Core Business Areas

To achieve its goals and objectives, the bureau provides services through five core business areas:

1. Regional Client Services

Through this core business, the bureau provides clients throughout B.C.’s eight major geographic regions with coordinated information and access to provincial natural resources on behalf of a number of provincial ministries and agencies. It does this through three broad themes:

• technically knowledgeable staff assisting clients with, and accepting applications for, land and resource-use authorizations, and monitoring and facilitating efficient, timely processing of applications;
• making decisions on tenures and sales of Crown land under the Land Act on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands;¹¹ and
• providing land and resource information, developing landscape-level land and resource-use plans and coordinating implementation of strategic land use plans to support the sustainable economic development of provincial natural resources.

These client services will increasingly be provided through a single-point-of-contact client service at FrontCounter BC offices with multiple-access channels (face-to-face, telephone, fax, e-mail, web, mail). This core business area also includes coordination of regional natural resource access strategies through regionally based Inter-Agency Management Committees, chaired and managed by senior regional bureau staff.

(287 FTEs, gross operating budget $28.4 million)¹¹

11	98 FTEs are temporarily assigned to the bureau from the Crown Land Administration in the Ministry Operations Vote for Land Act adjudication purposes and $8.4 million is recovered by the bureau from the ministry for this purpose. These FTEs are shown in the ministry’s resource table in Part A of this document.

2. Strategic Land and Resource Planning

This core business focuses on high-priority strategic land and resource management planning that builds on the New Relationship with First Nations. Four main functions are involved:

• finalizing strategic land and resource plans for government decision, an outcome of concluding government-to-government negotiations with First Nations;
• revising strategic land and resource plans at the direction of government, on the advice of other agencies, to address new issues and environmental factors (e.g., the impacts of Mountain Pine Beetles);
• undertaking related strategic plan implementation projects (e.g., coordinated management of the Muskwa-Kechika and Clayoquot Sound regions) at the request of government; and
• providing leadership of marine and coastal planning in B.C.

(12 FTEs, gross operating budget $8.8 million).

3. Species-at-Risk Coordination

This core business helps ensure the most effective management of the province’s globally significant, broad-ranging species-at-risk while providing responsible, balanced access to Crown land and resources. The bureau coordinates corporate development and implementation of recovery plans for three priority species: Mountain Caribou, Northern Spotted Owl and Marbled Murrelet.

(4 FTEs, gross operating budget $1.2 million)

4. Resource Information Management

Through this core business, the bureau captures, integrates, manages and warehouses provincial land and resource information, and delivers this information to government and non-government clients using a variety of means, including web-based tools.

The bureau provides these functions through the Chief Resource Information Office for natural resource ministries as a single-window access to land and resource information (Land and Resource Data Warehouse, Integrated Land and Resource Registry, GIS analysis services and the Integrated Cadastral Initiative). The bureau is also the provincial government agency accountable for providing spatial base mapping, land survey control systems and air and ortho-photo management to a wide range of internal and external users of landscape information across all sectors.

(125 FTEs, gross operating budget $27.9 million)

5. Bureau Management

This business unit includes the Office of the Associate Deputy Minister and a portion of Corporate Services Division (finance, facilities, etc.). The latter is a shared service and also serves the Ministries of Agriculture and Lands, and Environment. The business unit includes Corporate Operations Branch, a small team of headquarters-based bureau staff who provide strategic business planning, corporate budget and human resource management, website oversight, performance monitoring and issues management.

(17 FTEs,¹² gross operating budget $13.1 million)

The resources shown above make up the 2006/07 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff numbers and gross operating budgets before adjustment for cost recoveries. Net operating expenses are provided in the Resource Summary table on page 44.

For more information about the bureau, its mandate and functional components, please see: http://ilmbwww.gov.bc.ca/ilmb/index.html.

12	This does not include the FTEs in Corporate Services Division servicing the bureau. These are shown under the Ministry of Environment service plan. However, the operating budget for Corporate Services Division support of the bureau is shown here.