Russ Laroche runs the region whose Selkirk District says liability forces it to deactivate roads, has published no plan to meet the public, and now says it “will not be engaging” any critic. Isn’t it his fiduciary duty to check complaints against the law and reform policy that violates it?

The Selkirk Natural Resource District manages the forest service roads of the West Kootenay. Since 2020 it has closed, posted for removal or retired all or part of fourteen of them in a single riding. It tells the public that the law obliges it to do this, when no law we can find says so. It removes roads that its own consultant says could keep a trail, it consults on some roads and not others, and it publishes the least about the roads it is about to take.^01020304

One bad decision is a dispute about a road. Five years of the same decisions, across many roads, from one office, is a question of management. Selkirk’s road management needs new leadership from the top. This piece sets out the public record that supports that argument, and assesses the record of the official placed over the district.

The district sits inside the Ministry of Forests’ Kootenay Boundary Region. The senior official of that region, by the Province’s own staff directory, is Russ Laroche, Regional Executive Director. He is the official placed above the district, and this is an assessment of his record in that post, drawn from public documents.⁰⁵⁰⁶

Who answers for Selkirk

Ministry of Forests

Kootenay Boundary Region

Russ Laroche

Regional Executive Director

Selkirk District

1907 Ridgewood Rd, Nelson

Rocky Mountain District

Cranbrook

• Title Regional Executive Director, per the Province’s directory, April 2026⁰⁵⁰⁷
• Authority on record Final decision-maker on disputed forest service roads, per the Engineering Manual⁰⁸
• In post since On the lobbying registry as a Regional Executive Director from January 2022⁰⁹

Not on the public record: who appoints district managers, or his exact start date.⁰⁶

Named for the senior public office he holds, and for nothing beyond it.

This piece holds him accountable for his region’s conduct. As Regional Executive Director he is the senior official over the Selkirk district. The ministry’s own manual makes him the final decision-maker when the officials who administer a forest service road disagree over it, and the reforms the ministry promised the Auditor General were to be delivered by districts in regions like his. So what Selkirk publishes, issues and fails to correct, it does under his leadership, and he answers for it. Where a document shows who wrote or signed something, we say so; where it does not, we say only what happened on his watch. The one document here he wrote himself is his email of 8 October 2026.^05081011

Section 01The ministry promised to fix road inspections by spring 2021. By its own report, it still has not.

In January 2021 the Auditor General published an audit of how the Ministry of Forests manages its forest service roads. Two of its recommendations went to the heart of whether anyone knows the condition of these roads: give the districts a way to “accurately and consistently track ministry inspections and maintenance”, and “assess whether the natural resource districts are inspecting forest service roads as required by policy”. The ministry accepted both, and said in writing when it would be done.¹²

Exhibit 01Auditor General of British Columbia, Management of Forest Service Roads, November 2020, published January 2021 · printed page 16, “Response from the auditee”, recommendations 4 and 5oag.bc.ca

Four years later the ministry reported on itself. At 31 March 2025 both recommendations were “Not completed”, with completion now expected in 2026. Its own explanation says where the work has stalled: the new policies “are in various stages of being implemented by the districts across the province.”¹⁰

Exhibit 02Auditor General of British Columbia, Annual Follow-up Report, October 2025 · ministry progress report on Management of Forest Service Roads, status at 31 March 2025 · pages 48–49, recommendations 4 and 5oag.bc.ca

The reform the ministry promised in 2021 had to be delivered in districts like Selkirk, under the regional executive, and the ministry says it is being carried out district by district. On the public record it has not been delivered. The recommendations were addressed to the ministry, and the Auditor General’s report does not name him; but the districts of the Kootenay Boundary sit under the Regional Executive Director. In our view that is the plainest fact in this file: he had an obligation to deliver the reform in his region, and the record does not show that he did.¹⁰⁰⁵⁰⁶

The rules the ministry did rewrite say what a deactivation decision must rest on. Its Engineering Manual, revised in May 2026, says forest service roads are to be deactivated “in a planned manner that considers future access needs, road user safety, cost efficiency, and values at risk”. It lists when deactivation should be considered: a road no longer needed by industry, public safety risks that warrant restricting access, or upkeep at the wilderness level costing more than keeping the road open is worth. It requires “a thorough assessment of terrain stability, hydrologic function, road condition, and future land-use needs” to support the decision. And it says “stakeholder input must be solicited and considered when determining whether an FSR should be deactivated.”⁰⁸

Exhibit 03Ministry of Forests, Engineering Manual, 25 May 2026 · § 7.1, § 7.3.1 and § 7.3.2, printed pages 295, 298 and 299gov.bc.ca

Set those rules against what Selkirk has published under his leadership since January 2022.

