure is a reasonable indicator of success in attaining this objective. Performance targets are based on the lead time for industry-led product stewardship programs to be developed for additional product categories. The ministry is currently monitoring the effectiveness of the industry-led stewardships and may move to an outcome-based measure such as product recovery rate in the future.

Responding to environmental emergencies is an area in which the ministry is implementing its shift to focusing on high-risk issues. This objective pertains to all components of the goal, encompassing water, land and air.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: responding effectively to high-risk² environmental emergencies in conjunction with other ministries, local governments and industry; and expanding industry responsibility for response to and clean-up of spills.

Performance Measure:

Response to environmental emergencies: To assess its progress toward achieving the objective, the ministry is using an outcome measure of the percentage of high-risk environmental emergencies responded to effectively. The measure focuses on responses to environmental spills. Effectiveness considerations include identifying the spills that require attendance by ministry staff and the timeliness of their response, addressing the technical issues at the site, and ensuring that responsible parties (or others when there is no responsible party) respond appropriately and initiate proper clean-up. The ministry has made considerable progress toward transferring responsibility for low- and medium-risk spills to industry, local governments and other partners. The responsible party addressing a low- or medium-risk spill will report how impacts were mitigated to enable further monitoring and evaluation. The ministry is able to contract for the resources required to respond effectively to high-risk spills and hold the responsible party accountable for those costs.

Maintaining and restoring ecological diversity, fish and wildlife species and natural habitats provides environmental, social and economic benefits for all British Columbians. This goal focuses on the development of effective legislation and the improved use of science and scientific information, and promotes a shared-stewardship approach involving First Nations, other government agencies, stakeholders and communities within British Columbia.

The ministry continues efforts to focus on environmental outcomes by providing clear direction, known information and certainty for people who must comply with ministry regulations. To achieve this, the ministry develops standards informed by science, provides known information about environmental values and clearly identifies expectations and required results.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: focusing on reducing regulatory requirements to implement results-based stewardship and providing clear guidelines and standards for appropriate protection and conservation of species and habitats on Crown land outside the protected areas system.

Performance Measure:

Designations under the Forest and Range Practices Act: The ministry is piloting an output measure to demonstrate its progress in establishing designations and objectives for fisheries, wildlife and water quality under the authority of the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA). This measure will indicate the ministry's progress in setting results-based environmental standards informed by science under the FRPA, which will be critical to attaining the desired environmental outcomes. To adequately demonstrate progress, two types of data are being collected: (1) the number of designations and objectives established, and (2) the area of forest land base for which designations and objectives have been established. Initially, information is provided for designations of wildlife habitat areas (WHA) and ungulate winter ranges (UWR). Performance targets are based on expected levels of funding from the Forest Investment Account and other funding sources related to achieving the performance measure, and are provided only for the number of designations because the size of the areas will depend on the species. The targets for approval of UWR designations decrease over the next three years, reflecting an expected decrease in the UWR remaining for approval. Data and targets for other areas, such as significant community and fisheries watersheds, may be provided as data become available.

This objective has been changed to incorporate new program areas of the ministry that increase its capacity and responsibilities for collection, storage and dissemination of scientific information. The application of the best available science is a key part of developing environmental standards and monitoring and reporting on their implementation and effectiveness.

Key Strategies:

The ministry is focusing on a range of strategies for this objective that include: improving access to scientific information to inform and implement strategies and actions for addressing issues associated with biological diversity; tracking species and habitats and their responses to management actions; developing standards and an assessment process for the protection of fish habitat in urban areas; and working with partners to develop and implement environmental standards for the Forest and Range Practices Act.

Key Issue:

In previous Service Plans, the ministry used the performance measure of the percentage of known native species that are threatened or endangered in the province regarding species at risk to track progress in achieving this objective. As reported in the ministry's 2003/04 Annual Service Plan Report, however, new data relating to this measure will not be available until 2006. Hence, the measure has been removed from the ministry's Service Plan.

Under the Accord for the Protection of Species at Risk (1997), provincial, territorial and federal wildlife agencies committed to an ongoing process for wild species assessment and monitoring. Tremendous progress has been made in recent years to compile information on wild species, but considerable challenges remain to expand, improve and update this information. A key role of ministry regional and headquarters staff in working toward the desired outcome of protecting species at risk is to put recovery planning processes in place in partnership with the federal government, First Nations, local governments, industry and other stakeholders.

As of November 2004, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) has listed 170 species in British Columbia. The province is responsible for leading or co-leading the recovery planning processes for 127 of these species. Recovery planning is underway for all extirpated, endangered and threatened species for which the province has responsibility.

Partnerships will be a crucial mechanism in promoting a shared stewardship approach.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: working to establish and maintain relationships with First Nations, communities, academia, environmental organizations and industry to undertake activities to conserve species and habitats; and providing standards, guidelines and best management practices to private landowners to develop and implement sustainable stewardship practices.

Performance Measure:

Number of partnerships: The ministry is monitoring its progress in forging partnerships by focusing on its efforts at building relationships with First Nations. In the past, the ministry has used a performance measure based on the number of Collaborative Management Agreements³ with First Nations. The measure has been changed to include the number of Official Wildlife Processes in addition to the Collaborative Management Agreements. Collaborative Management Agreements define how the province and First Nations will work together on the management of protected areas. Official Wildlife Processes are designed to bring First Nations and key stakeholders with an interest in wildlife together in a forum to discuss wildlife management and allocation issues.

Both of these partnerships are important in providing a significant role to First Nations in making recommendations around protected area and wildlife management.

