EDITORIAL · THE CONTRACTORS
Every company paid to remove a BC forest road — and the three most likely to get Rady Creek
Removing a forest service road is a job somebody gets paid to do. Since 2012 the Province has awarded 111 contracts worth $19,973,741 to 65 companies to take forest roads and their crossings out of public use, and 2024 was the most expensive year on record. We read all 15,108 contract awards the Province publishes, named every firm, and sorted them by what each was actually paid to do. Then we ranked the three the record puts closest to Rady Creek. Bids close this afternoon at one o’clock. Nobody on this page is known to have bid.
At one o’clock this afternoon, at a district office on Ridgewood Road in Nelson, someone opens a stack of envelopes and learns who has offered to destroy the Trout Lake–Rady Creek Forest Service Road. The tender went up on 9 September. Questions closed on the 22nd. Fifteen days, start to finish, to decide the end of a public road.03
This is not a procurement story. It is a public road being taken away from the public, and the instrument that does it is a contract. So we read the contracts. All of them.
Every contract award the Province of British Columbia has published since 2012 — 15,108 of them — filtered down to the work that removes a forest road or the crossing that makes it passable.01
111 contracts. $19,973,741. 65 companies.
That is what it has cost so far to take public roads out of public use. It is not a rounding error and it is not an accident. It is an industry, it runs on your money, and the people who lose the road are the only party to the transaction who never get asked.
One thing before the names, because it will be misread otherwise. Bidding on Rady Creek has not closed and the envelopes have not been opened. Nobody on this page is known to have bid on it. This is the list of firms the Province actually pays to do this class of work, what each has been paid, and how to reach them. When the Rady bids are opened, the winner will almost certainly be a name on this page — and you will already know who they are.05
Section 01Twenty million dollars, and the year the pace doubled
What the Province pays to remove forest roads
Every contract awarded since 2012 to deactivate a forest service road or pull out one of its crossings. Orange marks 2022 onward; the dashed line is Ravi Parmar’s election.
Source: Ministry Contract Awards, BC Data Catalogue, all quarters 2012 – March 2026.
$19.97M
Awarded since 2012 to remove forest roads and their crossings
65
Companies that have been paid to do it
2.5×
The pace since 2022, against the decade before it
Through the 2010s this ran at about five contracts and under a million dollars a year. From 2022 it runs at twelve contracts and $2.7 million a year, and it has not gone back. 2024 is the most expensive year on record at $3.49 million.
Something changed in 2022, and it was not the weather. A government that had spent a decade not funding maintenance found money to start removing roads instead. That is a decision about what public land is for, taken through a procurement system nobody outside it was watching.
Thirteen of these contracts name no contractor at all. The Province published the award, the value and the work, and left the company blank.02
Section 02Not everyone on this list drives an excavator
It would be easy, and wrong, to print sixty-five company names under the word “destroyers” and leave it there. The Province buys three different things when it removes a road, and they are not the same job.
What the money actually buys
All 111 contracts, split by the work the Province described in the award.
Source: classified from the contract titles the Province itself published.
Earthworks — 50 firms, $16,790,177. Machines. Excavators and dozers pulling the running surface apart, hauling out fills, cross-ditching the grade so water takes the rest. This is the work people picture, and it is 84 per cent of the money.
Crossing removal — 7 firms, $2,317,816. A forest road is only a road where it crosses water. Take out the bridge or the culvert and the road behind it is finished without anybody touching the road.
Prescriptions and monitoring — 8 firms, $865,749. These are consultancies. They walk the road, decide where it comes out and how far, write it up, and later confirm the contractor did what the document said.
