Sue Stroud's Central Saanich News & Views

2011-12-13T18:33:00.000-08:00

“We have the potential to become the most transparent Councilin the region.” – Councillor Zeb King

Last night saw the hottest item of the recent electioncampaign, transparency, arrive at the Council table in the form of two motions.One motion was based on a staff recommendation to reinstate the voting recordso that citizens can tell how Councillors are voting and the other, put forwardby Councillor King, proposed that the item “Delegations and Petitions” berestored to its rightful place near the beginning of the agenda.

Unfortunately, it was another evening of mixed results with thosein the gallery left unsatisfied by the explanations given and the votes taken.Councillor Jensen made a valiant effort to cut through the baloney and have allvotes recorded for all motions. Staff and some council members felt that it wasnecessary to differentiate between “substantive” motions and procedural motionssuch as approval of the agendas and minutes of council and committees.

This writer and others are well aware that proceduralmotions can be just as contentious as any other motion when used to curtaildiscussion and debate, but most councillors (except King and Jensen) werecontent with the assurance that any councillor opposed to these motions would have their names recorded. It’s worthnoting that the debate was going rather well until non-resident CouncillorGarrison did his mumble-jumble which always begins with “from my perspective.”In the end the hide-as-much-as-we-can councillors stated that any name notlisted as opposed must have been in favour. So save this bit of information, itwill be useful later on no doubt when they start claiming they were not infavour and the chair/mayor/recorder did not see their hand up.

The next motion, intended to restore respect for thecitizens who foot the bills by putting “Delegations and Petitions” near the beginningof the agenda, failed. This section was relegated to the back of the agenda byformer Councillor Kubek and friends and it means that citizens may have to waituntil 9, 10 or 11 o’clock to be heard. Working people, seniors, youngsters andthose with children all find this a difficulty. Being near the beginning of theagenda ensures that you are heard nearer to 7:30 or 8 pm and can then get homeas needed. Kudos to Councillor King fortrying, it would have gone a long way toward clearing the uncivil atmospherecreated by the last Council.

Finally the proposal for the densification workshops came tothe table. The proposal suggested two workshops, one for the public and one forthe developers to be held in a single day. When the gallery queried therationale for the workshops Councillor Siklenka did a good job of explainingthat there was a need to clarify what was meant by densification and what itwould mean to different neighbourhoods in Central Saanich “so that we haveclear guidelines to help us assess the suitability of developments as they comeforward.” So far so good except that the first step must be to ascertain if thecommunity wants densification at all!

His Worship, Mayor Bryson, clarified that he had not askedfor a separate closed workshop for developers which the wording of the proposalsuggested and which was creating a frisson throughout the gallery as peoplewondered what information developers would be giving and getting that would notbe for all ears to hear. In fact the gallery was pretty much unanimous inthinking that developers don’t need a workshop at all since they are simply tomake their proposals based on the expectations of the citizenry. These expectationswould be outlined in several workshops that would be held in the various neighbourhoodsto give optimum opportunity for input.

Cathie Ounsted asked for some clarification of the timeline,but got more of a history of the thought process than a clear answer as to whythese workshops needed to be organized in such a hasty fashion.

In the end it was decided that a second look was needed,that the gallery’s concern about the small number of workshops needed to bere-examined (and I would suggest heeded, I can’t see how fewer than three willachieve the desired consensus). For more on this item we’ll have to wait forthe January 9^th Council meeting by which time it is to be hopedcouncillors have a more realistic idea of what citizens expect from theseworkshops. We are after all footing the bill for the contractor.

Please also mark your calendars for the Strategic PlanningSession to be held February 8^th (evening) and February 9^th(daylong). This planning session is open to the public and sets the table forthe coming year.

2011-11-20T18:57:00.001-08:00

RECYCLE DEPOT

Next depot is Saturday Nov 26 at Stelly's 9 - 12.

Google Pacific Mobile Depot for details on what you can bring and what it costs.

