Okanagan Volunteers Sent Eby the Crown-Land Warning. Why Are They Still Waiting?

The NDP can move quickly when it wants to restrict public activity on Crown land. The harder test is whether it moves when local volunteers say illegal camps, dumped waste and fire-risk complaints are piling up in the backcountry.

West Coast Current reported September 1 that the Okanagan Forest Task Force says it has hauled more than 1.4 million pounds of waste from remote wilderness areas over the past decade. The same report says the group is preparing to clear a Lumby-area site involving a derelict motorhome, multiple truckloads of trash and deer remains that volunteers believe point to illegal poaching.

The accountability problem is not just the mess. It is the silence alleged by the people cleaning it up. West Coast Current says OFTF president Kane Blake sent an open letter to Premier David Eby two weeks earlier and later wrote Forests Minister Ravi Parmar; Blake said Friday that none of the letters had received a response.

Castanet reported August 14 that the task force’s letter demanded removal or relocation of illegal Crown-land encampments near Kelowna, citing public-safety, wildfire and watershed-contamination risks. The report also described photos sent to the premier that allegedly showed banned ATV use near Postill Lake Forest Service Road during the province’s off-road-vehicle prohibition.

That ban was real. BC Wildfire Service prohibited recreational off-road vehicles on Crown land throughout the Kamloops Fire Centre effective noon on August 10, saying elevated fire danger and the scale of fires in B.C. required the measure to protect public safety. On August 27, the service said the prohibition would be rescinded at noon August 28 after precipitation reduced risk enough to lift it, while warning that wildfire risk remained and open-fire restrictions continued.

There are legal tools, too. The current Land Act includes a Part 6 on trespass on Crown land and lists provisions dealing with unauthorized occupation and garbage on Crown land. That does not mean every file is simple, or that vulnerable people should be treated as props in a political fight. It does mean Victoria cannot pretend Crown-land enforcement is an unsolvable mystery.

The province owes residents a clear answer: who is responsible for inspecting these sites, who decides when a camp becomes an enforcement file, what happens when volunteers report fire hazards, and what timeline applies after a letter lands on the premier’s desk?

Compassion and enforcement are not opposites. Leaving rural residents and volunteers to patrol, extinguish, photograph and haul away the evidence is not compassion. It is offloading the cost of provincial inaction onto the people closest to the risk.