Premier Campbell is now saying that the review of this year's forest and interface fires will be "independent" but he has not provided any details. We'll have to wait and see whether Campbell's interpretation of "independent" is the same as the public's. Meanwhile he asserted on CKNW's Bill Good show that the Auditor General has confirmed that progress is being made on implementing recommendations from the critical 2001 report. The Premier greatly exaggerated the truth.

The Auditor's assessment of progress is available at http://www.bcauditor.com/PUBS/2002-03/Report8/FollowUpFeb2003.pdf. That report was actually done in November 2002. The Auditor General wrote "Since there are still 22 significant recommendations that have not been fully implemented, we will carry out a follow-up in about a year's time and report to the committee after completion of our review."

The Auditor reported that nothing had been done on the following two recommendations:

"The Interface Fire Committee should work with communities to improve training of local firefighters and other emergency responders, with emphasis in high and moderate risk locations."

"The Interface Fire Committee should identify local fire departments in high and moderate risk locations that lack suitable firefighting and communications equipment, and work with the communities to resolve the deficiencies."

15 recommendations of the original 37 have been fully implemented; partial progress has been made on 20. The response to the Auditor's follow up report from Response from the Provincial Emergency Program (Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General), Office of the Fire Commissioner (Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services) and the Protection Branch (Ministry of Forests) began with a statement that local government autonomy makes "coordination and sharing of interface fire preparedness and response challenging." "Challenging" is a favorite word in bureaucratic speak. It usually means trouble.

The response from the Ministries went on to say "Fire suppression is a discretionary service of local governments and the level of that service is a function of the council's willingness and ability to pay. Many communities do not have the resource tax base to allocate the necessary funds to fire protection or to emergency preparedness to the extent anticipated by the province." Perhaps the Premier's "independent review" will revisit that caution about fire suppression being challenging because of limits to local government's tax base in light of the $500 million that this year's fires cost all taxpayers. However, the Ministries' response to the Auditor went on to warn that "It must be acknowledged that the fiscal reality will continue to affect our ability to fully implement the recommendations. Implementation of expenditure and workforce reductions is scheduled to continue though to the end of fiscal year 04/05." Campbell forgot to mention those realities when he was stick handling Bill Good's questions. He must have forgotten that anyone can access and read the Auditor's report over the Internet.

It is important to note that a table included in the Ministries' response classified implementation status of the original recommendations as fully, substantially, partially, alternative action or no action. The substantially and alternative action columns were empty; in other words, little progress has been made on 20 recommendations.

An example of a partially implemented recommendation is the establishment of an Interface Fire Committee. The Ministries wrote "An Interface Fire Committee has been formed under the provisions of the Emergency Program Act. The Committee, chaired by the Provincial Emergency Program, is currently comprised of six members, including two from Ministry of Forests, Office of the Fire Commissioner and Provincial Emergency Program. No specific funding for the committee is currently available. Ability to fund committee activities by individual ministries is at present limited because of budget pressures." (emphasis added)

A careful read of the Auditor's follow up report does not offer the kind of reassurance suggested by the Premier in his appearance on Good's talk show. It does show why a truly independent review of this year's forest and interface fires is necessary.