To The Editor: Accountability. Local city councils in the Kootenays should follow the examples of  Victoria, Saanich and the District of the Highlands, who voted nearly unanimously to send a "Climate Accountability Letter" to 20 of the world's largest fossil fuel companies, asking the companies to pay their share of the...

West High Yield Resources Ltd. and the Record Ridge claims:  Rosslanders have been hearing from representatives of West High Yield  ("WHY") about mineral claims on and around Record Ridge that could be developed into a magnesium mine for some years now.  Some residents have been excited about the...

You have to hand it to the rich in dealing with the tax reforms proposed by the Liberals. They didn’t even have to put pen to paper or pick up the phone to protest the taxman messing with their ill-gotten wealth. They got the poor besotted small businessperson to fight on their behalf. In this newly fact-free world it didn’t...

First, the cannabis news:  as readers of the "Council Matters" column already know, the provincial government is seeking input from municipal governments to help guide provincial policy on the decriminalization of cannabis.  The federal government is preparing to pass Bill C-45 and Bill C-46.  There are questions to be...

Universal pharmacare is a hot topic on Parliament Hill these days.  The concept is simple—a single program that would ensure that all Canadians had free access to prescription drugs.  Canada is the only country in the world with universal health care that doesn’t include the cost of drugs in its coverage. And that doesn’t...

The Canadian government is banning plastic microbeads in toiletries. Although designed to clean us, they’re polluting the environment, putting the health of fish, wildlife and people at risk. Manufacturers and consumers ushered plastic microbeads into the marketplace, but when we learned of their dangers, we moved to phase ...

The fact that science is the foundation for civilization and democracy should be self-evident. Regrettably, that connection seems often to escape our collective consciousness. We tend to think of science narrowly as restricted to high-tech, laboratories, and the development of electric cars or travel to Mars. But everything...

The Selkirk College Students’ Union has launched a manual for students’ union organisers. The Fundamentals of Students’ Unionism provides student activists and organisers a framework to understand students’ unionism and the student movement. “Students are more in debt now than ever in the history of British Columbia and...

Conservative Member of Parliament Mel Arnold wants to make theft of firefighting equipment, which theft causes "actual danger to life,"  a specific Criminal Code offense with a maximum penalty of imprisonment for life. That's the same maximum penalty as mischief causing actual danger to life. Anyone who was evacuated from...

Masses of monarch butterflies fluttering across Toronto’s waterfront. Painted ladies (often mistaken for monarchs) descending on Montreal. Combined with the hottest September ever recorded in the Great Lakes region, it’s been a strange time in Eastern Canada. We should savour the joys of these captivating critters while we ...