So when this page says a company is paid to close your roads, read it precisely. Some of these firms run the machines. Some remove the crossing. Eight of them never touch a machine at all — they write the sentence, and somebody else carries it out. That is a real difference, and it cuts the way you would not expect: the prescription decides which road dies and how much of it. The excavator is the easy part to replace.
| Firm | Paid | Contracts | What the Province bought |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1197157 B.C. Ltd | $252,215 | 2 | Construction and deactivation monitoring, Campbell River and Haida Gwaii |
| Pioneer Forest Consulting Ltd. | $247,210 | 1 | Road deactivation specialist, Columbia engineering zone |
| KDC Forestry Consulting Ltd. | $94,800 | 2 | Monitoring road maintenance and deactivation projects |
| Little Timber Forest Services Ltd. | $91,013 | 1 | Supervision and monitoring of road, bridge and deactivation work |
| Bushtech BC Ltd. | $62,950 | 1 | “As and when” road deactivation specialist |
| 0938541 B.C. Ltd. | $61,395 | 1 | Road inspections, construction, maintenance and deactivation |
| Strategic Natural Resource Consultants | $36,410 | 1 | FSR inspections and deactivation prescriptions, Kamloops |
| Noel Phillips d.b.a. BRAT Expediting | $19,755 | 1 | Deactivation assessments and prescriptions, Campbell River |
Two of those eight are numbered companies. A numbered company can write a prescription that closes a road, and the public record will show a number.
Section 03Where the money actually sits
Fourteen years of awards, three ways. Who has taken the most, who is taking it now, and where in the province they are based. These are different lists, and the difference is the point.
Most money, all time
Total awarded 2012–2026. Orange marks the three the algorithm puts closest to Rady.
Source: Ministry Contract Awards, BC Data Catalogue.
W.E. Stone Ltd. tops that chart at $2,696,986, more than twice the next name. It has not been awarded one of these contracts since 2022, it publishes no website, and it carries no BC corporate registration — it exists in the public record on the forest-safety register and in the Province’s own payments. A chart of historical money is a chart of who used to do this work.
Most money since 2023
The field that is actually still bidding — 25 companies, $7,886,144.
Source: Ministry Contract Awards, awards dated 2023 onward.
Different names, and a much shorter list. Forty of the sixty-five have not been awarded one of these contracts since 2022. Some of them are no longer trading. That is why the directory at the end of this piece is ordered by the algorithm rather than by money: the biggest historical earner is not the most likely bidder, and on a job closing today that distinction is the only one that matters.
Where the companies are
By the company’s own base. Rady Creek sits in the Kootenay–Columbia cluster.
Source: company base from the award record, corporate registry and the company’s own listing.
The money is spread almost evenly across six regions, which tells you this is not a local arrangement in one district. It is a standing provincial capability. Eleven companies are based in the Kootenay–Columbia region and have taken $3,452,085 between them, and the Rady tender will be decided from inside that group.
Section 04The field, plotted
Sixty-five companies, one bubble each. How far right a bubble sits is the last time the Province paid it for this work; how high, the total it has been paid; how big, the number of contracts. The three the algorithm puts closest to Rady Creek are in orange.
Who is still doing this, and who used to
Every company in the record. The dashed line is 2023 — everything to the left of it has not been awarded one of these contracts in three years.
Source: Ministry Contract Awards, BC Data Catalogue, 2012 – March 2026.
The cluster splits cleanly. 39 of the 65 sit left of the line — dormant, holding $9,355,120 of historical work between them, including the single biggest bubble on the chart. 26 companies are still being paid, and they share $10,618,622. W.E. Stone is the high outlier on the left: the most money of anyone, and nothing since 2022.
Where the work clusters
One bubble per region. Across is the number of contracts, up is the money, size is how many companies are based there. Rady Creek is in the orange one.
Source: company base from the award record, corporate registry and the company’s own listing.
No region owns this. Six clusters, all between $3.2 and $3.9 million, which is what a standing provincial capability looks like rather than a local arrangement. The Kootenay– Columbia bubble holds eleven companies and $3,452,085, and the Rady contract will be decided from inside it.
Section 05Which three, and how we got there
Nobody can read a sealed envelope, but fourteen years of awards will tell you who is standing closest to it, because this work does not spread evenly across British Columbia — it clusters by district, by region, and by who still owns the machine. So we built an algorithm and wrote it on the window, exactly like Eduardo in The Social Network, Greek letters and all.