PLEASE NOTE! There will be a depot in December this year.

It will be the THIRD Saturday, Dec 17th - same time, same place.
Volunteers always welcome.

Maria St.Amand
LEADiva
250-652-5606
>http://hopeis.webs.com/
http://brentwoodlead.com/

2011-11-20T18:49:00.001-08:00

Thank you to all those who supported me in the recent municipal campaign. I very much appreciate your time and efforts and votes!

I will continue actively working to protect farm and rural land in our beautiful community. I encourage you to help in every way you can. Our environment is fragile and finite, we must become better stewards to ensure a healthy green future for those who come next.

- Sue

2011-11-17T12:58:00.001-08:00

November 19th

2011-11-17T12:50:00.001-08:00

Province moves to protect farm land

Extra enforcement, oversight, funds for B.C. Agricultural Land Reserve

By Carla Wilson, Times ColonistNovember 16, 2011

2011-11-15T17:31:00.001-08:00

My Environmental Credentials

Helped write the terms of reference for BC Housing's Livegreen Council which promotes environmental conservation and action at work, at home and in the community
Hosted organic gardening workshops for members and friends through the BCGEU Cool Communities Campaign, I invited local organic farmers like Robin Tunnicliffe and Geoff Johnson, composting experts from the CRD, tree pruning and heritage tree expert Cathy Rasmussen and more to share their knowledge, many of those who took the classes have now converted their lawns to gardens, are gardening in the schoolyards etc
Through the BCGEU Cross Component Committee provided the first year's insurance to the HOPE Recycle Depot in Central Saanich
Fought to save the trees in Brentwood Bay from destruction during the Brentwood Revitalisation
Helped blow the whistle on Randy Sewell's mass destruction of trees in Central Saanich (he was fined $125,000)
Provided several species of native plants free for the past few years to those attending the Labour Day picnic (Ocean Spray, wild currant, douglas fir seedlings and others)
Worked to save the Vantreight hillside from development because rural land is important to farmland for mason bees and other species (Dogwood Initiative joined this action)
Worked to protect farmland in Central Saanich in every way I can

This is just a sample of what I have done for our environment. In addition to this I am always postings information about farming and the environment on the internet, sharing everything I can find. It's important to walk the walk and that is what I do.

2011-11-11T17:43:00.001-08:00

Why I support Woodwynn Therapeutic Community

I support Woodwynn Therapeutic Community at historicWoodwynn Farm wholeheartedly, because I believe that this is a wonderful, caring,community use for a long under-utilised farm. I will never vote to rezone Woodwynn forpermanent residential housing or allow it to be carved up for subdivisions,this promise is written in stone.

The application sent to the ALC is for non-farm use on aportion of the land and 100% of Woodwynn will remain in the ALR.

The buildings being proposed have been designed to be easilymoved, and Woodwynn has offered a covenant to put monies in trust to remove thebuildings should the program be closed. All over the world land used foreverything from housing to the most poisoned industrial purposes is rehabilitatedand used for farming and nothing planned here would be difficult to reverse.

The Woodwynn Community has already shown their care andconcern for the farm in many ways including

· rehabilitatating the creek (with the help of Peninsula Streams)by planting 200 native trees, shrubs and grasses along its edge

· extensively repairing the buildings

· planting over 400 fruit and nut trees

· planting 180 blue spruce

· planting 12 garry oaks and 12 maples

· planting a 2 acre vegetable garden (the first vegetables grown and harvested onthis land since First Nations harvested the native plants)

· increasing the hay crop

· installing 6 bluebird boxes (this was done by theGarry Oak RestorationTeam)

· raising pigs

The people who have come to the farm so far have done welland have caused no harm to the community in any way. New lives have begun and the testimonialsfrom parents and others are inspiring to read.