The manual is the ministry’s, not the region’s, and a district’s internal files may hold assessments it has not published. But the public record is what the public gets, and on that record Selkirk’s stated reasons and steps, under his leadership, do not match the rules its own ministry rewrote after the audit, and he has left them standing.^0802030413

Read more The ministry told its auditor the deactivation rules were fixed. Then it tendered Rady Creek.

Section 02Selkirk’s record under his leadership: fourteen roads in one riding, and the same pattern on each.

This site mapped the district’s own road notices against the Province’s tenure register. Since 2020, fourteen forest service roads inside the Kootenay Central riding have been closed, posted for removal or retired, in whole or in part. Seven are closed with no date to reopen. Eight of the fourteen were closed or posted after the start of 2025. Most closures followed a failed bridge or a washout, and nobody should drive a bridge rated at zero tonnes. The problem is what follows. On all but one of those entries the district gives no planned repair date, or plans to remove the road altogether.⁰¹

1. Rady Creek

   Posted for deactivation in November 2025 on an unsigned, unsealed 2020 prescription, with the work “planned for 2026”. The only sealed geotechnical report is dated 8 September 2026, one day before the tender was issued. The ministry’s consultant was told before it began that “post-deactivation vehicular access is not required.” The tender, issued on 9 September 2026, called the project “contentious and well known to the public” and budgeted round-the-clock security. On 8 October the region wrote that no contractor was found before winter, and that the project is scheduled to be revisited in 2027.^13031411

2. Incomappleux

   Gated since 2017 and slated for deactivation since 2021. The district’s FAQ gives the reason that “there are no funds available to do maintenance on it”, says there are “no plans to have a public meeting”, and says the district “is obligated to relieve itself of liability.”⁰²

3. Sitkum Creek

   The ministry pulled the bridge in 2014. Volunteers rebuilt access in 2016 with money from the Columbia Basin Trust. On 6 July 2026 the district posted the upper half of the road for deactivation again, with no prescription published.⁰⁴¹³

4. Heights

   Posted on 6 July 2026. The district says there will be no ATV access afterwards, and it has published no prescription to show why.¹³

5. Kuskanax Creek

   Deactivation planning is under way for the 2026 field season. The district adds that the road “may be fully rehabbed if incremental funding is available.”¹³

The district’s road page tells the public what is happening to each road. It does not tell the public why one road keeps an ATV trail and another does not, or why one gets a comment period and another does not. Those are management decisions, and they are made in one office.¹³

Read more Fourteen forest roads in Brittny Anderson’s riding have been closed, posted or retired · Another Rady? Selkirk District is tearing out Sitkum Creek FSR for the second time · Scott McInnis took the Incomappleux to the Legislature and stood on the road at Rady Creek · It will pay for guards. It will not pay for a meeting.

Section 03Rady Creek on its merits: the decision came first, and the engineering did not require it.

At Rady Creek the ministry paid SNT Geotechnical for a 42-page prescription, dated 8 September 2026, the day before the tender opened. The report records what it was told before it began: “The MOF has indicated that the road is intended to be deactivated to a permanent standard, and that post-deactivation vehicular access is not required.” The end of vehicle access was an instruction to the engineers, not a finding of theirs.⁰³

Exhibit 04SNT Geotechnical Ltd. for the Ministry of Forests, Rady FSR Road Deactivation Prescription, 8 September 2026 · page 4gov.bc.ca

Then the report says what it found. The consultant reviewed air photographs from 1968 to 2011 and 2025 satellite imagery: “No timber development or road related landslides are visible on the face unit slope where the Rady FSR is located for the duration of the air photo record”, and “the landslide incidence on the face unit slope appears to be low.” The elements at risk it lists are fish habitat in two creeks and Trout Lake, and Highway 31, 1,700 metres downslope. It does not list a person or a road user. It did not carry out a risk assessment, because it expected a low to very low residual hazard once its own works were done.⁰³

On the upper road, waypoints 1 to 16, the road sits on gentle to moderate alpine and subalpine ground with “minimal cuts and fills”, and the prescription is cross ditches to manage water. The heavy work is at the switchback, where the report prescribes pulling back the fill and recontouring the road. That, it says, ends vehicle access, including ATVs. Then it names the alternative.⁰³

Exhibit 05SNT Geotechnical Ltd. for the Ministry of Forests, Rady FSR Road Deactivation Prescription, 8 September 2026 · page 9, waypoints 16 to 18gov.bc.ca

Read on its merits, the file says this. The ministry decided vehicle access would end before its engineers reported. The engineers found no road-related landslide in more than half a century of photographs, and listed no person at risk. They identified a way to keep a trail, and the only barrier they named was money. On that record, the decision to end all access at Rady Creek was a choice about cost and policy, not a finding the engineering forced.⁰³¹⁵

The ministry’s own rules offer other courses. A road that industry no longer uses can stay open as a wilderness road under section 81 of the Forest Planning and Practices Regulation, with a much lighter maintenance duty. A deactivated road must be barricaded against motor vehicles “other than all-terrain vehicles”. A public user can ask to maintain a road under a maintenance agreement. And the ministry’s December 2025 FAQ answers “No” to the question “Do all unmaintained FSRs have to be deactivated?”¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸

No published Selkirk document shows that any of these was weighed and rejected in writing for any of the roads above.¹³

Read more Michael Ferguson and the Rady Creek prescription · The prescription they did not want · Rady Creek isn’t in Donegal Wilson’s riding. She took it to the minister anyway.

