About

WHO WE ARE

“Open The Gates” (OTG) is a grass roots non-profit organization dedicated to improving public access to the backcountry of spectacular Vancouver Island, Canada. We are not an anti-logging group, indeed we recognize the important role that the forestry industry has played in the history of Vancouver Island and continues to play in terms of economic opportunities for our residents.

WHAT ARE THE ISSUES

Since approximately 2011, an ever increasing number of locked gates have been erected on southern Vancouver Island, preventing the general public from accessing the Island’s mountains, valleys lakes and rivers. At present these gates number in the hundreds, making it all but impossible to access almost 1 million acres of Southern Vancouver Island backcountry, from any direction. The blocked areas encompass a number of regional parks, including Mount Arrowsmith Regional Park, the highest mountain peak on southern Vancouver Island as well as neighboring Mount Cokley, Mount Moriarity, Minna’s Ridge, Labour Day Lake. Also blocked are vast areas of the San Juan Ridge (Sooke to Port Renfrew), the Nanaimo Lakes area, The Comox Lake and Comox Glacier area, the Cowichan Valley and more. The list of recreationally important areas that are now inaccessible to the public is endless and grows longer week by week.

HOW DID WE GET HERE – WHO OWNS THE LAND AND WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR INSTALLING THESE GATES ?

The current gate situation is the legacy of a historic land transfer agreement that occurred more than a century ago, when British Columbia was first joining the Dominion of Canada. In this agreement (known as the  E&N land transfer), over 800,000 hectares (8,000 square kilometres) of land was given to the E&N Railway Company as payment to build a railway line from Esquimalt to north of Campbell River. For context, 8,000 square kilometres represents almost one quarter of the entire Vancouver Island land mass.

From the initial E&N Land grant until 2011, the lands were privately owned (fee simple) by a number of successive forestry companies (including MacMillan Bloedel, Pacific Forest Products, Weyerhauser and others). During this period large portions of the E&N lands remained accessible to the public and recreational opportunities peacefully co-existed with ongoing forestry activities.

However, in 2011 the E&N lands changed hands for the last time and were acquired by a group of Canadian Pension Fund organizations, namely the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (bcIMC), the Alberta Investment Management Corp (AIMCo) and the Canadian Public Sector Pension Investment Board.

These pension funds then got together and hired a private contractor named Mosaic Forest Management to manage the ongoing day to day forestry activities. It is the Mosaic Forest Management group, led by its current CEO Mr. Duncan Davies, who is solely responsible for the proliferation of locked gates that is preventing access to our Vancouver Island backcountry.

What is particularly relevant in regards to public access of the (former) E&N Lands is that each of these pension funds is an agent of the government, with the Minister(s) of Finance for British Columba, Alberta and Canada being the sole shareholder for each fund. Thus, in legal terms, the E&N lands have been successfully re-acquired from the private sector by the peoples of British Columba, Alberta and Canada.

Moreover, the Forestry activities of the former E&N Lands have been historically managed by an act of legislation known as the BC Privately Managed Forest Land Act (PMFLA). Mosaic Forest Management continues to operate its forestry business under this Act which provides them special privileges in terms of forestry activities and tax advantages. Because the former E&N Lands are no longer in the private sector, but are owned ultimately by Provincial and Federal Pension Plans and their respective Ministers of Finance, this Act is no longer applicable and needs to be repealed or amended.

WHAT ARE OUR GOALS

One of the primary goals of the “Open The Gates” project is to ensure that ALL stakeholders in this scenario, including the Pension Fund Managers, the individual Pension Fund Members and the Minister(s) of Finance for British Columba, Alberta and Canada as well as the general public are made fully aware of the ongoing actions of Mosaic Forest Management to lock the general public out of the lands that we ultimately own.

Mosaic Forest Management claims that its primary reason for locking out the public is in the interest of public safety. However we feel that recreational access and forestry can and should co-exist, thus we urge the government to repeal or amend the BC Privately Managed Forest Land Act to ensure public access now and in the future.

JOIN US

We encourage everyone interested in this situation to learn about the history and reality of the problem and to join us in our quest to restore access to the magnificent backcountry areas of Vancouver Island.
Thanks for visiting our site and please consider ADDING YOUR NAME to our MEMBERSHIP LIST by going to the “Membership” page.

Having your name on a membership list is critical for the purpose of having large numbers to press our governments to make the changes necessary for us to meet our goals. We know that our government created this problem in the 1800s, and we believe it is their responsibility to resolve the problem. They have the power to do this!