He was working out who wins a chess match. We are working out who wins a demolition contract. Yes, we are both nerds. You love it.
Proprietary methodology
The Rady Creek Contractor Algorithm™
| δ | ×40 | DSE | Contracts held in the Selkirk Natural Resource District — the district that owns Rady Creek |
| κ | ×18 | KOOT | Contracts anywhere in the Kootenay–Columbia contract series |
| λ | ×18 | LIVE | Still winning this work — last award 2023 or later |
| ρ | ×12 | RECENT | Each contract awarded since 2023 |
| β | ×12 | BAND | Median award falls in Rady’s size band, $75k–$400k |
| ε | ×10 | PLANT | Owns and operates its own earthmoving equipment |
Output
- 01C.HI.L. Logging Ltd.188
- 02Custom Dozing Ltd.128
- 03BHEX Contracting Ltd.98
- 04Yus Cho Enterprises88
- 05Noble Five Creek Ltd.70
- 06Okanagan Iron Worx Inc70
The formula is doing considerably less work than it appears to be doing. Three companies have ever been paid to deactivate a road in the Selkirk district. Everything else is decoration. The hard part was reading the spreadsheet — and the Province publishes the spreadsheet.
Five weights, five inputs, all of them published by the Province. The heaviest term by a wide margin is the first one, and it is the only one that really matters: has this company ever been paid to deactivate a road in the Selkirk Natural Resource District, the district that holds Rady Creek? Three companies have. That is the whole shortlist. Everything after that is tie-breaking.
The gap in the table is the interesting part. First place scores 161, third scores 98, and fourth scores 58. There is a cliff between the firms that have worked in this district and everybody else in British Columbia.
Section 06The three
Each of these companies has been paid by the Selkirk district to deactivate a forest service road. Each is in or beside the Kootenays. Each works at Rady’s size.
01Ψ 161
C.HI.L. Logging Ltd.
Cranbrook, BC
- Paid
- $862,078
- Contracts
- 5 contracts
- Active
- 2022–2025
Selkirk district awardEN24DSE005 — Akokli Forest Service Road Deactivation, $167,815, awarded 9 August 2023
The busiest deactivation contractor in the Kootenays by a distance: four contracts and $788,378 in the region, and the only firm on this list still winning this work in 2025. Took the Old Kootenay FSR out between kilometre 0.905 and 3.553 in July 2025.
02Ψ 107
Custom Dozing Ltd.
Salmo, BC
- Paid
- $447,500
- Contracts
- 2 contracts
- Active
- 2013–2023
Selkirk district awardEN24DSE006 — Lower Blazed FSR Deactivation, $98,500, awarded 10 August 2023
Holds both halves of the job. The 2023 Lower Blazed deactivation, and before that the Lower West Balfour Creek culvert removal at $349,000 — taking out the crossing rather than the road, which ends the access just as completely and never appears under the word deactivation.
03Ψ 98
BHEX Contracting Ltd.
Revelstoke, BC
- Paid
- $270,201
- Contracts
- 2 contracts
- Active
- 2020–2022
Selkirk district awardEN23DSE012 — Forest Service Road Deactivation, $140,372, awarded 20 June 2022
Both of its contracts are deactivations, both in this corner of the province: the Selkirk district job in 2022 and the Tangiers Road deactivation in 2020. Closest of the three to Trout Lake.
Contact details for all three, and for the other sixty-two, are in Section 09.
Section 07Three roads this district has already taken out
Rady Creek is not the first. The Selkirk district has let three deactivation contracts before this one, and all three went to the companies above. Here is the complete record.06
| Contract | Awarded | Value | Road, and who took it out |
|---|---|---|---|
| EN23DSE012 | 20 Jun 2022 | $140,372 | Forest Service Road Deactivation — BHEX Contracting Ltd. |
| EN24DSE005 | 09 Aug 2023 | $167,815 | Akokli Forest Service Road — C.HI.L. Logging Ltd. |
| EN24DSE006 | 10 Aug 2023 | $98,500 | Lower Blazed FSR — Custom Dozing Ltd. |
| EN27DSE008 | closes 24 Sep 2026 | — | Trout Lake–Rady Creek FSR 0321.02 — open |
Three roads, $406,687, two summers. Akokli and Lower Blazed were awarded a day apart in August 2023 — two roads in the same district ended in the same week, and no editorial was written about either of them at the time. We are going back for those three. That is the next piece.
