The fight over storing contaminated soil in a quarry upstream from Shawnigan Lake has exposed major flaws in B.C.’s system for protecting the environment, says B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver.

The Oak Bay-Gordon Head MLA called it “bizarre” that Environment Minister Mary Polak suspended the quarry’s permit Friday after it was already stayed by a judge earlier in the week.

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“This is a shocking embarrassment that a minister is threatening to revoke a permit after the court just noted that, in fact, the whole [Environmental Appeal Board] approval has to go back to the drawing board,” he said.

Weaver said Polak should pull the permit immediately, rather than giving the quarry more time to meet certain conditions.

“It should be revoked — not [suspended] until you fix it up and then we’ll give it back to you.”

Polak said her decision was based on current and past issues of non-compliance by quarry owner, Cobble Hill Holdings Ltd, and had nothing to do with the recent court case.

But Weaver said the court ruling raises serious questions about government’s decision to issue the permit in the first place.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Sewell found that the engineering firm that designed the storage facility and did the site’s technical assessment had an ownership interest in the project. The arrangement was withheld from both the government, which issued the permit in 2013, and the appeal board, which upheld the permit in 2015, the judge said.

Sewell overturned the appeal board’s decision and said that, if it were up to him, he would have no difficulty setting aside the permit as well, because the technical assessment “was prepared by persons who were biased in favour of approving the project.”

Weaver said the ruling highlights problems with B.C.’s system of allowing companies that are seeking project approvals to also hire the professionals that do the technical assessments.

“It shows it’s broken,” he said.

Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, said that, under the current system, the B.C. government relies on the opinions of professionals, who may, in some circumstances, be in a conflict of interest.

“I mean, Shawnigan’s an extraordinary situation where the professionals are actually involved in the business,” he said. “But there are more subtle conflicts of interest that occur when you’re being hired by somebody to give an opinion.”

Sandborn gave the example of someone hiring a professional to certify that a tree is diseased so that it can be cut down. The professional has an incentive to find disease in the tree if he wants to keep the client and get recommended for future business, he said.

“He who pays the piper calls the tune, is kind of a general situation. Even when people are trying to be straight, you just tend to be influenced by the fact you’re being paid by somebody.”

To solve the problem, Sandborn said the professionals should be hired by government, rather than by a company that is seeking a project approval. “The company could still pay for it, but [the professionals] should be answerable to an independent, objective agency,” he said. “This whole system of just allowing companies to hire people to write reports -- human nature is such that it’s not necessarily always so reliable to protect the public interest.”