Section 04The record the decisions rest on is wrong in places, and the scrutiny was earned.

Public criticism of Rady Creek did not come from nowhere. Set the district’s documents beside the record and they do not hold. Below, each row puts what the district or its consultant wrote beside what the record shows. Where the documents directly contradict each other, we call it an error. Where a conclusion is simply unsupported, we say that instead.⁰³¹⁹

Six things follow. For five years the district relied on unsealed paper, and the sealed engineering arrived only after the decision, one day before the tender. The consultant misdescribed the ministry’s own document. The Province issued a sealed report to bidders with the seal and signature covered. The ministry’s first prescription kept the road open to ATVs, and the change came from a decision, not a finding. The district’s public explanation drops the words in the regulation that allow ATV access after deactivation. And the safety and liability case for removing all access was never backed by the risk assessment the manual calls for. On those documents, the scrutiny the district now calls harassment was earned.^03160802

Read more Michael Ferguson and the Rady Creek prescription · The prescription they did not want

Section 05The engineering title: what the public record shows, and what it does not.

The Rady file runs through an office with an engineering name. The September 2026 prescription opens: “At the request of Michael Ferguson, RFT, of the Ministry of Forests – Selkirk Natural Resource District”. RFT is a Registered Forest Technologist, a title reserved to Forest Professionals BC. The Province’s staff directory gives his post as “Engineering Officer”; its 2017 directory gave his title as “Engineering Specialist”.⁰³⁰⁵

Engineers and Geoscientists BC publishes guidance on who may use which titles. It lists “Jamie Smith, Engineering Specialist” among the titles a non-registrant may not use, and it says the duty follows the person: “If your title contravenes the misuse of title prohibitions under the Act, then you must revise that title, even if it was given to you by your employer.” The rule behind it is section 52 of the Professional Governance Act, which bars a non-registrant from using a reserved title, or any title or description that “expresses or implies” registration.²⁰²¹

The ministry builds these posts that way on purpose. Its own advertisement for an Engineering Officer in another district asked for applicants registered with Forest Professionals BC as a Registered Professional Forester, “OR another applicable professional (i.e. PENG)”. The engineering title is the employer’s, attached to a forestry post.²²

We could not check the Engineers and Geoscientists BC register, which refused automated access, so we cannot say from a public record whether he is registered with it. “Engineering Officer” is not one of the titles in the regulator’s published table, and no regulator has made any finding about it. The 2026 prescription itself was sealed by a professional geoscientist, and it names a Registered Forest Technologist as the ministry’s professional of record, which its own text lists as a qualifying registration. The record shows a ministry that gives engineering titles to forestry posts. Whether any title crosses the line in the Act is for the regulator to decide.⁰³²¹

Read more Michael Ferguson and the Rady Creek prescription

Section 06Under his leadership, Selkirk tells the public the law requires deactivation. No law we can find does, and no other district says so.

Section 3.1 of the Occupiers Liability Act, in force since 25 June 2012, says that a person who uses a resource road “is deemed to have willingly assumed all risks”. The government and the road’s maintainer then owe only a duty not to create a danger with intent to do harm, and not to act with reckless disregard for a person’s safety. The Province passed it to “reduce the number of resource roads that are closed due to concerns regarding third party liability”, and it has argued in court that a forest service road attracts that reduced standard.^23242526

Exhibit 06Selkirk Natural Resource District, Incomappleux FSR deactivation FAQ, April 2025 · answer 14gov.bc.ca

When this site read every PDF published on the road pages of all twenty-three natural resource districts, 223 documents in all, this was the only one that gave liability as a reason a road had to be deactivated. The ministry’s own Engineering Manual says roads must be maintained so that users “are reasonably safe in accordance with the Occupiers Liability Act”, and warns that deactivation can create liability rather than remove it. Section 79(3) of the regulation makes deactivation the end of the duty to maintain, not a duty in itself.¹⁸⁰⁸¹⁶

There is a fair reading on the district’s side. Its FAQ also says deactivation is done “to relieve the permit or tenure holder of their ongoing obligation to maintain roads”, and the Auditor General found that districts were funded at between 14 and 20 per cent of what they asked for to maintain roads. If “liability” means the cost of upkeep, the district is describing a budget choice. A budget choice is not a legal obligation, and the public is entitled to be told which one it is.⁰²¹²

Section 3.1 has not yet been decided by a reported appellate court; the Court of Appeal left the question for trial in 2025. Section 8(2)(c) separately excludes the government as occupier of “a road under the Forest Act”, and no court has said how that sits with section 8(3). The duty not to act with reckless disregard still applies, including to hazards that deactivation work creates. This site has set out the statute in full in The law everyone forgot.²⁷²³¹⁸

Read more Why is the NDP lying about liability at Rady Creek if they already passed a law to stop roads being closed over liability in 2012?