One thing the Lower Blazed file already tells you, because BC Bid published the bids. Three companies bid: C.HI.L. Logging at $59,700, Custom Dozing at $98,500, and Turner Excavating at $114,500. The job went to Custom Dozing, $38,800 above the low bid.07
Turner Excavating is worth a note of its own. It bid on a Selkirk deactivation and did not win, so it appears nowhere in the award data and nowhere in our sixty-five. The list of companies paid to do this work is not the list of companies willing to do it. The second list is longer, and at one o’clock today it gets shorter by being written down.
Section 08What happens at one o’clock, and what does not
The envelopes open at one o’clock. Nothing appears online at that moment. BC Bid’s results are typed in by hand by a ministry staffer, and they land one to two business days later — so the date that matters is the 26th, not the 24th.
The tenderThe election
| When | What | Where | What you actually see |
|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Sep 2026 | Writs issued | OIC 410/2026 | The Legislative Assembly is dissolved and government enters the caretaker period. Two days before this tender closes.09 |
| 24 Sep, 1:00 PM | Close & open | Nelson | Nothing new online. Envelopes are opened at the district office. |
| ~25–26 Sep | Bid results | BC Bid | Every bidder’s name, total bid and city. Typed in by hand by a ministry staffer, one to two business days after close. No documents, no unit prices.04 |
| 3 Oct, 1:00 PM | Nominations close | Elections BC | The ballot is fixed. Ravi Parmar is a candidate, not a minister with a mandate.09 |
| ~2–3 weeks | Award notice | BC Bid | Winning company, contract value, award date. Losing bidders drop off.05 This lands mid-campaign. |
| 24 Oct 2026 | General voting day | Province-wide | By the time anyone votes on this government, the Rady contract is signed. |
| 6–10 Nov 2026 | Final count | Elections BC | No new Cabinet can be sworn in before this.09 |
| ~Jan 2027 | Open data | BC Data Catalogue | The quarterly award file. It has published nothing since 1 April 2026. |
| On request | FOI | FIPPA | The bid documents. The winner’s total normally comes out; losing bidders’ unit rates normally do not. |
Read the shaded rows against the plain ones. The Rady Creek road is being tendered, opened, awarded and signed inside an election campaign — by a ministry whose minister is a candidate, under a government that has been dissolved, before a single vote is counted. The writ dropped on 22 September. The envelopes open on the 24th.
So the useful date is not today. It is tomorrow, or the day after, when a civil servant in Nelson types the names into a web form. That page lists everyone who bid — not just the winner. Losing does not keep a company off it. We will publish that list the day it appears, beside this one, and every name on it will already have a row on this page, or it will get one.
What the Ministry put in its own tender
Two lines from the Rady tender package are worth reading slowly, because the Ministry of Forests wrote them, not us.
The Province will provide 24/7 onsite security for the entire duration of deactivation operations.
And the project is described in the tender as contentious and well known to the public.03
Read that as a procurement officer would. The Province is telling bidders, in writing, that this job needs round-the-clock guards. It knows exactly what it is doing here, and it has budgeted for the reaction.
A contractor reading that line is being told the same thing we are telling them, in the Ministry’s own words: this one is different. Every other road on this page went quietly. This one has a name, a file, and people watching. Anyone who puts an envelope in today is choosing to be on the record next to it.
That is the whole of our ask, and it is not a threat: the record is public, we are reading it, and we will publish it.
