BC Timber Sales to start addressing concerns over logging Lynch Creek
Concerns Brown Creek residents have with logging proposed for the Lynch Creek area will be looked at this week by a team of staff from BC Timber Sales, said Ingrid Russell, planner with BCTS out of Nelson. BCTS had a meeting with the community in May 2012 where residents expressed their concerns and had an opportunity to view...
COMMENT: The Department of Peace, part 1
In this column I would like to share part of the speech I gave to those attending the “Open Forum” on a culture of peace and Department of Peace in Canada which took place in Ottawa early in November of 2012. Arms trade is big business – in 2010 total military spending in the world was around $1.6 Trillion. According to the...
Deadline for input on proposed logging in Brown Creek area this week
Brown Creek residents have until Friday, Jan. 11 to provide BC Timber Sales (BCTS) with their input about logging proposed for the Lynch Creek area. BCTS had a meeting with the community in May 2012 where residents expressed their concerns and had an opportunity to view detailed maps of the proposed cut blocks slated to hit...
COMMENT: For frack’s sake
When Josh Fox received a letter offering him nearly $100,000 for the natural gas extraction rights on his Pennsylvania property, his first reaction was: nice chunk of change. Then he started wondering what was involved in the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) process proposed. Looking for the answer took him on a road trip...
OP/ED: Is BC heading for its own fiscal cliff?
The Government of BC has been on a borrowing and spending spree for about eight years. A lot of this is being done using the “Public-Private Partnership” model (P3) of which the former Premier Campbell was exceedingly fond. In fact, he was such a leading proponent in Canada that the commercial interests behind the...
Report critiques Canada's organic certification system
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy recently released a policy study examining the system for testing organic products – or the lack thereof – in Canada. Authors Mischa Popoff and Patrick Moore drop the bomb on organic certification in Canada by revealing that organic crops are not systematically tested by the Canadian Food...
Power of the Internet: hackers target Westboro Baptist Church website, Twitter
Hackers claiming to be associated with the internet activist group Anonymous have attacked the website belonging to the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) and hacked into the Twitter account belonging to Shirley Phelps-Roper, the Church's spokeswoman. The attacks are part of an operation dubbed '#OpWestBor' on Twitter and is in ...
COMMENT: Forsaken on Highway 16
Wally Oppal’s long awaited report commissioned in the wake of the conviction of serial killer Robert Pickton holds a surprise. Something had gone tragically wrong with law enforcement. How else could one individual have murdered dozens of women in one location over more than a decade without being caught? That Oppal’s report...
COMMENT: Tight lips tank trust
Following the city’s overzealous and incorrect use of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act (FIPPA) to withhold letters that are clearly in the public’s interest and do not “unfairly” harm anyone’s reputation, I am left wondering what, exactly, remains in the five redacted lines in Coun. Kathy Moore’s letter...
Grand Forks teachers return from middle school tour with great optimism
The nine teachers who went on the second trip to Betty Gilbert Middle School in Aldergrove, BC at the end of November had a positive impression of the middle school system. Two of the teachers attended the monthly school board meeting in Grand Forks on Tuesday, Dec. 11 to tell the board about their trip. The trip was the...
