One Cowichan

Tonight I attended an event at the Quw'utsun' Cultural Centre in Duncan BC to address the flow "management" of the historic Cowichan River. The intent was to bring together all the stake-holders and officials from all levels of government to explore everyone's wishes and try to find common ground.

These stake-holders included:
- a pulp and paper corporation with a 1960's licence to use water from the river for industrial purposes
- First Nations people who have lived on the river for thousands of years and have cultural ties to the salmon that spawn there
- cottagers who's "enjoyment" of their property may be impacted by fluctuating levels of the lake that feeds the river
- recreational anglers
Lots of luck with that!

As those in the crowd whispered revolutionary ideas like, "If we had left the trees, the lake and the river alone it would all have managed itself", the government bureaucrats showed slides of graphs and statistics and when that failed, un-furled a paper scroll with more axes and coloured lines . . . . . then fell silent.

The stake-holders voiced their disparate talking points, sometimes politely, sometime not so. Thankfully, no one mentioned the cultural significance of roasting marshmallows on the beach . . . . . then we all went home.

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Canadian Sovereignty For Sale to Fuel Power and Money Addiction

Am I seeing this correctly? Could this possibly be happening to my country, Canada? Are we giving away our right to act as a sovereign nation to satisfy the greed of the filthy rich of our own country and an odd collection of others?

Despite the sham of reviewing the Nexen - China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) deal against our newly neutered laws, we know that the Harper Government will discard any opposition in secret and endorse the deal. This will give a "corporation" owned by the Chinese government the right to extract and process tarsand into diluted bitumen.

At the same time, Harper has secretly signed an agreement in Vladivostock with the Chinese president Hu Jintao to enact a "trade agreement" which will prevent Canada (the country he was supposed to be leading) from doing anything that could cause a loss of anticipated profit for CNOOC on their tarsand operations.

As a result of the above, the Government of China would be able to authorise the building of pipelines and ports to handle their tarsand products wherever in Canada they wished, and authorise the operation of whatever kind of tankers they wanted to use wherever they said on the Canadian coast. The Government of Canada, on the other hand, would not be able to exercise any control over these works and operations as doing so would impede the making of profits by the Chinese "corporations" thereby contravening the provisions of the so-called "trade agreement".

Please tell me I am missing something here. Please tell me that the air, water, food, land and other resources that my grandchildren will need to survive will not be under the control of foreign governments seeking nothing but control over Canadian resources and the money that comes from destroying them.

If I am completely out of whack with my assessment of this situation, please point me to a genuine and believable alternate assessment that leaves control over these resources and their use in the hands of the Canadian people and I will do my best to distribute it as widely as possible. But spare me the bullshit about how our national security and my country and our environment and various species (including my own) will be capably looked after by the "honourable" members of the Harper Government. I can't think of a single reason for them to start looking after anything for the benefit of the ordinary citizens of Canada at this point.

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Enbridge's approved chart of the BC Coast

If there is anybody who has not yet seen this, it is Enbridge's idea of Douglas Channel linking Kitimat with Hecate Strait. In reality, about 1,000 square kilometres of islands dot the channel making it considerably harder to navigate with a super-tanker than this view of a 20 to 30 kilometre wide, unimpeded waterway would indicate. Enbridge explained that the image was meant to be "broadly representational".

In the spirit of "broadly mis-representaltional" imagery, this shows approximately where the supertanker shown in the image above would be, hard aground on Hawkesbury Island at an elevation of about 500m. With the cloud and the viewing angles involved, the location might actually be in Evelyn Lake which would seem much more appropriate except it would be hard to imagine how the Captain and crew could have put her in there without some damage to the hull - mega-tsunami perhaps. No real problem with getting out, just wait until enough fossil fuels have been burned to raise the ocean level to the point where she could be driven out.

This is a true (Google Earth) representation of Douglas channel from about the same vantage point as the Enbridge image above. Imagine how the captain of the first super-tanker in would feel as he looked at the 'special' chart supplied by Enbridge and compared it with the view ahead.

A satellite view of Douglas Channel from Kitimat to Hecate Strait and yes . . . the islands are all there all right.


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Putting the boots to protest

The New Canadian Reality

"Look at that you son of a bitch."

Thanks to "Give a Shit About Nature"

I am (not Steven Harper's) Canadian

In March 2011, a petition to the Government of Canada was initiated in response to  a directive that "reference to 'Government of Canada' should be replaced by 'Harper Government' in federal communications"; the petition was worded as follows:


We, the undersigned, call on the Government of Canada to cease official reference to itself as the "Harper Government".

This is not just Stephen Harper's government. It is the government of the Canadian people. 

Our country is not Stephen Harper's Canada. It is a democratic Canada. 

I am not Stephen Harper's Canadian. I am Canadian.

We demand that all official references to the Canadian government continue to use "Government of Canada". Any official reference to "Harper Government" should be immediately ceased.


As the petition was initiated by Canadian citizens and signed by over 19,000 of them it was, of course, ignored. 


Personally, I have been happy to refer to "the harper government" in my writing as it points out the illegitimacy of the group of arrogant ideologues that has usurped the constitutional authority for the governance of our country.


Also, as there is apparently no "Government of Canada" at the present time, any efforts to wrest power from this group could not be construed to be insurrection against a legitimate Government. In the event of a revolution this vacuum should legally void any counter efforts aimed to quell such revolution.


Perhaps this abdication by the Government of Canada provides an opportunity to reclaim what used to be our country before it is taken over by the United States of America with the collusion of the government of harper.

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The Biochar Solution

I have just finished reading "The Biochar Solution" - Albert Bates (2010)



Although biochar represents only one piece of a solution to one of a large number of future crises, this is still the most hopeful book I have read about the survival of the human species in a couple of years. The problem of course, is that for any small step in the right direction to be taken, a majority of people all over the world would have to accept the scientific evidence of the plethora of looming crises (virtually undisputed within the scientific community) and then convince their 'leaders' that something should be done — we are a very long way from clearing either of these hurdles at the moment.


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