2024, Sept 19 – OTG wrote this letter to John Rustad, candidate for the Conservative Party. The Conservatives have expressed an interest in public access to the privately managed forests of the E&N lands.
Here is that letter: (link: 24.9.19-letter-Rustad-Conservatives.pdf)
2024, May 4 – Three of us from OTG met with government officials to discuss access to the E&N lands. After pressuring them for a reply, they finally responded on August 15th with this letter:
(link: GOV-Response-Letter_to-Open-the-Gates.pdf)
We believed some of the statements in the letter to be false, and so wrote a response to that letter.
2024, August 22 – Our Letter delivered to Mr. Bruce Ralston (Minister for Forests) and Mr. Nathan Cullen (Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship) in response to their August 15th letter by the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship on August.
In the letter the Ministry states that “The provincial government has no legislated authority to direct private landowners to provide public access to their land.” Open the gates is responding to this argument by clarifying that the former E&N lands on Vancouver Island are actually no longer private as they were purchased in 2011 by pension funds that are themselves agents of the government, having the Minister of finance as their sole legal shareholder. Accordingly, the provincial government has ALL the legal authority to ensure that the public has access to the vast backcountry areas of Vancouver Island that have been put under lock and key by a third party contractor (Mosaic Forest Management).
HERE IS OUR RESPONSE: (link: 24.8.22-letter-OTG-reply-to-gov.pdf)