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Click here to download the press release
Click here to download the report (PDF)
Click here to download the report (ZIP)
 The main objective of the Northern Coastal Information and Research Program (NCIRP) has been to make meaningful contributions to the level of information and knowledge about offshore oil and gas issues. A parallel but longer term goal has been to support the participation in the process of people along the coast of British Columbia.
Indeed, one of the most significant contributions NCIRP has made to the process has been its unprecedented amount of community engagement. This has occurred in two principal ways: direct participation by residents of the Queen Charlotte Basin in the core projects undertaken within the program; and through the creation and work of the Community Guidance Group (CGG).
The original purpose of the CGG, whose membership includes a cross section of residents from communities adjacent to the Queen Charlotte Basin, was to provide guidance, information and recommendations to NCIRP regarding the design, conduct and review of its research and other information projects. This it did. However, during the process of meeting to discuss the research program and methods for increasing public involvement in the process, the CGG developed into something greater.
For the first time a method for all communities adjacent to the Queen Charlotte Basin to network and collaborate on common challenges had begun to develop. The success of this unique collaboration with communities is seen in the strengthening of relationships between UNBC and the communities it serves. It advanced the general understanding of the challenges and benefits of collaborating with communities in academic research. Most importantly, however, it deepened the sense of the BC coast as a distinct region with a common set of hopes and challenges.
At the end of the program, UNBC agreed to partner in a subsequent project conceived of and developed by the CGG. Called Voices From The Coast, it is a publication containing the story of NCIRP and offshore oil and gas as told by the members of the CGG who learned about it, thought about it, talked about it and debated it for a year and a half.
The stories were collected on audio tape and transcribed into narratives. They were then organized into storytelling format that roughly followed the old shipping routes on the coast – beginning in Port Hardy on Northern Vancouver Island, slipping down into the Johnstone Strait and the Broughton Archipelago before turning and heading north up the coast to Kitimat and Prince Rupert and then on to the Queen Charlotte Islands/Haida Gwaii where the stories finish in Skidegate and Queen Charlotte City.
The collection reveals a myriad of voices and perspectives, each speaking passionately about their homes, about how to protect them, how to make them grow and how to help them thrive economically, environmentally, socially and culturally. Each of the storytellers has an opinion about what the future of coastal BC should look like. They may not agree on the methods. They certainly don’t agree on whether oil and gas development should be part of that future. In fact, they may not agree on much of anything. But at the core of Voices From The Coast – perhaps its biggest success – is a shared belief in the importance to British Columbia of vibrant and sustainable coastal communities.
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