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By Steve Weatherbe
THE NEWS media on southern Vancouver Island have been
transfixed for months by the question of whether forests minister Rich
Coleman should have allowed Western Forest Products (WFP) to sell some of
its forestry land – around Jordan River, west of Victoria – to
a residential subdivision developer.
In mid-July, auditor general John Doyle ruled that
Coleman had ignored the public interest and failed to consult key
stakeholders in approving WFP’s plan.
The whistleblower whose submission instigated the
investigation is a lifelong Christian, inspired by the example of his
devout mother to stand up for the oppressed. To that end, he got
involved in helping Vancouver eastside residents and farm workers.
Calvin Sandborn, now the director of the University of
Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, sees his faith as crucial to his
life of advocacy.
“I’m no theologian,” he admits.
“Nor was my mother. She didn’t talk much about her faith. She
lived it.” A social worker who took her four children to church each
Sunday in California, she “drilled into us” a Christian’s
duty to help the downtrodden.
Sandborn remembers as a teenager seeing a family of
migrant farm workers emerging from beneath their pickup truck, where they
had sheltered during the night. “I thought, ‘Hmmm, this
isn’t right.’”
He was clear in his mind that he was entering law
school (at the University of British Columbia) with advocacy for such
people in mind. He helped organize the Downtown Eastside Residents
Association during this time. Later, when Chiran Gill was organizing the
Canadian Farmworkers Union and gave a speech at the law school,
Sandborn decided to sign on. He got a research grant to look into why
British Columbia’s labour and workers’ compensation laws
excluded farm workers.
“I found that it was explicitly racist,” he
recalls. When labour standards for hours, safety and wages were set in the
1920s, legislators made no bones about the exclusion of domestic, cannery
and farm workers; Asians dominated in these fields.
Armed with this information, the Farm Workers
persuaded the B.C. Human Rights Commission to recommend one law for
all; but fierce lobbying, by the Social Credit government of the day,
delayed reform until the New Democrats under Mike Harcourt took over.
Sandborn had worked on the issue of pesticide use for
the farmworkers, which led to a shift into environmental issues and a job
with the West Coast Environmental Law organization. Since then, Sandborn
has been using existing laws to push for environmental protection.
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The spiritual side of environmentalism came easily to
Sandborn, who remembers making “powerful spiritual progress”
during his teenage years, through camping experiences with the YMCA in the
High Sierra Mountains. “These were crucial to my sense of a
connection with God.”
Though the classic environmental critique blames
Judeo-Christian scriptures for teaching that humanity has
“dominion” over nature, Sandborn has always put more emphasis
on the idea that humanity is “steward” of the earth. As well,
he says, “ I see it as living out the commandment to love other
people and our children and our grandchildren, by protecting nature for
them.”
In the case of Western Forest Products so easily
getting the forest minister’s permission to sell off forest land for
subdivisions, Sandborn says the issue was whether Vancouver Islanders
wanted their cities spreading out into sprawling suburbs, without any
planning.
He hopes the auditor general’s report will force
the government to consider public opinion and not just the interests of
forest companies.
Sandborn now attends The Place, a community focussed
mainly on 20- and 30-somethings, which operates from Victoria’s
Lambrick Park Church.
Steve Weatherbe is editor of the Business Examiner.
September 2008
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