What the documents say
The lobbying registry shows that the meetings happened. It does not show what was said in them. So we filed for the records behind the registry entries.
Three freedom-of-information packages came back — 108 pages, covering the same years. They are heli-ski tenure files: six Licences of Occupation under review, caribou conditions, GPS flight data, tenure term. Every page is published below, and every exhibit links to the original release on the Province's own open information portal.
Read together they show what the registry cannot. Through the years either side of this decision, the commercial operator flying Silvercup Ridge was telling the Ministry of Forests in writing — to the officials deciding its licences — that public recreation on that ridge was a problem for its business.
Highlighting is ours. Everything else is as released.
One rule for industry. Another for the helicopters.
Meeting note prepared for the Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, 16 May 2024, ahead of a meeting with the CEO of HeliCat Canada and the VP of Sustainability at Canadian Mountain Holidays.
What the Province requires of everyone else
Mining and forestry must observe timing windows and setback distances, and must supply detailed spatial data on their operations. In the same note, four bullets later, data from heli-tourism operators is to be provided on a voluntary basis.
Years of asking. No data.
The Province records that it has sought flight path data for several years and that HeliCat has not provided it — while some individual operators have. The association’s stated objections: the data might become public, the industry is being unfairly targeted, and there is no clear plan for its use. The same page notes limited evidence that operators comply with the recommended two-kilometre setback from caribou.
The Ministry says so itself
Forestry and mining took steps to support caribou recovery. The briefing note states plainly that the lack of similar improvements from the adventure tourism sector diminishes the credibility of the Province’s own recovery efforts. Prepared for Deputy Minister John Allan, three weeks before the Trout Lake clubs signed their stewardship agreement.
FOR-2023-31284 · same note · authored by Michelle Porter and Darcy Peel
View original PDF ↗
And expects to be lobbied over it
The Ministry writes that HeliCat Canada has historically resisted requests to voluntarily supply GPS flight data and may resume lobbying efforts to block these changes. This is the government anticipating, in a decision document, that an industry association will lobby against a caribou measure.
The ridge, named, in the operator's own words
CMH Galena Heli-ski Management Plan, 15 July 2020 — filed with the Ministry in support of a request to replace Licence of Occupation #340826 for a further 45-year term. The tenure covers 1,167 square kilometres. Silvercup Ridge is one of its thirteen ski zones.
FOR-2023-31283 · CMH Galena Management Plan · zone description · 15 July 2020
View original PDF ↗
Silvercup Ridge, by name
In the description of its Silver Cup zone, the operator records that the runs are “becoming increasingly affected by (and less useable as a result of) unregulated snowmobile use from Trout Lake.” The town is named. The ridge is named. The document is dated eight months before the Trout Lake clubs learned the road was going.
Areas they can no longer ski
Under a heading that opens by stating the operation “does not restrict public access in any way,” the plan goes on to record rising snowmobile use “particularly in the vicinity of Silver Cup Ridge” and concludes: “There are some areas that we can no longer ski due to the snowmobile traffic.”
FOR-2023-31283 · Dave Butler, CMH, to Tracy Ronmark, Director of Authorizations · Nov 2022
View original PDF ↗
Raised with the person adjudicating the tenure
Writing to the official deciding six of its tenure replacements, CMH lists its grievances: tenure term, wildlife issues, old growth deferrals, and “lack of management of public recreation.” Elsewhere in the same correspondence, “growing unmanaged public recreation” is described as “creating both safety and experiential issues for us.” The sector, he writes, faces “a death by a thousand cuts.”
What the Province asked for in return
The conditions the Ministry proposed attaching to the renewed licences: record every caribou sighting, track all GPS flight data including flight paths and landing locations, report twice yearly, and do not operate within 2,000 metres horizontally or 500 metres vertically of caribou. For the Galena file specifically, a referral recommendation asks that a temporarily closed area in critical caribou winter range become permanently closed — amendable only in the event of extirpation.
The emails
Released with headers intact — sender, recipient, timestamp, subject line. These are the exchanges between the operator and the officials deciding its tenures.
The header establishes the relationship the rest of this section rests on. CMH’s Director of Sustainability is corresponding directly with the Ministry of Forests Director of Authorizations for the Kootenay-Boundary region — the region containing Trout Lake and Rady Creek — about six Licences of Occupation awaiting decision.
The long submission. Butler responds point by point, in italics, to the Ministry’s position on tenure term, caribou conditions and flight data. It is a lobbying document in the ordinary sense of the word — an operator putting its case to a decision-maker while a decision is pending.
Butler sets out what he calls a contradiction: being asked to do more on stewardship — flight data, greater separation distance from wildlife — at greater cost, while being offered shorter tenures. In the same breath he lists the pressures the company is under, and public recreation is one of them.
The closing appeal. “Lack of management of public recreation” sits in a list of grievances put to the person deciding the tenures, alongside a request that she weigh all of it — “not just what you receive from your government colleagues.”
The conditions the Ministry proposed writing into the renewed licences — and, for the Galena file specifically, a referral recommendation that a temporary caribou closure become permanent, amendable only in the event of extirpation. This is the ask that HeliCat had resisted for years, arriving as a tenure condition.
The government side of the same room. Senior officials across two ministries coordinating a briefing note for the Deputy Minister ahead of another meeting with the industry coalition — one of many. No equivalent thread exists for the recreation groups using this terrain, because no equivalent meetings took place.
What the file shows
Through the same years the registry records those meetings, the operator flying Silvercup Ridge was putting a documented commercial case to the Ministry of Forests: public recreation on that ridge was reducing what it could sell, and the sector wanted it managed. That case went to named officials, in writing, while decisions on its licences were pending. The people who use the road were in none of those rooms.
