Column: The easy way can lead to disaster
By David Suzuki H.L. Mencken once wrote that “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” This is often the case with society’s responses to human-caused wildlife decline. Take salmon populations along B.C.’s coast. According to assessments by the Committee on the Status of...
MP Cannings: Important to thank people to help those with addictions
Last year, Gord Portman saved two people in a house fire in Penticton. When he saw his picture in the local newspaper, he said to himself ‘Oh boy I need help.” Gord was addicted to drugs. So he turned to Discovery House, a local organization that helps men battle their addictions, and he now thanks Discovery House for saving...
Column: Heading for the stars? (Part One)
“Mankind will conquer the stars. It is his destiny.” -- Isaac Asimov “We are the way the universe understands itself.” “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” -- Carl Sagan “Let us make adam in our own image, as our likeness... Let him have dominion over ... earth and all the creeping things that...
Letter: Open Letter to Minister Conroy
An Open Letter to Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, Katrine Conroy: Dear Minister Conroy, Congratulations on your appointment as Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. We hope you will usher in considerable change from the former destructive...
Column: The lessons of COVID -- are we good students?
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” All in this together, but not all suffering together The coronavirus pandemic has been rich in lessons. We have been told one lesson over and over as a kind of mantra, by authorities in government, science, and medicine, and we know what we are supposed to have learned:...
Letter: The promise parties keep making -- and breaking
Dear Editor: Monday, February 1 marked the four year anniversary of Trudeau's broken promise on electoral reform. “We are committed to ensuring that the 2015 election will be the last federal election using FPtP” It was a key campaign promise which Trudeau repeated over 1800 times. An all party parliamentary committee, ERRE,...
COLUMN: From the Hill -- BC apple farmers and food security
Many sectors have been hard hit by the pandemic, and agriculture is one of them. Despite concerns about food security and pleas to buy local, orchardists and farmers in the region have had a number of serious headwinds facing them over the past year. B.C. apple growers have had to deal with huge production from just across...
Column: Alberta inquiry steps into a past era’s dark denial
That anyone today could deny the overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence for human-caused climate disruption is shocking. You don’t even need a science background to see its worsening effects occurring worldwide, from record high temperatures to increasing extreme weather events and wildfires. For a government — especially...
MLA speaks to one-year anniversary of Covid-19 in Canada
Dear Community Member, It has been one year since B.C.’s first joint statement about the novel coronavirus (now termed COVID-19) from Health Minister Adrian Dix and Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. Since that date, our world has changed dramatically. We have all felt the impacts of the pandemic on our lives, our ...
Climate: Proforestation vs. more old-growth logging
Researchers say "proforestation" policies are the fastest and most effective way to draw excess CO2 out of the atmosphere. By Kate S. Petersen for Environmental Health News HAMPSHIRE COUNTY, Mass.—Bob Leverett walked away from the trunk, looking up through the canopy, trying to get eyes on the crown. He crushed...
