Series GR-1786 - ELUC Committee records

The Environment and Land Use Committee Secretariat was established in 1973 as the staff support unit of the Environment and Land Use Committee. The Environment and Land Use Committee (ELUC) was established by the Social Credit government in 1971 under the Environment and Land Use Act (SBC 1971, c. 17).

The mandate of the committee was to establish and recommend programs to increase public awareness of the environment, to ensure that environmental concerns were fully considered in the administration of land and resource development, and to make recommendations and reports to the Executive Council. It was empowered to conduct public inquiries, appoint technical committees, and hire experts, specialists and researchers.

The Secretariat was established after the New Democratic government was elected in 1972 to provide recommendations and solutions to the committee by coordinating and analyzing interdepartmental studies. In May 1973, Robert Williams, Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources formed the ELUC Secretariat headed by a Director with Deputy Minister status and consisting of a staff of over one hundred. It was the first time in B.C.’s political history that a permanent staff served a committee of cabinet.

The Secretariat conducted studies on economic development, made recommendations to cabinet on the rationalization of resource and land use policies and provided information directly to Ministers. The Secretariat was organized into three units that operated interdependently to improve and apply integrated resource planning within the regional districts of the province. The units were Resource Planning, Special Projects, and Resource Analysis. By 1975, ELUC had a membership of nine out of a cabinet of nineteen and was the decision making core of the government as far as resource development was concerned. The work of the Secretariat was thus central to all resource and land use policies.

After the formation of William Bennett's Social Credit government in 1975, a formal cabinet committee structure was initiated in all areas of policy. The Environment and Land Use Committee was not part of this structure and the newly formed Economic Development Committee took on the chief Ministers of Environment, Agriculture, Economic Development, Forests, Health, Highways and Public Works, Mines and Petroleum Resources, and Recreation and Conservation. The Secretariat functioned in a diminished role within the Dept. of the Environment and the renamed Ministry of the Environment in 1976.

The role of the Secretariat was to conduct integrated resource development planning, policy and procedure studies, to implement impact assessments of major resource developments, and to advise on Agriculture Land Reserve matters. The Secretariat was reorganized into two units (1) Resource Planning and (2) Special Projects, though there was considerable overlap in project assignments. The "Program Project Briefing Notes," 1978, are the background data on the various ELUC Secretariat studies provided to the Ministries that were members of ELUC. The Environment and Land Use Committee continued as an Executive Council committee but the Secretariat was disestablished in 1980.