How CVRD Actually Works (It’s Worse than you Think)
Staff Running the Show
A recent article by a former CVRD director described how the current CVRD board of directors is basically dictated to by their staff. This seems absurd in a democracy, but sadly it is very true, at least as demonstrated by last Wednesday’s board meeting.
The first major item on the agenda that morning was a staff power point presentation about work on climate changes potentially impacting the Cowichan Valley years in the future. The presentation was, on the face of it, fine, showing the AI modeling the staff had done to predict what sorts of climate issues might arise before 2080 and how they might impact life in the valley.
Red Flags in the Climate Report
The problems to someone like me, a trained scientist, were readily apparent with two initial red flags: First, the presenter stated that her model system was based, and “validated” as a baseline model, by UN models of climate change. However, UN predictions about pretty much anything, perhaps especially climate, are notoriously inaccurate. Red flag number 2 was the assertion that this was based on increasing levels of CO2. This latter hypothesis builds on the notion that human activity leading to increases in greenhouse gas emissions is the primary, perhaps the sole, reason that climate is changing. An assumption promoted by the government, including CVRD staff, and by the media is that this hypothesis is the only valid one. Allegedly it is based on some sort of “consensus” of climate scientists. That this is not correct should be apparent since a number of scientists in the field don’t agree with such models and posit instead things such as solar cycles being involved in temperature increases. Did the staff consider such things? No.
The presenter went on to show graphs of the future Cowichan Valley in which temperature increases, severe storms and the potential for water shortages were possibly going to occur. In some of the questions to the presenter, some directors referred to the material presented as “apocalyptic.” Red flag number 3 was that there were no statistics or probability values given, so no way for the Directors to assess whether the data were actually valid at all, let alone apocalyptic.
The data presented Wednesday could not even be compared to the data from staff in 2017. Hence to accept the conclusions of major future changes due to climate in the valley one would have to accept that looking back 9 years is impossible but looking to a future of 8 or further into the future is possible.
It was a presentation that likely would not have survived a graduate thesis exam at any decent university, but most of the board seemed more than happy to give it a passing grade.
Weak Oversight and a Risky Decision
So, problem one: assumption driven science, with few actual ways to validate the data.
Problem two is equally, if not more, consequential: Most of the board members were not able to frame cogent questions about the model and how it was derived and validated. Nor could the presenter or a more senior member of staff present answer the most basic soft ball types of questions. In spite of this, one deputy director claimed to be so scared by the presentation that she wanted to “crawl into her bed in the fetal position.”
And then came the vote on whether to simply “accept” the staff report or to “endorse” it. The first would be reasonable in that the presented data, no matter how badly derived, might suggest future reanalyses. Fine.
The second option, endorsing the report, would imply that the CVRD agrees with the data and the interpretation and that the various staff in other departments need to plan accordingly. Cost of doing so? No one was able to say. Impact on the lives of all of us in the valley? No one seemed to know.
In the end, the result was to endorse the staff presentation in an 8 for, 7 against vote. Maybe we should consider the glass partially full: some directors could see this for the mess that it was, even if they were not capable of really understanding the scientific flaws in the report.
And herein lies the problem: Staff presents reports such as this with little time for Directors to actually absorb the material and intelligently critique it. Hence, they default to accepting staff reports and then getting locked into policy that is poorly considered at best. The recent problems with the various versions of the OCP and CZB are examples. The climate report is just the latest.
And this is precisely the problem that some of us running for Director need to change when we get in.
Hiding Basic Information
Lastly, a “fun” fact: I had been trying to get information from CVRD about how many staff members they employ overall. It seems they don’t want to release this information in any easy way and I was told that I needed to put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. I had been told earlier by several directors that they themselves don’t know the answer and had been told that they also need to use FOIs to get information from their own agency, the CVRD.
As absurd as this seems, this is where we are at: Staff controls the Directors and hides information from not only their own Directors, but from the public as well.
If this were all a Monty Python skit, it would be funny. Alas, this is the reality and it is anything but funny.
Is anyone still doubting that we need a total house cleaning at CVRD to restore some semblance of democratic governance to the Cowichan Valley?
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