Section 07Under his leadership it consults on some roads and not others, and his region’s own procedures are not published.

Selkirk has shown it knows how to consult. For Incomappleux it posted draft prescriptions and advertised a comment period in the Valley Voice, and wrote that comments “will be reviewed and considered by the decision maker”. For the Blazed and Jersey roads in 2022 it posted a written comment deadline. At Rady Creek it set no written comment deadline. At Sitkum Creek the whole public notice is a short entry on the road page and a sign in the field.⁰²⁰⁴¹³

The same district told the public in its Incomappleux FAQ that “the province cannot release liability through the use of a sign.” A sign is now most of what the public gets before a road is posted for removal.⁰²

None of the roads on the district’s current deactivation list carries a published plan for a public meeting. For Incomappleux the district wrote that “there are no plans to have a public meeting in relation to the planned deactivation.”⁰²¹³

Exhibit 07Kootenay Boundary Region, “Road Infrastructure Deactivation and Rehabilitation Regional Guidance”, information sheet, 2021 · still linked October 2026gov.bc.ca

The guidance sheet carries the region’s name, not the district’s. It dates from 2021, before the registry first lists him as a Regional Executive Director, so he did not issue it. He has kept it in force: it is still linked from the Selkirk road page today.²⁸¹³

Read more Another Rady? Selkirk District is tearing out Sitkum Creek FSR for the second time · It will pay for guards. It will not pay for a meeting. · The roads you hunt, sled, fish and climb from are being torn out, and no agency in British Columbia is responsible for keeping them open to the public

Section 08What the public data shows about his region’s roads.

The Province publishes its road register, its contract awards and its lobbying records as open data. We pulled all three for the whole Kootenay Boundary Region, both districts under him. Each pattern below is stated with its source and method, and none of it alleges anything about any company or group named in it.

A large public road network, and a steady removal. The Kootenay Boundary holds 11,445 kilometres of active forest service road, second only to the Thompson-Okanagan, and 20 per cent of the provincial total. Since 1 January 2022, the earliest date the Lobbyists Registry records him as a Regional Executive Director, 141 sections and 290 kilometres have been retired from the register across the region; since 2020 the figure is 472 kilometres. Selkirk accounts for 248 of the 290 kilometres since 2022, Rocky Mountain for 42. By length retired since 2022 the region ranks fifth of eight; as a share of its network it sits below the provincial rate, because the network is so large. Inside it, in the Kootenay Central riding alone, all or part of fourteen roads have been closed, posted or retired since 2020.²⁹⁰¹

290 kmof forest service road retired from the register across his region since January 2022, when the Lobbyists Registry first lists him as a Regional Executive Director.

Forest service road retired since 1 January 2022, by Ministry of Forests region

Forest Tenure Road Section Lines, all 286,220 records, retrieved 14 October 2026; regions as the ministry lists them. Retirement is a change in the register, not proof that a road was physically closed.

Show the numbers

Region or district	Active FSR km	Retired since 2020, km	Retired since Jan 2022, km	Sections since Jan 2022
West Coast	4,097	770.3	721.3	568
Omineca	8,602	862.3	545.2	148
Thompson-Okanagan	13,832	930.2	530.5	261
Skeena	5,858	485.0	473.3	319
Kootenay Boundary	11,445	471.8	290.0	141
Northeast	692	164.5	91.6	7
Cariboo	8,158	132.7	88.1	46
South Coast	3,738	82.9	81.4	55
Selkirk district	7,594	428.8	247.5	109
Rocky Mountain district	3,852	43.1	42.5	32
Province	56,423	3,899.7	2,821.5	1545

85%of the region’s retirements since January 2022 were in the Selkirk district: 248 of 290 km.

Kootenay Boundary: forest service road retired per year, km. Orange from 2022; Rocky Mountain is the pale top segment; the white line is the running total since 2022

Same register, by retirement date. 2026 is to 14 October.