The volunteerism fostered here is extensive and goes a longway to creating a respect for farming in the wider community:

· over 2,000 individual volunteers have come towork on the farm, some for an hour others putting in 50 hour weeks

· 85 five year old girls (Sparks from the girl guidemovement) came to the farm with their parents and had a wonderful day buildinga new pond and filling it with plants and fish

· local farmers have been helping by providingadvice, expertise and equipment

· elementary schools, middle schools and highschools have come to the farm (St Michaels has been a few times) as well asgroups of students from UVic, Camosun and Royal Roads who are currentlyplanning a fund and awareness raising event for the farm

· Church and community groups come to volunteerand use their experience as a team building exercise

· 3,500 attended the Open House held earlier thisyear and a steady flow has come to the farm market (that started slowly butramped up as word got out)

Many of the homeless or nearly homeless in downtown Victoriaare from Central Saanich and use services provided by other municipalities. Ibelieve that we must do more to support the region in its efforts to end thecycle of poverty and homelessness. This is a piece we can do that fits ourcommunity well.

This use is a good use. I support it because I understand the need.

What I believe

2011-11-05T19:46:00.000-07:00

It's time forpositive change in Central Saanich.

It's time tobring everyone to the table.

I am committed to maintaining the rural health and beauty of CentralSaanich. We live in the centre of an exquisite jewel. This is the place I love. Ihave worked hard and passionately to protect her over the years, speaking outat public hearings, writing articles and advocating for a small, sustainableand self-sufficient community. But there’s much more that needs to be done.

It’s time to understandthe interconnectedness of farms, small businesses, community groups, culturesand families.

If we aren’t working together we are missing the opportunity to build avibrant, healthy community. With 16,000 citizens, Central Saanich is full ofgood ideas and helping hands. Regular round tables and community discussionscan make the most of this vitally important resource. We need to include ouryouth in everything we do. Youth are our future, they should be there when wenext review the Official Community Plan and they should be sitting as observerson some of our committees so they can learn how a community works. We need to support our seniors by helping maintain the seniors centre in Brentwood Bay. This should become a regular part of our budget, they should not have to come asking for help through the grants in aid process. This is a well used centre providing all sorts of activities. Keeping it going is good for the whole community.

I am proud ofthe help I have been able to offer to those who would set up a recycle depot,fight to save farmland, protect our ferry route, hold a dry grad, get a newcrosswalk and create a more liveable, less stressful space for our community.

We are not just another cookie-cutter suburb of a larger city. We are LÁU,WELNEW,the place of refuge, as our First Nations neighbours know, and we need tomaintain that vision. We need to respect the land we are using and give back toits future wherever we can. We are here to help each other!

CentralSaanich needs to refocus on families, farms and fairness.

Our families need safe, affordable, green and appropriate housing so thatour community does not become a monoculture of one age group or one incomelevel. We need to help people "live where they work and work where theylive" to reduce transportation costs and the pollution that goes with longcommutes. We need to find incentives and funding for alternative energy use andto encourage urban gardening and tree planting to mitigate the effects ofclimate change.

We need to lobby our provincial government for more help for farmersincluding perhaps a land bank to buy farms and lease them back at low rates toother farmers. We need to nurture small businesses and help them with ourpatronage, our support and our creativity. We can streamline the civicpaperwork so they can get down to business faster. We can help Keating byencouraging value-added agricultural businesses to start up there (bakeries,flour producers, packing, canning, weavers and more).

We need a true commitment to ourOfficial Community Plan and the Regional Sustainability Strategy so that ourcommunity can concentrate on growing food for our families far into the future.We need to respect and understand our agreements with other communities becausewe are not a law unto ourselves; what we do or fail to do impacts others.

We need fairness and accountability - all votes must be recorded. Meetings must be video-taped and posted on the website. Secrecy is the enemy of openness. If you've nothing to hide you should proudly state yea or nay for the camera.

We needmuch more public interaction, more notification of public hearings, openhouses, town halls, and council & committee meetings using all the newtools available to us. And we need to foster civic values. We can do this by being inclusive.

CentralSaanich needs a clearer more readable budget and accounting system so citizenscan easily access the information they need.