Section 09All sixty-five, and how to reach them
Every company the Province has paid since 2012 to remove a forest service road or one of its crossings, what each has been paid, and the work it was bought for. Ranked by the algorithm in Section 05, not by money — a firm that last worked in 2016 is not a candidate for a job closing today. 46 of the 65 publish a phone number. Everything here is a business listing the company publishes itself — they chose to be on the public record.08
| Ψ | Company | Paid | Work | Base & contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 188 | C.HI.L. Logging Ltd.2022–2025 · 5 contracts | $862,078 | Earthworks | Cranbrook, BC |
| 128 | Custom Dozing Ltd.2013–2023 · 2 contracts | $447,500 | Earthworks | Salmo, BCcustomdozing.com |
| 98 | BHEX Contracting Ltd.2020–2022 · 2 contracts | $270,201 | Earthworks | Revelstoke, BCbhexcontracting.com |
| 88 | Yus Cho Enterprises2023–2024 · 4 contracts | $354,895 | Earthworks | |
| 70 | Noble Five Creek Ltd.2024–2024 · 1 contract | $333,058 | Earthworks | |
| 70 | Okanagan Iron Worx Inc2025–2025 · 1 contract | $165,409 | Earthworks | |
| 70 | Little Big Works Revelstoke Ltd2024–2024 · 1 contract | $128,800 | Earthworks | |
| 70 | K&M Wallis contracting ltd2025–2025 · 1 contract | $81,269 | Earthworks | Kamloops, BCmwalliscontracting.com |
| 64 | Nahanni Construction Ltd.2019–2024 · 3 contracts | $931,605 | Earthworks | Prince George, BCnahanniconstruction.ca |
| 58 | Spider Excavators2025–2025 · 1 contract | $502,616 | Earthworks | Golden, BCspiderexcavators.com |
| 54 | 1197157 B.C. Ltd2023–2025 · 2 contracts | $252,215 | Prescriptions | Campbell River, BC no published phone |
| 52 | Denis Francoeur Backhoeing Ltd.2017–2024 · 3 contracts | $763,169 | Earthworks | |
| 52 | Way Out West Contracting Ltd.2023–2024 · 2 contracts | $703,416 | Earthworks | Quesnel, BC no published phone |
| 52 | Chu Cho Industries Limited Partnership2017–2025 · 2 contracts | $411,452 | Earthworks | Prince George, BCchuchoindustries.ca |
| 52 | Civil North Consulting Ltd.2022–2023 · 2 contracts | $330,925 | Earthworks | |
| 52 | MIB Excavating Ltd.2024–2024 · 1 contract | $222,305 | Earthworks | |
| 52 | Dalchako Road Services Ltd2024–2024 · 1 contract | $166,854 | Earthworks | |
| 52 | Bear Creek Construction Ltd.2025–2025 · 1 contract | $85,459 | Earthworks | |
| 52 | Great Northern Bridgeworks2025–2025 · 1 contract | $80,000 | Earthworks | |
| 42 | Little Timber Forest Services Ltd.2023–2023 · 1 contract | $91,013 | Prescriptions | Port Alberni, BC no published phone |
| 40 | Far North Contracting Ltd.2022–2023 · 2 contracts | $987,995 | Earthworks | |
| 40 | SURESPAN CONSTRUCTION LTD.2024–2024 · 1 contract | $959,248 | Earthworks | |
| 40 | Roc-Star Enterprises Ltd.2023–2023 · 1 contract | $426,738 | Earthworks | |
| 40 | Formula Contractors Ltd.2021–2021 · 1 contract | $361,222 | Earthworks | Prince George, BCformulacontractors.com |
| 40 | Skyline Resources Ltd2020–2020 · 1 contract | $287,646 | Earthworks | McBride, BC no published phone |
| 40 | Specialized Forest Management Inc.2025–2025 · 1 contract | $53,450 | Earthworks | Dunster, BC no published phone |
| 30 | Heavy Metal Marine Ltd.2018–2023 · 2 contracts | $970,544 | Crossing removal | |
| 30 | CHATTER CREEK HOLDINGS LTD.2020–2020 · 1 contract | $95,000 | Crossing removal | |
| 30 | Strategic Natural Resource Consultants2025–2025 · 1 contract | $36,410 | Prescriptions | Campbell River, BCsnrgroup.com |
| 22 | Pacific Coast Articulated Truck Ltd.2014–2016 · 2 contracts | $666,610 | Earthworks | Chilliwack, BCStruck from registry Oct 2019 |
| 22 | Jim Dent Construction Ltd.2015–2017 · 2 contracts | $501,166 | Earthworks | |