Show the numbers

Year	Selkirk km	Rocky Mountain km	Region km
2012	19.7	0.0	19.7
2013	35.5	15.4	50.9
2014	10.4	5.5	15.9
2015	55.2	0.0	55.2
2016	84.2	0.0	84.2
2017	18.3	0.0	18.3
2018	27.0	47.7	74.7
2019	77.3	0.0	77.3
2020	77.9	0.0	77.9
2021	103.3	0.6	103.9
2022	68.0	0.0	68.0
2023	48.7	0.0	48.7
2024	36.9	0.0	36.9
2025	72.4	39.6	112.0
2026	21.7	2.8	24.5

A retirement in the register is an administrative change and is not proof that a road was physically closed. It also runs behind events: Rady Creek, Incomappleux (gated since 2017), Sitkum Creek, Heights and Kuskanax Creek, every road on the district’s current deactivation list, are still listed as active, so these figures leave out the roads now being removed.²⁹¹³

What it costs to remove them. The ministry’s contract-awards data lists eight Selkirk road-deactivation works contracts from 2015 to 2023 and a 2022 contract for a deactivation specialist in the Columbia engineering zone. It lists no Rocky Mountain deactivation award. Two regional geotechnical services contracts went to SNT Geotechnical, the firm that wrote the Rady prescription, in 2016 and 2025; the data does not say which jobs ran under them. Across all of government, the Public Accounts list payments to SNT Geotechnical of $148,556 in 2022/23 and $741,718 in 2025/26; those listings are not broken down by ministry or job, and nothing in them ties any payment to Rady Creek. No award for the Rady tender appears, and the region has written that no contractor was found and that the project is scheduled to be revisited in 2027.³⁰³¹¹¹

$1.16Min published contracts to plan and carry out Selkirk road deactivations since 2015: $914,944 in works, $247,210 in specialist services. Two regional geotechnical contracts to SNT Geotechnical add $165,000.

Contract awards by date; circle area is the award value. Orange: deactivation works. White: specialist services. Grey: regional geotechnical contracts

Ministry Contract Awards open data, all quarterly files 2012 to September 2026. No Rocky Mountain deactivation award appears. The Rady tender was not awarded; the region says no contractor was found.

Show the numbers

Awarded	Contract	Value	Type
2015-08-24	Barnes Creek West	$50,650.00	Works
2016-04-15	SNT Geotechnical, regional geotechnical services	$75,000.00	Regional geotechnical
2020-08-17	Tangiers	$129,828.20	Works
2022-04-27	Deactivation specialist, Columbia zone	$247,210.00	Specialist services
2022-06-20	EN23DSE012	$140,372.50	Works
2022-09-08	Maryland/Boundary	$73,700.00	Works
2022-10-17	Deactivation services	$105,000.00	Works
2023-08-09	Akokli	$167,815.00	Works
2023-08-10	Lower Blazed	$98,500.00	Works
2023-08-30	Grano Creek	$149,078.06	Works
2025-04-14	SNT Geotechnical, regional geotechnical services	$90,000.00	Regional geotechnical

Compared with other regions. We tried to set his region’s spending against the other seven. The contract-awards data identifies a district in the tender number for only a minority of awards: since January 2022, 23 road-related Ministry of Forests awards can be placed in a region that way, and 313 worth $68.0 million cannot. Of the 23, the Kootenay Boundary’s 15 total $981,960, and $566,282 of that, 57.7 per cent, is deactivation; Omineca’s four total $517,787 with $175,241 in deactivation; Cariboo’s four total $251,825 with none. The other regions have no awards that can be placed. That is too thin a sample to rank regions, and we do not. No public source we found breaks the ministry’s road budget down by region.³⁰

Who tries to reach him, and what came of it. Since January 2022 eight registered lobbying reports name him as Regional Executive Director, more than name any other Regional Executive Director in the Ministry of Forests. Six came from recreation and access groups: The B.C. Wildlife Federation three times in early 2022, and the British Columbia Snowmobile Federation three times in July and August 2026 on “Public recreation access and resource roads”. One came from Canadian Forest Products Ltd. and one from the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. None of the eight records a meeting arranged with him. A registry report records a lobbyist’s attempt at contact; it is not evidence that he engaged. What the groups say came of their efforts is on a public recording. In the British Columbia Snowmobile Federation’s open forum of 21 September 2026, with its executive director Amber Lane and Colin Stuart of the Four Wheel Drive Association of BC on the panel, the moderator asked whether they had been able to get the Ministry of Forests “to the table”. The answer from the panel: “We have tried countless times. They have not spoken to us at all. The only time we have heard anything from the [Ministry] of Forests is through news clips” (22:11). Asked later about dialogue with the Selkirk office, the panel said that was “what we’ve been asking for”, and that the efforts had gone “unheard” (37:24). The recording does not name him; it describes the ministry and the Selkirk office he oversees.⁴⁰ Across the seven other Regional Executive Directors named in the same period, four of thirteen reports record a meeting arranged, including two with the Guide Outfitters Association of British Columbia, one with an environmental group and one with a science centre. He is the most-lobbied of the eight and the only one with more than two reports and none arranged.⁰⁹

Who his region does deal with. Road tenure tells the other side. Since 1 January 2022 the Kootenay Boundary’s districts have taken 962 industry road-permit sections, 726 kilometres, onto the register, against 290 kilometres of public forest service road retired in the same period. In the Selkirk district alone, harvesting began on 1,970 cut blocks from 2022 to the middle of 2026. We found no Gov News release in that period that names him, and no registered lobbying report that names any other Selkirk or Kootenay Boundary office holder. This is a pattern on the public record, not a claim that any permit was traded for anything.²⁹⁰⁹

6 · 0Recreation and access groups filed six registered lobbying reports to reach him. None records a meeting arranged with him, and neither do the other two reports that name him.

