Fort Nelson’s Chief has pushed for resource development. A vote this week will test member support.
The Tyee: On Wednesday, members of the Fort Nelson First Nation will vote in what could be a pivotal election for the band and the roughly 3,000 other people who call the Fort Nelson area their home.
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The nation has about 800 members living on and off reserve and is one of many First Nations who signed Treaty 8, which covers a vast area of land in present-day northeastern British Columbia, northern Alberta, northwestern Saskatchewan and part of the southern Northwest Territories.
For nearly four years, Chief Councillor Sharleen Gale has deepened the First Nation’s ties with Peak Renewables, a company owned by Brian Fehr, a businessman with close ties to Canfor, British Columbia’s largest forest company.
Gale has been on council since 2009, and chief councillor since 2020. She’s also a director of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, which supports member nations’ involvement in and ownership of major natural resource and infrastructure projects.
Gale has said the partnership with Peak Renewables “allows us to lay the foundation for sustainable economic opportunities for our people.” The nation is also exploring geothermal energy projects.
Fehr has proposed a plan to log the region’s forests at unprecedented rates and grind up most of the logged trees to make wood pellets in a new plant that would be the largest of its kind in Canada.
Details of that plan first surfaced in November 2020 and the Fort Nelson First Nation subsequently gave Peak Renewables a $1-million interest-free loan to advance the project.
Despite the goal of a startup in early 2022, work hasn’t begun on the pellet mill, and a growing number of people in Fort Nelson doubt it ever will.
Meanwhile workers are dismantling equipment in a massive wood panel mill on the outskirts of Fort Nelson shuttered by Canfor in 2008 — equipment that Peak Renewables will soon ship to Alabama to make panels there.
At the same time, 26 candidates are running for seven seats on the Fort Nelson First Nation council. Some are questioning that loan and related financial decisions made under Gale’s leadership.
Questions include details about an entity called the FNFN Forestry Limited Partnership, first reported as an entity by the FNFN in 2021, and how $6.7 million of the nation’s money was advanced to create it. The nation’s most recent financial statements say it was “established to enter into forestry operations in the region” and that it has produced no revenue.
Questions are also being raised about how much money was generated during the logging of land that the FNFN bought decades ago on Vancouver Island.
“There has yet to be even one report given to our members by those who are responsible for selling those resources,” said Wilfred (Bonzo) Behn, one of the many candidates running in the election.
No mention is made of revenues generated from the logging of that land in the consolidated financial statements the FNFN is required by federal law to post each year, where such revenues were invested or how much third parties received to do the logging.
Questions are also being raised about the band’s involvement with the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality — the governing body for the wider Fort Nelson region — in a community forest that is the largest of its kind in B.C.
And questions are being asked about why it is Canfor, the company that has caused so much economic pain in Fort Nelson in the first place, that is getting the lion’s share of logs coming out of that forest.
“All the questions that I have asked in writing there’s been no response… absolutely none. Even the councillors don’t know what is going on,” Pehcheh, a Dene Elder and nation member whose given name is Richard Behn, told The Tyee.
Kathi Dickie, one of the candidates and former chief councillor, said the nation is not getting information it needs.
“The lack of transparency leaves members in the dark,” she said. “For decades, FNFN members approved and ratified annual budgets.”
“This practice was unilaterally changed by the current council at the May 2023 budget meeting. Members couldn’t even vote on the budget,” Dickie said.
Bonzo Behn said he is particularly concerned about the lack of clarity around the decision to lend Peak Renewables $1 million. “We still don’t know the details of when it was made, why it was made or when it will be paid back to us,” he said.
Behind closed doors
The FNFN leadership informed eligible voters in a July mail-out, a copy of which was obtained by The Tyee, that “there will not be an Electoral Candidates Forum for the upcoming Election on Aug. 21, 2024.” But a number of candidates, about half, did end up holding their own candidates’ forum in Fort Nelson on Aug. 6. Chief Gale did not attend.
The Tyee asked to speak with Chief Gale about that decision and about the band’s financial dealings with Peak Renewables and other forestry-related FNFN investments, but Gale did not return calls or respond to emails. Peak Renewables, similarly, did not respond to emailed questions.