| 22 | Mission Contractors Ltd.2018–2018 · 1 contract | $378,058 | Earthworks | |
| 22 | Alpine Country Rentals Ltd.2022–2022 · 1 contract | $243,849 | Earthworks | |
| 22 | Berg-Mac Industries Ltd.2015–2016 · 2 contracts | $233,590 | Earthworks | Queen Charlotte, BC no published phone |
| 22 | West Bridge Corporation2014–2014 · 1 contract | $226,000 | Earthworks | North Vancouver, BC |
| 22 | Crane Enterprises Ltd.2022–2022 · 2 contracts | $176,335 | Earthworks | Armstrong, BC no published phone |
| 22 | Stan Zwicker Contracting Ltd.2013–2013 · 1 contract | $159,375 | Earthworks | Port McNeill, BC no published phone |
| 22 | A. Wood Bulldozing Ltd.2014–2021 · 2 contracts | $148,719 | Earthworks | Campbell River, BC |
| 22 | Nazko Logging Limited Partnership2017–2017 · 1 contract | $147,150 | Earthworks | |
| 22 | Caliber Bridge and Design Limited2016–2022 · 2 contracts | $146,465 | Earthworks | Campbell River, BCcaliberbridge.ca |
| 22 | Klo-Well Silviculture Ltd.2022–2022 · 1 contract | $122,095 | Earthworks | Kaleden, BC |
| 22 | Shiels Contracting Ltd.2014–2014 · 1 contract | $119,815 | Earthworks | Sandspit, BC |
| 22 | Transcendent Mining and Mobilization Inc.2019–2019 · 1 contract | $119,180 | Earthworks | |
| 22 | Borrow Enterprises Ltd.2019–2019 · 1 contract | $109,750 | Earthworks | |
| 22 | Shamrock Ventures Ltd.2019–2019 · 1 contract | $99,400 | Earthworks | Campbell River, BC no published phone |
| 22 | Xaayda Ventures Inc.2021–2021 · 1 contract | $99,200 | Earthworks | Skidegate, BC no published phone |
| 22 | Arnica Contracting Inc.2019–2019 · 1 contract | $91,600 | Earthworks | |
| 22 | ALLEN E COOK DBA COOK AND SONS2014–2014 · 1 contract | $87,716 | Earthworks | Gibsons, BC no published phone |
| 18 | Maglio Installations Ltd2015–2015 · 1 contract | $506,935 | Crossing removal | Castlegar, BC no published phone |
| 12 | Platinum Stone Contracting Ltd.2014–2019 · 2 contracts | $467,812 | Crossing removal | |
| 12 | Pioneer Forest Consulting Ltd.2022–2022 · 1 contract | $247,210 | Prescriptions | |
| 12 | Ruskin Construction Ltd.2017–2017 · 1 contract | $161,300 | Crossing removal | Prince George, BCruskinconstruction.com |
| 10 | W.E. Stone Ltd.2012–2022 · 6 contracts | $2,696,986 | Earthworks | Lillooet, BC no published phone |
| 10 | Fusion Timber Inc.2016–2016 · 1 contract | $72,854 | Earthworks | Lac Le Jeune, BC no published phone |
| 10 | Interior Silvi-Services Ltd.2020–2020 · 1 contract | $53,288 | Earthworks | |
| 10 | Deverell Contracting Ltd2019–2019 · 1 contract | $52,025 | Earthworks | |
| 10 | Crescent Bay Construction Ltd2015–2015 · 1 contract | $50,650 | Earthworks | Nakusp, BC |
| 10 | Silva Services Ltd.2014–2022 · 2 contracts | $45,594 | Earthworks | Duncan, BC no published phone |
| 10 | Skidegate Inlet Construction Ltd2022–2022 · 1 contract | $25,400 | Earthworks | Victoria, BC |
| 0 | KDC Forestry Consulting Ltd.2019–2022 · 2 contracts | $94,800 | Prescriptions | |
| 0 | Bushtech BC Ltd.2019–2019 · 1 contract | $62,950 | Prescriptions | Hope, BC no published phone |
| 0 | 0938541 B.C. Ltd.2022–2022 · 1 contract | $61,395 | Prescriptions | Armstrong, BC |
| 0 | Steel Ridge Contracting Ltd.2016–2016 · 1 contract | $58,500 | Crossing removal | Hazelton, BC |
| 0 | Michael King and Blair Nixon dba MB Construction2016–2016 · 1 contract | $57,725 | Crossing removal | Chase, BC |
| 0 | Noel Phillips d.b.a. BRAT Expediting2017–2017 · 1 contract | $19,755 | Prescriptions | Chemainus, BC no published phone |
Thirteen further contracts name no company at all. The Province published the award, the value and the work, and left the vendor field blank. There is nothing to put in the table.