Registered lobbying reports naming each Ministry of Forests Regional Executive Director, January 2022 to October 2026, by filer type

Russ Laroche · Kootenay Boundary

8 reports · 0 meetings arranged

Josh Pressey

3 reports · 1 meeting arranged

Allan Johnsrude

3 reports · 1 meeting arranged

Karrilyn Vince

2 reports · 1 meeting arranged

Lori Borth

2 reports · 0 meetings arranged

Sharon Hadway

1 report · 0 meetings arranged

Jeff Sheldrake

1 report · 1 meeting arranged

Jennifer Reid

1 report · 0 meetings arranged

Recreation and accessGuide outfittersForest and resource industryEnvironmentalOther

BC Lobbyists Registry open data (files dated 20 September 2026) and report pages posted to 14 October 2026. Office holders whose registered title is Regional Executive Director with a Forests agency; superseded versions dropped. A report records a lobbyist’s attempt at contact. “Meeting arranged” is the registry’s own field. Guide outfitters are a commercial association and are shown separately from recreation and access groups.

Show the numbers

Regional Executive Director	Reports	Meetings arranged	Filers, as registered
Russ Laroche	8	0	The B.C. Wildlife Federation (3); British Columbia Snowmobile Federation (3); Western Canada Wilderness Committee (1); Canadian Forest Products Ltd. (1)
Josh Pressey	3	1	Guide Outfitters Association of British Columbia (3)
Allan Johnsrude	3	1	Watershed Watch Salmon Society (2); West Coast Environmental Law Association (1)
Karrilyn Vince	2	1	The B.C. Wildlife Federation (1); Guide Outfitters Association of British Columbia (1)
Lori Borth	2	0	Artemis Gold Inc. (1); Canadian Forest Products Ltd. (1)
Sharon Hadway	1	0	Mosaic Forest Management Corporation
Jeff Sheldrake	1	1	A.S.T.C Science World Society
Jennifer Reid	1	0	Interfor Corporation

Read more Who do B.C.’s NDP MLAs really work for? · Fourteen forest roads in Brittny Anderson’s riding have been closed, posted or retired

Section 09The government’s own auditor found the ministry was not managing these roads to its own policies. Four of its fixes are still not done.

None of what follows is this site’s finding. It is the Province auditing itself. In November 2020 the Auditor General of British Columbia reported on how the Ministry of Forests manages its forest service roads, and the conclusion is printed in one paragraph.¹²

Exhibit 08Auditor General of British Columbia, Management of Forest Service Roads, November 2020 · printed page 25, “Audit conclusion”oag.bc.ca

The same report says who is responsible on the ground, and it says what the law already does for road users. District managers “oversee FSRs within their respective natural resource districts”. And road users, the auditor wrote, “under the Occupiers Liability Act use FSRs at their own risk.” The Province’s own auditor stated in 2020 the reading of the Act that the Selkirk district’s FAQ leaves out.¹²

Exhibit 09The same report · printed page 21, “About the audit” and “Oversight and maintenance”oag.bc.ca

Then the money. The auditor found that districts “did not receive the funding from the ministry that they identified as needed to maintain and repair roads according to policy.” From 2017/18 to 2019/20 they received between 14 and 20 per cent of what they asked for. The South area, which contains the Selkirk district, did better than the rest, at 26 to 31 per cent, which still left most of its maintenance request unfunded.¹²

Exhibit 10The same report · printed page 39, “Districts did not maintain roads as required by policy”, and Exhibit 8oag.bc.ca

$12.5Mof South Area road-maintenance requests went unfunded in three years. The South Area is the Cariboo, Thompson-Okanagan and his Kootenay Boundary region.

Requested → funded → removed: the chain in the government’s own documents

Requested

$17.7M

South Area districts asked for this much road maintenance, 2017/18 to 2019/20.

Funded

$5.2M

They received this much: 31%, 31% and 26% of each year’s request.

Unfunded

$12.5M

Left undone, by the Auditor General’s own figures.

The auditor: road deactivation is used to “manage liability associated with FSRs that are not maintained because of inadequate funding.”

In his region since January 2022: 290 km of forest service road retired from the register.

Auditor General of British Columbia, Management of Forest Service Roads, November 2020, Exhibit 8 (printed page 39) and printed page 46; road register as above. The auditor reports these figures by area, not by region; no public source we found breaks the ministry’s road maintenance budget down by region or district.

