A key ingredient in any democracy is that people choose their leaders based on their values.  In our current voting system we are often forced to choose between a person or a party or to vote “strategically”. The make-up of the government often doesn’t reflect the popular vote so a party may only get 10% of the seats even if...

When our children and grandchildren and those of us still here in 20 years look back to this time, will we say it was when the world finally got serious about the climate crisis? Or will we mark a tragic time when political and business leaders prioritized short-term economic gain over the future of humanity? Listening to...

Editor's Note:  This letter would have been better addressed to residents of all local commuities, not just  the "Trail residents" mentioned in the last line. The spills affected vehicles from a number of communities. Dear Neighbours, International Raw Materials (IRM) is committed to safely transporting our products through...

We tend to think of the post office as a place just to get and send our snail-mail, especially parcels.  We may have to change that thought: Canada’s postal workers are in negotiations for a new contract, and they are proposing some interesting things. They’re also authorized to go on strike. But that’s the stick:  they’re ...

"This is the scariest thing about the IPCC Report — it’s the watered down, consensus version." By Jon Queally, Staff Writer, Common Dreams If the latest warnings contained in Monday's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—which included pronouncements that the world has less than twelve years to...

Last week I became a grandfather for the first time.  Politicians are fond of talking about what kind of future we will leave our grandchildren, but I can now say that having a grandchild sharpens that perspective dramatically. On Thanksgiving Monday, two news headlines jumped out at me, both dealing with our path to a...

News that Environment and Climate Change Canada is considering “priority threat management” to assess endangered species is troubling. The method is often used to inform a “triage” approach in which some species are abandoned to focus resources on others ranked higher priority. The federal government is legally required to ...

At Tuesday evening’s Public Hearing on the re-zoning of the land at 2812 Cedar Crescent in the Pinewood neighbourhood, some of those presenting their concerns kept repeating that the distance to downtown from that location “is unwalkable.” (To  me, the walkability or not was irrelevant to the re-zoning, because it would be ...

Introduction:  Both sides of the Proportional Representation debate have made claims about what the effects of a ProRep system would be.  Here, two Political Science specialists delve into the major claims made about ProRep by both sides. We’ll examine a different claim each week.  This week, we look at...

NOTE: This item is still up because more voters may need to read it before the election. Candidates who responded (all but one) have answered nine questions. This year, Rosslanders get to choose who will form our new City Council and shape Rossland for the next four years. Mayor Kathy Moore has been acclaimed, but we have six...