We need true respect for those who come before council, they are theemployer and they are the people footing the bill. We need those who will spendcarefully for what is needed, but hold the line on frills. Tax increases as aresult of the new "run up the debt" philosophy of some currentcouncil members will hamper local families for years to come and futurecouncils will be blamed for the mis-spending taking place now.

Developmentdoes not add to revenue sufficiently to cover the expenses it creates, as ourmunicipal planner has clearly stated in more than one public meeting.

Development increases taxes over time as demands are made for moreamenities, as growth triggers the legal requirements for more police and fireservices, and as maintenance and repairs become necessary.

So who am I?

I am a BC government employee working for BC Housing. In my youth I pickedberries on Veyaness, attended Mt Newton School, helped build the trail in Centennial Park and worked forCharlie White Productions on Keating X Road, marketing his Salmon Spectacularfilm. I have lived on Tanner Road, East Saanich Road and Wallace Drive.

I have learned a lot about the difficulties people face in our society and Ihave learned to respect them no matter who they are.

We are allone, we all belong.

Our respectfor each other is what creates "community."

-Sue Stroud

sue_stroud@hotmail.com

250-415-3828

On November 19^th remember,

Sue Stroud will makeyou proud!

2011-11-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

How to save small farms

By protecting farmland from development, land trusts are making small-scale agriculture more viable

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/small_farms_gilt_taste/

Central Saanich All Candidate's Meeting Oct 28, 2011

2011-10-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

Democracy is about YOU!

2011-10-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

I am running because democracy is not something that happens one day every several years, and the winner does not "take all".

Democracy is an obligation on the part of those elected to represent all of the people, to listen (without whining about too many emails or phone calls which happen when people feel they aren't heard), to have an open mind and to question their own reasoning and assumptions. This is what makes us accountable.

I have an obligation to make sure I do not run up the borrowing and debt causing our community to become unaffordable for those who live here. I have an obligation to stand up and speak out even if I am the only voice.

I have an obligation to do my best to communicate and listen, to encourage and include and inspire.

Central Saanich needs people who will sign their names to the motions they've put forward and voted on (it's called transparency).

Central Saanich needs people who will uphold the people's document, the Official Community Plan.

Central Saanich needs people who understand that what we do here affects people far beyond our borders.

Get Out the Vote!

2011-10-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

Straight from the Central Saanich website.

The next general local election for Mayor, Councillors and School Board Trustees will be held on November 19, 2011.

Voting Opportunities:

• Advance Voting: Wednesday, November 9, 2011, at the Municipal Hall between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.

• Advance Voting: Wednesday, November 16, 2011, at the Municipal Hall between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.

• General Voting Day: Saturday, November 19, 2011, at the Municipal Hall or the Cultural Centre between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.

If you have any questions regarding local elections, voting, or any other matter, please contact the Chief Election Officer. 250-652-4444

Vantreight Court Date Looming

2011-10-04T19:27:00.000-07:00

October 19th and 20th are important days for Central Saanich as an appeal of the earlier Vantreight hill development decision is made in Vancouver. The Residents and Ratepayers of Central Saanich have consistently stood against development that will breach our urban settlement areas as designated in our Official Community Plan. RROCSS has made it clear that when the people speak, the Council should listen. Let's hope the Court sides with the democratic processes that created our Official Community Plan. More to come....and by the way, thanks Ian Cameron for your courage and your tenacity.

Moodyville Facing Parking Crunch

2011-10-04T19:11:00.000-07:00

Both safety and peace of mind are at risk as the Brentwood Inn seeks to expand it's footprint in Moodyville. The development planned for the current gravel parking lot calls for a reduction in the number of parking spaces usually required for such a development. The result will be additional spillover into the community.

Neighbours already have considerable trouble with cars from the patrons of the Inn parking in household parking spots and blocking road access when the parking lot is full. While the claim is made that these vehicles are from kayakers and ferry-travellers local resident John Creviston has noted that they are there in the evenings when the ferry is finished running for the day and kayakers are no longer out on the waters.