Show the numbers

Year	South Area requested ($M)	Funded ($M)	Share funded
2017/18	5.7	1.8	32%
2018/19	5.7	1.7	30%
2019/20	6.3	1.7	27%

The auditor also found that the ministry could not show whether its districts were doing the work at all. It sampled eight of the twenty-three districts, one from each region, and found record-keeping “so inconsistent and incomplete that we could not determine whether districts inspected and maintained FSRs according to policy.” Seven did not track their inspection history. Two kept no maintenance tracking, which “means there was no record of required maintenance being completed.” The report does not name the sampled districts, so it cannot be said whether the Kootenay Boundary’s sample was Selkirk.¹²

Exhibit 11The same report · printed page 38oag.bc.ca

On deactivation, the auditor recorded why it happens. The ministry’s funding policy says roads that industry no longer uses deteriorate and need deactivation “to reduce environmental risk, address public safety and manage liability associated with FSRs that are not maintained because of inadequate funding.” In the government’s own documents, then, the liability is the product of the funding gap. The auditor also found, in fairness to the ministry, that it “was deactivating roads according to risk, as required by its policies.”¹²

Exhibit 12The same report · printed page 46, “Deactivation”oag.bc.ca

The ministry accepted all nine recommendations. By its own progress report to 31 March 2025, five are complete and four are not, including the two on tracking and checking district inspections set out at the top of this piece. The other two incomplete items belong to BC Timber Sales.¹⁰

The audit is ministry-wide, and it does not single out Selkirk. What it establishes is the system Selkirk works inside: districts funded at a fraction of their maintenance needs, records too thin to show whether roads are inspected, and deactivation as the way the funding gap is closed. Those are the government’s findings about itself. In the South area the single largest category of capital-road requests was high-value recreation, $3.1 million of a $4.5 million ask, and the area received $1.7 million against it. We found no Ombudsperson report on the district’s road decisions.³²

Read more The ministry told its auditor the deactivation rules were fixed. Then it tendered Rady Creek.

Section 10Why the answer is new leadership, and why it now falls to the next premier.

Each of the decisions above could be defended on its own. Together they show an office that removes roads before it asks whether they could stay, gives the public a legal reason the law does not support, and consults when it chooses to. Those are not the failings of one file or one season. They are habits of an office, and habits of an office change when the people who lead it change. Selkirk’s road management needs new leadership from the top.

This is an argument about how an office is run, not an accusation against any person in it. The record does not show who made each decision, and it does not show bad faith. It shows a pattern that the people responsible for the district have not corrected, and that someone above the district has the standing to address.

The first person with that standing is the Regional Executive Director. The ministry’s manual already makes him the final decision-maker in disputes over who is responsible for a forest service road, and the region issues its own guidance on deactivation. Whether he can replace a district manager himself, or must recommend it to the deputy minister, is not in any published document.⁰⁸²⁸

On the public record, the region has not acted. Its 2021 guidance sheet still leaves out the Occupiers Liability Act. The district’s liability claim is still published under the region’s watch. Its engagement procedures are still unpublished, and we found no regional review of any of these roads. On that record, the region will not change it. That conclusion rests on what the region has published and left standing, not on anything decided in private.²⁸⁰²¹³

Then, on 8 October 2026, the region answered a recreation club that had asked where the Rady Creek file stood. The reply came from Mr Laroche himself.¹¹

Exhibit 13Email from Russ Laroche, Regional Executive Director, 8 October 2026, 13:29 · “Re: Rady creek path forward” · recipients redactedSource

The scrutiny was earned. On his watch at Rady Creek, the road was posted for deactivation on an unsigned, unsealed 2020 spreadsheet; the only sealed geotechnical report is dated 8 September 2026, one day before the tender carrying it was issued. The ministry ruled out vehicle access before its engineers reported, and issued the sealed prescription to bidders with the geoscientist’s seal, signature and date painted over. The district told the public that the law obliged it to deactivate when the statute says road users accept the risk, and the Auditor General said the same. The inspection reforms the ministry promised for spring 2021 were still not delivered in 2025. In our view the record shows misconduct in how Rady was decided, and it drew what such a record should draw: letters, published criticism, a formal complaint to the Forest Practices Board and calls for the professional regulators to review the prescription. No regulator has made a finding. Public scrutiny of how public servants do their public jobs is not harassment, and it is not bullying; it is the lawful, ordinary way citizens hold their government to account. Calling it “vexatious” turns accountability into an offence.^03021019

What his own rules require when the public complains

His employer’s standards say how a public servant answers the public, critics included. They are a condition of his employment.³³

Exhibit 14BC Public Service, Human Resources Policy 09, “Standards of Conduct for BC Public Service Employees”, updated 15 December 2021 · pages 1 and 2gov.bc.ca

