Council Matters: Cannabis store, Rec Committee, urban trails, taxation . . .
Present: Mayor kathy Moore, and Councillors Chris Bowman, Scott Forsyth, Stewart Spooner, Andy Morel, and Janice Nightingale. Absent: Dirk Lewis. Public Input Period was very quiet -- no one offered to speak. Staff Reports & Recommendations: (moved up in the agenda to accommodate interested people in the gallery) A...
Op/Ed: How B.C. quietly found a way to permit natural gas plants without environmental reviews
Internal documents released via Freedom of Information laws show that, while the B.C. government was publicly apologizing to the Fort Nelson First Nation for exempting natural gas plants from environmental assessments without consultation, the province quietly used a loophole to allow the exemptions to continue — a...
Op/Ed: Private auto insurance? Be careful what you wish for
Imagine a land where drivers pay 55 per cent more for auto insurance than other drivers in Canada, a land where an insurance company may not cover you because of the city you live in, a land where your automobile insurance premiums isn't based on your driving record but your postal code. That land is Ontario. It's a land that...
Budget housekeeping sparks debate about homeless camping in Castlegar parks
A hot-button social issue arose in Wednesday night’s operational budget meeting when city Director of Civic Works Lucas Pitts brought forward what would otherwise be a simple housekeeping issue. The concern is creating a bylaw governing overnight camping in city parks – not by residents, but by homeless people who haven’t anywhere else to sleep. […]
BC Hydro in court to keep Site C expenditure details from public
By Sarah Cox for The Narwhal BC Hydro has gone to court to avoid revealing the names of public employees who decide which companies are awarded lucrative Site C project contracts during construction of the $10.7 billion hydro dam. B.C.’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) ordered BC Hydro to release the...
Council Matters: Small but mighty! Rossland is Canada's 10th City committed to 100% renewable energy
Rossland City Council Meeting, January 21, 2019 Councillors Present: Mayor Kathy Moore, and Councillors Dirk Lewis, Janice Nightingale, Chris Bowman, Stewart Spooner, and Andy Morel. Absent: Scott Forsythe Staff Attending: Chief Administrative Officer Bryan Teasdale, Chief Financial Officer Elma Hamming, Deputy Corporate...
‘Drastic and scary’: Salmon declines prompt First Nation to take Canada to court over fish farms
By Sarah Cox, from The Narwhal In an unprecedented move, the Dzawada’enuzw nation is claiming in court that farming Atlantic salmon — which often carry disease — in their traditional waters constitutes a violation of Aboriginal rights Willie Moon’s family used to catch hundreds of salmon a day ...
Column: Pipeline Blockade Signals Deeper Troubles
Recent controversy over a natural gas pipeline blockade and the differing priorities of hereditary chiefs and elected band councillors illustrates a fundamental problem with our systems of governance and economics. Elected councils for the Wet’suwet’en and other Indigenous bands have signed lucrative “impact benefit agreements”...
Column: Political climate heating up
Global warming isn’t a partisan issue — or it shouldn’t be. The many experts issuing dire warnings about the implications of climate disruption work under political systems ranging from liberal democracies to autocratic dictatorships, for institutions including the U.S. Department of Defense, World Bank, International Monetary...
Column: News to cheer or fear for the New Year
Introduction: last year of our Second twenty-first-century Decade (!) Year-end and year-start reviews can be an occasion for melancholy or celebration, and yet I personally feel neither. Mostly I feel astounded to find myself 19 years into the twenty-first century, and the third millennium, when it seems not so long ago that the pregnant year […]