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GRL to seek judicial review
By Ian Cobb/e-KNOW
Glacier Resorts Ltd. (GRL) intends to seek out a judicial review of the provincial government’s ruling to pull its Environmental Assessment Certificate June 16.
In a July 20 letter to Mark Read, chief administrative officer for Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality (JGMRM), Pheidias Project Management Corporation president Oberto Oberti stated, “Glacier cannot allow that the project be dismissed after having substantially done everything that it was asked to do and was permitted to do up to October 12, 2014, and it believes that a judicial review will show clearly that the minister (Environment Minister Mary Polak) did not make a correct decision in declaring that the project was not substantially started.
Calling Polak’s decision “surprising,” Oberti added, “Glacier’s lawyers will submit a request for judicial review as soon as the case is prepared. We wish to note here that the challenging process and permitting system only allowed Glacier to start construction work at the beginning of September 2014, when the deadline imposed by the process followed under the Environmental Assessment Act (EA Act) was October 12, 2014.
“We believe that your mayor and council, being fully informed, will easily recognize that the work done in the five available weeks was more than substantial, and that if permitted to continue would have allowed to open the project to skiers in the future, with access to beautiful ski runs currently available only to heli-skiers. This would have created the certainty that this project so badly needs,” Oberti stated.
“Glacier intends to continue to work with a minor amendment to the Master Plan and to the Master Development Agreement, reducing the size of the project below the thresholds of the EA Act regulations and therefore moving forward under the All Seasons Resort Policy or ASRP (the present-day name of the Commercial Alpine Ski Policy process under which the project was initiated before being transitioned by cabinet order into the EA Act in 1995). The ASRP does not have the deadline created in 2002 in the revised EA Act, a deadline that has become the latest issue in this project and that is not related to the sustainability or value of the project.”
Oberti said he is confident “that the recent setback will be rectified.”
Sticking to business as usual, JGMRM council unanimously agreed to receive Oberti’s letter during a 22-minute meeting July 21 in the Village of Radium Hot Springs council chambers.
“To my mind it doesn’t require any decision from council. It’s just for information,” said Mayor Greg Deck of Oberti’s letter.
Lead image: The foundation for the proposed resort’s day lodge; it should have been enough for the Environment Minister to consider work under way as “substantial,” argues Oberto Oberti. The foundation was also placed in an avalanche path.