The Ombudsperson, the independent officer of the Legislature who oversees fairness in provincial administration, has published what a public body must do before it stops dealing with a member of the public. Restricting access is “a last resort”. It must be “proportionate to the behaviour being addressed” and tailored to the person. It requires notice, reasons “with as much detail as possible”, a stated review, and a written record of “the behaviour that led to the restriction”.³⁴

Exhibit 15Ombudsperson of British Columbia, Respectful Engagement: Practical guidance for delivering public services, 2026 · printed pages 16 and 18, “Service restrictions”bcombudsperson.ca

Measured against those documents, his email fails. It gives no process and no notice to any named person. It names no incident and documents no harassment, and nothing in the public record shows any; the record shows criticism made through letters, complaints to regulators and published pieces. It addresses none of the substance: not the liability claim, not the access decision made before the engineering, not the reforms left undone. And it imposes a blanket refusal on “any group or individual”, which is the opposite of the proportionate, individual, documented restriction the Ombudsperson describes as a last resort. His email says “the concerns being raised are with government policy or legislation which Ministry staff are directed and obligated to follow”; a senior official told that his region’s stated legal reason is wrong is the one person best placed to check it.¹¹³⁴⁰²

The criticism is about decisions and professional conduct. His email recasts it as a personal attack and the officials as its victims, and uses that to stop engaging. In our view, this is victim signalling, and it is unprofessional: a failure of his duty to the public, judged against his own employer’s standards and the Ombudsperson’s principles of fair administration. It disregards the first duty of an executive, which is to take criticism of his office’s decisions and fix the policy when the criticism is right. A regional executive director does not get to choose which citizens he serves. Whatever one calls the duty, fiduciary or otherwise, it is not discharged by refusing to listen.^11333534

One day after the complaints were reported

The email did not arrive in a quiet week. Set the published dates side by side.

1. 19 September 2026

   CTV News reports recreation groups asking the Province to stop the Rady Creek deactivation.³⁶

2. 29 September 2026

   A member of the public files a formal complaint about Rady Creek with the Forest Practices Board.¹⁹

3. 30 September 2026

   This site publishes its account of the Rady prescription with a complaint addressed to Forest Professionals BC and Engineers and Geoscientists BC. The published complaint text copies the Regional Executive Director’s office address.¹⁹³⁷

4. 7 October 2026

   This site reports that the complaint has been filed with two regulators and an oversight board, and that one regulator replied that day.³⁷

5. 8 October 2026

   His email: an update that no contractor was found, then “We will not be engaging with any group or individual involved in furthering this vexatious activity.”¹¹

Within a day of a published report that complaints about the Rady prescription had gone to the regulators, the region announced it would no longer engage with anyone involved. Was that a response to the complaints? The public record cannot show his reasons, and whether his office received the copies is not on it. But the timing invites the question, and his email names no other incident. In our view, the timing has the look of retaliation against people who used the lawful route to complain, and his email names no specific incident.¹¹³⁷

No statute we found gives members of the public an express protection against reprisal for complaining; the protections in the Public Interest Disclosure Act cover public servants, not the public. The standards that do apply are the ones above: service that is “courteous, professional, equitable”, and, in the Ombudsperson’s guidance, restrictions that are a “last resort”, proportionate to documented behaviour, with notice and reasons. A complaint to a regulator is not behaviour that guidance treats as grounds for cutting off service.³³³⁴

When the district has not changed and the region has said it will not engage, the decision goes to the top. British Columbia votes on 24 October. Whoever forms the next government will own the Ministry of Forests and this record, and the mandate is plain: change the leadership responsible for road management in Selkirk, and reform the ministry’s road and deactivation practice directly, in every district that works this way. The site’s other pieces compare what the parties have said; this one sets out what the winner will inherit.

Does a regional executive director have a fiduciary duty to act on a record like this? In the strict legal sense, the answer is no. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that the Crown owes fiduciary duties only in limited circumstances, and a public servant’s duty of loyalty runs to his employer. The duties that do apply point the same way. The public service oath speaks of “the special trust placed in them to carry out their duties on behalf of all British Columbians”. The Standards of Conduct require service that is “courteous, professional, equitable, efficient, and effective”. And administrative law expects public decisions to be justified by the facts and the law that bind them.^38353339

Read more Michael Ferguson and the Rady Creek prescription · It will pay for guards. It will not pay for a meeting.

Section 11Seven questions of his fiduciary duty, graded on the record.

Each line below is a duty a regional executive director should be responsible for, the question it raises, and what the public record shows. This is the site’s assessment of his public role from public documents. It grades the record of the office, not the man, and only what the documents on this page show.

If you hold public records about road decisions in the Selkirk district, such as notices, published decisions or a regional procedure document, send what you have the right to share to contact@backcountry.cx. Say where each item came from. Nothing sent will be published until it has been checked against other sources.

The district has not changed it. If the region will not fix Selkirk, we must demand the next premier does.