19 of these companies publish no phone number anywhere. Not on a website, not on a Google listing, not in a local business directory. We went looking for each one and in most cases the absence is real rather than hard to find: Way Out West Contracting holds a current safety certificate in Quesnel and $703,416 of this work, and two Quesnel trade directories listing forty-odd local contractors with their phone numbers have no entry for it. Where the only number that exists is a residential line, we left it out.
Two of the companies above cannot bid on Rady Creek at all. Mission Contractors Ltd. closed in August 2025 after thirty-six years, and Pacific Coast Articulated Truck Ltd. was struck from the corporate registry in October 2019 — which is why its last contract is 2016. They are listed because the Province paid them, not because they are candidates.
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Six images carrying this story on their own — the money, the gap and the shortlist. Made to be posted.
Slide 1 of 6
Suggested caption
British Columbia has spent $19,973,741 since 2012 paying companies to remove forest service roads and the crossings that make them passable. 111 contracts. 65 companies. We read all 15,108 contract awards the Province publishes.
About five contracts a year through the 2010s. Twelve a year since 2022, and it never came back down. 2024 is the most expensive year on record at $3.49 million.
Not everyone on the list drives an excavator. 50 firms run the machines ($16.8M), seven pull out bridges and culverts ($2.3M), and eight never touch a machine at all ($866K) — they write the prescription that decides which road dies and how much of it.
Bidding on the Rady Creek deactivation closes 24 September at 1:00 p.m. Nothing becomes public at that moment: BC Bid posts the bidder names, totals and cities one to two business days later, and that list includes everyone who bid, not just the winner.
Three companies have ever been paid to deactivate a road in the Selkirk district, the district that holds Rady Creek. We named them, and the other 62.
