As I discussed in my last column, the federal government had an opportunity in last week’s budget to finally start closing the growing income inequality gap in Canada. But, unfortunately the Liberals chose tax breaks for wealthy Canadians and giveaways to large corporations over helping the unemployed, veterans, and Indigenous...

To The Editor: More funding might help our seniors if they are in a publicly owned facility. A few more staff and maybe an extra therapist. But history shows that more funding has not improved the quality of care in "for profit" or even "non-profit" facilities. The taxpayers shelled out more money in 2010 when the client rate...

Senator Lynn Beyak's complaint that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) "didn't focus on the good" done by Canada's residential schools has provoked calls for her resignation, and some people wonder how she is qualified to sit on the Senate's Aboriginal Peoples Committee. For any who have not yet read the letter of...

We recently highlighted the faulty logic of a pseudoscientific argument against addressing climate change: the proposition that because CO2 is necessary for plants, increasing emissions is good for the planet and the life it supports. Those who read, write or talk regularly about climate change and ecology are familiar with...

To the Editor: I was recently visited by a representative of Access Gas offering me participation in the Customer Choice Program which guarantees you stable pricing for the gas you receive via Fortis for the next five years.  The program is well presented and documented and is perfectly legitimate. But although this all sounds...

Scissors and Paste The academic supervisor for my post-grad thesis in history would not have approved of what I do in this edition of the Arc. He dismissed the method (with a curl of his lip) thus: “writing with scissors and paste, Charles.” I have looked over several pieces of writing recently, some of it my own, and I am ...

In 2011, I travelled with my family down Yukon’s Hart River. It’s one of seven pure rivers in the Peel River watershed, a 68,000-square-kilometre wilderness that’s been at the centre of a legal dispute for many years and a land-use planning debate for more than a decade. For two weeks, we fished from the river’s vibrant green...

This past weekend the Globe and Mail reported that lobbyists in the province have been making political donations on behalf of their clients, effectively camouflaging the identity of the real donors and breaking B.C.'s Elections Act in the process. On Sunday, Elections B.C. announced it was conducting an investigation into ...

Apparently, fossil fuel companies protect watersheds and rivers by removing oil. That’s according to comments on the David Suzuki Foundation Facebook page and elsewhere, including this: “The amount of contamination occuring [sic] from extraction is far less than if we just left the oil there to continue polluting the waterways.”...

In my few years of reporting on Rossland City Council, I have observed different styles of interaction between Council members, and between Council and the public; I have observed different concerns and priorities.  But always, our City Councils seem to have been concerned to do the best thing for Rossland and its people --...