On Feb. 5th the Canadian government signed an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the United States to govern The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).  FATCA is an American tax law requiring all Canadian financial institutions to provide the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with account information on customers...

Dear editor: In regard to your latest rant : Where are all the grownups looking after our health care? I believe the City if Castlegar did the right thing. We entered into this regional information gathering because someone had to get the ball rolling. We knew, of course, that there would be opposition, but that is no reason...

Dear editor, I am appalled by the jailing and the subsequent death in custody of CBSA in Vancouver, of Lucia Vega Jimenez - a 42 year old Mexican woman working to save money to care for her ailing mother. Days before Christmas, she was jailed for not having bus-fare and not having immigration papers!!  While alone in CBSA...

I'd like to paint a picture for you, explaining why, in my opinion, this region enjoys sub-par health services: Imagine, if you would, that you're the BC Minister of Health. You oversee five health authorities, with 16 health services delivery areas under them, all of them clamouring for a finite pool of funding and resources....

Dear Editor Reading 'Logging in Lynch Creek North is underway'  filled me with despair and anger. Dispair because Lynch Creek North is an important corridor for a threatened grizzly bear population and the road density in the area already far exceeds the level recommended by grizzly bear biologists.  Five-hundred logging...

Dear Editor, We are third year nursing students at UBC-Okanagan and are writing in regard to the growing amount of flavoured tobacco products available today. With National Non-Smoking Week upon us, we feel it is important to address this concern specifically because of the way these products are being marketed towards youth....

“…the new religion of material science … rules our mind, and this religion has a very, very bad god behind it. Certain patterns of thinking are now being induced electronically over the whole earth. …I don't think, as we are turning our forces now, that we're doing ourselves any good whatsoever. I feel rough times ahead.”...

The dictionary definition of perverse says (of a person or their actions) “...showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often in spite of the consequences.” Well, that just about sums up Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s disturbing trip to Israel. If anyone knows why this...

When you compare prices at the supermarket you usually look at comparable products, for instance you don't compare the price of a head of lettuce with a can of baked beans. It should be the same way with government consultations. Case in point: when you're trying to figure out how many people live in an electoral district for...

My reading consists primarily of books on history and political philosophy, and does not include memoirs of has-been politicians. I would not have read Joe Clark’s How We Lead: Canada in a Century of Change had it not been a Christmas gift from my daughter. Had I relied on my prejudices, I would have deprived myself of an...