backcountry.cx/editorials/who-gets-paid-to-close-your-roads/
#BCpoli #PublicLand #RadyCreek #Kootenays #ForestServiceRoad
Sources
- ↩Ministry Contract Awards — Province of British Columbia. BC Data Catalogue. Every quarterly award file, 2012 through March 2026 — 15,108 awards. Our working set is the 112 whose published title describes removing a forest service road or one of its crossings, with highway, paving, well, dam, marina and orphan-site work excluded. https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/ministry-contract-awards-province-of-british-columbia
- ↩Awards published without a vendor, and one published twice. Thirteen of the 111 carry an award, a value and a description with the vendor field left blank or set to N/A. Counted in the contract total; absent from the company total. One further award — Lois Lake/Hotham Sound, $87,716 — is published twice under two spellings of the same sole proprietor, with different award dates and an identical value. We count it once. https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/ministry-contract-awards-province-of-british-columbia
- ↩↩BC Bid opportunity EN27DSE008 — Trout Lake Rady-Cr Forest Service Road deactivation. Invitation to Tender, Ministry of Forests. Issued 9 September 2026 1:20 PM; enquiries closed 22 September 4:00 PM; closes and opens 24 September 2026 at 1:00 PM Pacific at 1907 Ridgewood Road, Nelson. Status Open, amendment 0. The 24/7 security provision and the “contentious and well known to the public” description are in the opportunity’s Summary Details. https://www.bcbid.gov.bc.ca/page.aspx/en/bpm/process_manage_extranet/233877
- ↩Unverified Bid Results — BC Bid public portal. Bidder name, total bid and city, entered by hand by the issuing ministry after a tender closes. Measured against the portal’s own publish dates, results appear one to two business days after close, not at the closing moment. The page carries a standing notice that the figures are unverified and do not predict the final ranking. https://www.bcbid.gov.bc.ca/page.aspx/en/rfp/unverified_bids_browse_public
- ↩↩Contract award notices on BC Bid. Core Policy and Procedures Manual, Chapter 6: after a contract is signed, award decisions for solicitations competed on BC Bid must be posted. The notice names the winning supplier and the contract value. Unsuccessful bidders do not appear on it. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/bc-procurement-resources/sell-to-government/government-procurement-processes
- ↩Selkirk Natural Resource District contract series. Awards in the EN##DSE### series. Three deactivation contracts have been let in the district before Rady Creek: EN23DSE012 (BHEX Contracting, $140,372), EN24DSE005 (C.HI.L. Logging, $167,815) and EN24DSE006 (Custom Dozing, $98,500). https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/ministry-contract-awards-province-of-british-columbia
- ↩Bid results, EN24DSE006 — Lower Blazed FSR Deactivation. Three bids: C.HI.L. Logging $59,700, Custom Dozing $98,500, Turner Excavating $114,500. Awarded to Custom Dozing at $98,500 on 10 August 2023 — $38,800 above the lowest bid. https://www.bcbid.gov.bc.ca/page.aspx/en/rfp/unverified_bids_browse_public
- ↩↩↩Order in Council 410/2026 — the writ. Approved 22 September 2026. Writs of election issued Tuesday 22 September 2026; nominations close 3 October 2026 at 1:00 PM Pacific; final voting day Saturday 24 October 2026; final count planned 6–10 November 2026. On dissolution the government enters a caretaker period, set out in the Province’s own operational guidance — convention rather than statute. Ministers remain in Executive Council until a new Cabinet is sworn in, which cannot happen before the final count. https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/oic/oic_cur/0410_2026
- ↩OrgBook BC. Corporate registration status and registered trade names for the companies in Section 08. Contact details are business listings the company publishes itself, its Google Business Profile, or the BC Forest Safety Council SAFE register. Nothing is inferred: where no number is published we say so. Sole proprietors trading under a person’s name are listed by business only. https://orgbook.gov.bc.ca/
Correction
What we changed, and why
On 22 September we posted a contractor sheet to social media built on the same public records as this page. It was brought to our attention that some of the contracts we charted were not road work. We went back to the government’s public records, fixed our filters and re-ran it.
“Decommissioning” is also the word the Province uses for retiring water wells, dams and marinas. Eighteen contracts worth $3,065,876 were swept in that had nothing to do with forest roads. Drillwell Enterprises Ltd. should not have been on that list at all — its $1,572,370 contract was a water well at Westwold. The same applies to three dam decommissionings, the Toquaht marina demolition and five oil-and-gas orphan-site contracts.
We also merged three spellings of one firm the Province writes inconsistently, and removed one award it published twice under two spellings of the same sole proprietor.
| Posted 22 Sep | Corrected | |
|---|---|---|
| Contracts | 121 | 111 |
| Total | $20.7M | $19,973,741 |
| Companies | 84 | 65 |
| Largest firm’s share | 8% | 13.5% |
| Contracts in 2022 | 30 | 16 |
| Drillwell Enterprises Ltd. | $1,572,370 | removed |
The finding the original sheet was built on survives the correction: the pace of this work more than doubles from 2022 and never returns, and 2024 is still the most expensive year on record. Every figure on this page comes from the corrected set.