Natural Resource changes, there is hope

Earlier I could only go on the ministry names, now I can see there are have been some important changes to the dirt ministries that seem to be undoing the disaster of last fall.

Randy Hawes has been appointed the parliamentary secretary for Natural Resource Operations Review to the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.  This says there is some sort of review that will happen of the changes.

Rich Coleman at Energy and Mines seems to have some more powers now.   The permitting of mines is now falling under his ministry.  He also has two parlimentary secretaries - Pat Pimm for Natural Gas (I am resisting making a joke about an MLA being responsible for Natural Gas), and John Yap for Clean Energy.  The Oil and Gas Commission reports to Coleman as does BC Hydro

Rich Coleman also gets one of the most skilled civil servants as his Deputy Minister in Steve Carr.

I am not yet certain, but I believe the minister of Agriculture has all the traditional roles again.

Terry Lake as Minister of the Environment seems to have parks and all the traditional

Steve Thomson as Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations seems to mainly be the minister of forests.  Certainly he Deputy Minister Doug Konkin is out of the Ministry of Forests.

What he keeps that seems out of place:

• Independent Power Production
• Mineral and coal titles (this could work if the tenuring system is integrated into the lands side of things)
• Aquaculture licencing and regulation
• Aboriginal consultation and coordination - natural resource operations (I need to know what that means before saying it is a good of bad thing)
• Licencing and permitting for angling, hunting and trapping (this should be with environment)
• Provincial hatchery and stocking program (this should be with environment)
• Fish, wildlife and habitat management (this is core to the ministry of the environment)
• Resource management compliance (Hen, fox and the coop come to mind)

I am hoping that the review Randy Hawes does highlights some of this.

One other area that should be elsewhere is FrontCounter BC, this should be linked to the rest of the people dealing with citizen service delivery in the Ministry of Labour, Citizens' Services and Open Government.