Park, fish and wildlife opportunities contribute significantly to the provincial economy. To help ensure that British Columbia's parks continue to showcase the natural beauty of the province and attract visitors, this goal focuses on the provision of high-quality outdoor experiences, services and economic contributions created by the provincial parks system and wildlife and freshwater fish opportunities.

The ministry is continuing its efforts to provide high-quality client service in provincial parks. British Columbia's provincial parks are world renowned and contribute to tourism and conservation, and therefore to the economy and sustainable communities. Parks also encourage healthy activities and contribute to a healthy population.

Due in large part to a thriving British Columbia economy, the ministry has been able to commit additional financial resources in the order of approximately $20 million to upgrade park facilities over the next three years. These additional resources will fund improvements to facilities such as campgrounds, water systems and trails in parks across the province.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: implementing a new management model for provincial parks to increase visitation through day use and camping; implementing a parks lodge strategy in support of the provincial resort strategy; initiating further opportunities for delivery of appropriate park services through partnerships with commercial operators; and monitoring park operations to ensure service standards and facilities are maintained and conservation and habitat-restoration priorities are met.

Performance Measure:

Visitor satisfaction with park and campground facilities and services: The ministry provides campground facilities and services in provincial parks throughout the province. To assess client satisfaction, the ministry has conducted an annual satisfaction survey of visitors to campgrounds in the provincial parks system since 1985. This important outcome measure enables the ministry to capture campers' views about the quality of services being provided in campgrounds and to identify priorities for service and facility improvements.

The ministry is continuing its efforts to provide high-quality outdoor opportunities through a range of strategies and programs.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: working with the Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C. to cooperatively manage the stocking of fish in lakes and streams and undertake conservation activities; implementing new initiatives to enhance and diversify fish and wildlife experiences; increasing the involvement of First Nations and other users in allocating natural resources for hunting, angling and wildlife viewing opportunities; and providing hunting and angling authorizations based on allowable harvest levels informed by science to ensure sustainability of the populations.

Performance Measure:

Client satisfaction with fish and wildlife opportunities: This outcome measure will assess the ministry's effectiveness in providing British Columbians and visitors with fish and wildlife opportunities (e.g., hunting, angling and wildlife viewing). The ministry intends to use a survey of hunters and anglers to acquire this data.

Economic contribution is an important factor that the ministry considers when determining the level and types of park, fish and wildlife services and opportunities to provide.

Key Strategies:

To optimize the economic contribution of outdoor experiences, the ministry is: promoting participation in outdoor opportunities; working with First Nations, governments and communities to develop parks and special tourism destinations; providing unique hunting and fishing opportunities to enhance regional tourism; and exploring electronic service delivery to improve timeliness of licensing, authorization and permitting processes for fish, wildlife and park activities.

Performance Measures:

Hunting and angling licences sold: The ministry is reporting the number of basic hunting and angling licences sold in a particular year. This measure reflects the actual number of hunters and anglers benefiting from freshwater fishing and hunting opportunities in British Columbia.

Park visitors: A measure of the economic contribution of parks is being provided through an estimate of the number of park visitors (measured as the number of recorded visits to provincial parks).

Changes in the numbers of hunters, anglers and park visitors provide a reasonable indication of changes in the economic contribution resulting from their activities. However, changes in the number of participants will become a less accurate indicator of changes in the economic contribution of park, fish and wildlife opportunities as the types of experiences provided become more varied. It is anticipated that the development of key parks and special tourism destinations and the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will offer new opportunities for participation in and enjoyment of British Columbia's outdoor experiences. Work has begun to more directly estimate the economic contribution to the provincial economy.

The ministry provides corporate leadership and planning services that support the effective and efficient delivery of ministry programs.

Good policy and planning guides ministry activities, provides leadership and direction and helps position the ministry for the future.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: establishing strong strategic policy leadership that focuses on broad directions; undertaking strategic planning and providing leadership to staff that ensures a coordinated and integrated approach to ministry initiatives in all regions of the province; providing leadership in intergovernmental harmonization of regulatory requirements and streamlining of processes through work with the federal government, provinces and territories; eliminating, revising or developing legislation as appropriate; undertaking comprehensive service and performance planning, reporting and evaluation; identifying risk⁴ within a structured decision-making framework; developing State of the Environment Reports; and providing leadership and services in support of the delivery of effective compliance and enforcement activities.

Performance Measure:

Regulatory reform: As part of its New Era commitments, the government pledged to reduce regulations by 33% overall by June 4, 2004. This was the initial step in reducing the economic burden of prescriptive regulations for industry and other stakeholders. To support this initiative, the ministry had a three-year plan that reduced its regulations by 38% as of June 4, 2004. The next phase of regulatory reform has been identified and related performance targets have been established to continue to monitor ministry progress toward regulatory reform.

Managing programs efficiently, meeting fiscal targets and promoting client satisfaction enables the ministry to have resources available for more initiatives and to make greater progress in delivering on its mandate.

Key Strategies:

Key strategies for this objective include: implementing a human resource strategy that acknowledges changing workforce requirements, fosters healthy and knowledgeable staff and supports achievement of business objectives; ensuring service requirements and fiscal targets are aligned; identifying methods to reduce the costs incurred by those who must meet environmental standards, reduce conflicts and eliminate service backlogs; and implementing an effective information system strategy.

Performance Measure:

Employee performance and development plans: Achieving this objective requires ministry staff to focus on developing key performance and development goals that will enable them to contribute to accomplishing ministry objectives articulated in the Service Plan. A key initiative for ensuring that this occurs is a ministry requirement for all staff to have an Employee Performance and Development Plan (EPDP). This plan identifies what work an employee is accountable for and makes clear links to the ministry's Service Plan. As the EPDP initiative is being implemented, the ministry is using an output measure to indicate the percentage of staff with an EPDP.