The Fort Nelson First Nation Electoral Candidates 2024 document lists all 26 candidates running for office and devotes one page to each. The printed document was mailed to all eligible FNFN voters and is not available online.
The document indicates that a number of candidates feel Gale and the FNFN council have failed to share financial information with members, that council travel expenses and remuneration are excessive and that intimidation is being used to stifle dissenting voices. Gale received the largest salary of anyone on council at more than $146,000 in the fiscal year ending March of last year. Figures for the most recent fiscal year have yet to be published.
“I would never call the cops to a meeting to deal with angry band members, instead their questions should be answered,” Sally Behn says in her campaign material.
“Allowing employees to express their concerns in a safe manner that will NOT result in threatening their employment” must be a priority, fellow candidate Morgan Behn-Tsakoza says.
“We have an economic development board that has provided very little in terms of updating the members,” says Harrison Dickie. “This is something that we deserve as members.”
Kathi Dickie adds that the lack of financial transparency is most pronounced with the FNFN’s dealings with Peak Renewables, the promised pellet plant and the few if any jobs created, despite the extension of the $1-million interest-free loan.
According to an FNFN consolidated financial statement in 2021 that first disclosed that loan, the nation “advanced $1 million to Peak Renewables Ltd., an unrelated party.” The loan is due back on demand, and only bears interest at eight per cent when the FNFN asks for the money back.
A region on the ropes
How the FNFN leadership and Fehr came together is rooted in nearly two decades of worsening economic and environmental conditions for Fort Nelson’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents alike.
As reported previously in The Tyee, the region was dealt a devastating economic blow when Canfor closed two panel mills in Fort Nelson in 2008 and 600 unionized mill employees and hundreds more people in related logging and log-hauling jobs were suddenly without work.
A few years later, oil and gas companies effectively abandoned the region after a short-lived methane drilling and fracking boom in B.C.’s remote northeast corner.
The result, energy analyst David Hughes told The Tyee, is that methane production in Fort Nelson plummeted. From 600 million cubic feet per day of gas production in 2013, output in the Fort Nelson region fell to below 100 million cubic feet per day this year and continues to decline.
With Fort Nelson’s oil and gas industry effectively gone, elected leaders in both Fort Nelson’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments began pinning hopes on a reborn forest industry.
In that, it was encouraged by the provincial Ministry of Forests to think big. First, the ministry set a new maximum logging rate in the region’s forests of 2.6 million cubic metres per year — a 63 per cent increase. Then it announced that Fort Nelson’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments had been given the largest community forest to manage for the betterment of their communities.
Enter Brian Fehr.
‘A really good living with Canfor’
In November 2020, Canfor announced that it had reached a multi-year, $30-million deal to sell its provincial government-granted forest licence in Fort Nelson to Peak Renewables. By then, Canfor had done no logging in the Fort Nelson region for a dozen years.
A Toronto Star news story published the day after the announcement notedthat Fehr-controlled Peak Renewables had earlier purchased Canfor’s two long-idled panel mills in town for $10 million. The same article noted that Peak Renewables was in talks with the FNFN to bring the nation in as an equity partner in a proposed 600,000-tonne-per-year wood pellet plant.
Fehr’s purchase of the Fort Nelson mills and forest licence is part of a broader pattern that has seen him buy up mills once operated by Canfor, dismantle them and sell their processing lines elsewhere.
Recent examples include the disassembling of Canfor’s Pacific BioEnergy wood pellet mill in Prince George and its reassembly in Dothan, Alabama; the dismantling of Canfor’s sawmill in Mackenzie in preparation for its rebuilding in Plain Dealing, Louisiana; and now, the taking down of Canfor’s oriented strand board mill in Fort Nelson in preparation for its resurrection in Enterprise, Alabama.
“I have made a really, really good living with Canfor,” Fehr told John Brink, a Prince George-based entrepreneur who, like Fehr, has deep roots in the Prince George and Vanderhoof areas.
Relocating the old Canfor equipment in the southern United States is also part of the Fehr playbook. A post on the Peak Renewables website describes the project in Dothan, Alabama, as a partnership between Peak Renewables and the Rex Lumber company and a first step in Peak Renewables’ plans to “continue our growth strategy across the southern U.S.”
Working with First Nations
Since the sale of Canfor’s Fort Nelson assets to Peak Renewables, Fehr has deepened his ties with Gale and the FNFN leadership, something he says is a prerequisite for any company being able to successfully launch a forestry venture in B.C.
“We have absolutely no choice and on top of that it’s the right thing to do to work together with First Nations in our province,” Fehr told Brink.
This culminated in an announcement in September 2022 by Gale that the provincial government had agreed conditionally to provide the FNFN with as much as 1.26 million cubic metres in logging rights in the region’s forests.
With that sizable volume of wood secured, plus more than 550,000 cubic metres of logging rights transferred from Canfor to Peak Renewables, plus wood in the community forest, Peak Renewables and the FNFN would control roughly 80 per cent of the logging rate approved earlier by the provincial government.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime for our people,” Gale said in an FNFN press release. “With these licences, we are on the doorstep of creating a viable forest economy in our territory that will bring lasting benefits to our people.”
In the same press release, Peak Renewables CEO Scott Bax said he was “thrilled to see the Province of B.C. commit the forest tenures needed to bring this project one step closer to fruition.”
The only hitch to starting the project, Gale maintained, was that the provincial government would have to come up with $60 million to $75 million to upgrade the rail line linking Fort Nelson with Fort St. John.
This was news to many in the FNFN and Fort Nelson communities, who up until then had not been told that a rail line upgrade was a prerequisite to the project proceeding.
By January of this year, Fehr had upped the projected cost of the rail line to $100 million and warned Fort Nelson residents that “unless we have that rail” there would be no pellet mill. No money has been forthcoming from the provincial government for the line.
Growing unease
As the FNFN under Gale’s leadership has deepened its ties with Peak, a number of members have begun questioning not just the wisdom but the feasibility of a project that would require such a massive increase in logging.
Before Canfor walked away from town, decades of industrial logging and oil and gas industry developments had already resulted in the clearing and fragmenting of large areas of forest.
Subsequently, some of the largest wildfires to ever burn in B.C. occurred in the Fort Nelson area, with one this year threatening the town’s very existence.
Pehcheh says that between the wildfires and decades of previous logging, there simply aren’t enough trees there to supply a pellet mill that would be 50 per cent larger than any currently operating in Canada.
“It’s not feasible,” Pehcheh said of the logging plans advanced by Gale and Fehr. “They’ve been industrially logging up here for 60 years. There’s not enough old growth left up here.”
Dramatic increases in logging, other FNFN members say, will also come at the expense of further wildlife losses, which are already a problem in the Fort Nelson region.
“Right now, she’s pretty slim,” said Bonzo Behn. “You don’t see much moose tracks or moose at all.”
An information vacuum
Some FNFN members have also begun questioning what they say is a more general lack of financial information on other forestry ventures that the leadership has advanced or is participating in.
As one example, all FNFN members share or at least shared in a valuable asset in the form of land in the Qualicum Beach area on Vancouver Island, which was purchased in 1982 by Pehcheh’s and Bonzo Behn’s father, George.
But now, virtually all of that land has been logged, the brothers say.
Analyzing figures in a searchable government database, The Tyee confirmedthat 108,000 cubic metres of trees in total were logged on lands owned by the band between 2017 and 2021 and that roughly a third of those logs would have generated high revenues because they were purchased by Island Timberlands and Probyn Log Ltd., two companies that market raw logs to overseas buyers who pay premium prices.
The owner of those logs is listed in the database as the Fort Nelson Indian Band Lands Trust Society. But the society’s business dealings are excluded from the FNFN’s financial reporting. “Trusts administered on behalf of third parties by Fort Nelson First Nation are excluded from the First Nation reporting entity,” the FNFN’s consolidated financial statement for the fiscal year ending in March 2021 reads. The Tyee found no information in earlier FNFN financial reports discussing the logging or any revenues associated with it.
“There has yet to be even one report given to our members by those who are responsible for selling those resources without the knowledge or approval of our members,” Bonzo Behn said.
The Tyee also used the same government database to examine recent logging activity in the community forest jointly held by the FNFN and Northern Rockies Regional Municipality.
That analysis shows that more than 69,000 cubic metres of logs were taken from the community forest since 2022, with at least 55 per cent of all those logs being trucked to Canfor’s operations in Fort St. John.
Yet FNFN members say they have seen no reports from their council that document what, if any, money was generated from that activity to the benefit of their nation.
“There’s been absolutely no consultation with the people — the Dene people — about what a community forest even is,” Pehcheh told The Tyee.
The Tyee asked Jaylene MacIver, director of corporate services for the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality, for copies of any reports received from the board that operates the community forest limited partnership.
MacIver responded that only one short annual report was filed in the last three years and that that report and quarterly financial statements submitted to the regional municipality and FNFN by the board would likely require filing a formal freedom of information request.
A lack of consistent reporting on the community forest board’s actions, including why logs taken from the forest are being sent out of town to Canfor rather than used to stimulate some kind of local wood processing enterprise, was a topic of discussion last September during a regional municipal council meeting.
At the meeting, Coun. Leslie Dickie noted that she had never been told what was happening with the community forest.
“I don’t recall there ever being a quarterly update, a semi-annual update,” Dickie said. “I think that somewhere in the [community forest] agreement it must say that we are required to meet. So not only are we failing the community by not enforcing that, but the Nation is also failing by not reporting to their membership.”
The Tyee was unable to reach the community forest board’s general manager, Ben Wall, for comment, and Wall did not respond to questions emailed to the board.
Members of the FNFN also say there is no information being provided to them about other forestry-related ventures that the FNFN leadership has endorsed.
For example, in its consolidated financial report for 2021, a new investment of $6.7 million is noted to create the FNFN Forestry Limited Partnership. The report notes that most of the money used to create the new entity came from $6.51 million taken from the FNFN’s Ottawa Trust Funds.
There is no explanation in the report as to what the FNFN Forestry Limited Partnership is and any connection that it may have to the nation’s involvement in the Peak Renewables project.
A First Nation’s Aggressive Logging Has Some Members ‘Heartbroken’
In an interview, Kathi Dickie said she had no knowledge of the partnership and suspected most FNFN members had no idea of what it was either.
“We don’t have a clue. We don’t have any information. Not a thing,” she said.
Documents examined by The Tyee also show that something called the FNFN Forestry General Partner Corp. received approval from the Ministry of Forests in June to log more than 200 hectares of forest near Fort Nelson.
But a local resident and FNFN member on whose trapline the logging will take place says he was not informed by his own nation prior to the logging approval being granted.
Manny Gairdner is 76 and has lived his whole life in the Fort Nelson area, having been born in a canoe downstream of Fort Nelson on the Deer River. He says there are still marten, fisher, wolverine, weasel, squirrel and beaver to be found on his trapline and that he should have been told about the logging but had to inform the nation that he hadn’t been.
“Most of them are my relatives. I’m a First Nation and I’m an Elder. They should let trappers know what they are doing,” Gairdner said.
The election
If the last FNFN election in 2022 is any indication, the race this time out will be extremely close.
That year, 17 candidates ran for the seven seats on council. Of those who won office, Sharleen Gale as an incumbent and Chief received the seventh-most votes and was the last to win a seat with 107 votes. That placed her three votes behind Archie Harrold, who received 110 votes, and two behind Roberta Michel, who received 109.
Trees to Pellets? Fort Nelson’s Future Hangs in the Balance
Falling just short of being elected was Lycrecia Adin, with 105 votes, meaning that a total of just five votes separated the first of many unsuccessful candidates from the last three to be elected.
This time out, 50 per cent more people are running for the same number of seats.
Under the FNFN’s current election rules, it falls to the seven newly elected councillors to decide who among them becomes chief councillor, not the members at large. The chief councillor then assumes all the responsibilities and gets all the perks associated with the job.
According to documents that all First Nations and band councils must file under the federal First Nations Financial Transparency Act, Gale’s salary as Chief in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023, was $146,383, her earnings outside of her capacity as Chief were $4,930 and her expenses for the year were $25,028.
The FNFN has yet to post either its consolidated financial statement or what its elected council members received in salary and expenses for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Ben Parfitt, The Tyee
Ben Parfitt is a reporter at The Tyee covering forestry and related issues.
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