The new proposal is not acceptable if it means reducing parking spots that are already at a premium. Homes and families must be the first consideration of council in any development proposal. More cars trying to park on local streets mean more headaches for homeowners, more noise, more fumes, and more cars in the way everyday. It also means more difficult access for emergency vehilcles and more danger for neighbourhood children. Homeowners pay taxes to guarantee safety and peace of mind at home, let's make sure their voices are heeded.

Sue Stroud for Council

2011-10-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

You can hear me at the All Candidates Meeting hosted by the Residents and Ratepayers of Central Saanich, Friday, October 28th at 7 pm at the Brentwood Community Hall. You can also come and meet me at Spelt's Coffee Shop in Saanichton November 9th from 7 to 10 pm. I will post more events as they come up. I welcome your thoughts and ideas as to how we can move Central Saanich forward without sacrificing her farmland or rural ambience.

If you like what you see as you read over my blog please consider helping with my campaign. I will need people willing to help me leaflet and doorknock throughout Central Saanich, or perhaps hold a coffee party so I can meet your neighbours.

I will also need donations to help with the cost of printing and advertising. Just send a cheque to Sue Stroud, 105-7088 Wallace Drive, Brentwood Bay BC V8M 1P4, large or small they all help a lot and are greatly appreciated. For more info you can call me at 250-415-3828 (evenings are best) or email me at sue_stroud@hotmail.com.

In the spirit of greeness I am using the signs I had last time and will be printing my leaflets on 100% recycled paper.

It's time for change in Central Saanich, it's time to bring everyone to the table.

2011-10-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

Excellent video on Harold Steves and the founding of the ALR.

Why I am Running for Central Saanich Council

2011-10-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

I am running for Central Saanich Council in the local elections this November 19th.

I love and am committed to maintaining the rural health and beauty of Central Saanich. I have worked hard and passionately to protect her over the years, speaking out at public hearings, writing articles and advocating for a small-community, sustainable and self-sufficient future. I am proud of the helping hand I have been able to offer to those who would set up a recycle depot, fight to save farmland, protect our ferry route, hold a dry grad and create a more livable, less stressful space for our community.

I am opposed to turning us into just another cookie-cutter suburb of a larger city. We are LÁU,WELNEW, the place of refuge, as our First Nations neighbours know and we need to maintain that vision. We need to respect the land we are using and give back to its future wherever we can.

Central Saanich needs to refocus on families, farms and fairness.

Our families need safe, affordable, green and appropriate housing so that our community does not become a monoculture of one age group or one income level. We need to help people "live where they work and work where they live" to reduce transportation costs and the pollution that goes with long commutes. We need to find incentives and funding for alternative energy use; we need to encourage urban gardening and tree planting to mitigate the effects of climate change. And we need to keep costs down.

We need to lobby our provincial government for more help for farmers including perhaps a land bank to buy farms and lease them back at low rates to other farmers. We need a true commitment to our Official Community Plan and the Regional Sustainability Strategy so that our community can concentrate on growing food for our families far into the future. We need to respect and understand our agreements with other communities because we are not a law unto ourselves; what we do or fail to do impacts others.

We need fairness and that means accountability which means all votes must be recorded. We need much more public interaction, more notification of public hearings, open houses, town halls, council and committee meetings using all the new tools available to us. We need more input from the public and a clearer more readable budget and accounting system so citizens can easily access the information they need. We need respect for those who come before council, they are the employer and they are the people footing the bill.

We need those who will spend carefully for what is needed, but hold the line on frills. Tax increases as a result of the new "run up the debt" philosophy of some current council members will hamper local families for years to come and future councils will be blamed for the over-spending taking place now. Development increases taxes over time as demands are made for more and more amenities and as maintenance and repairs become necessary. Development does not add to revenue sufficiently to cover the expenses it creates, as some believe.

Any council pay or benefit increases should have to go to the next election as a referendum item before they can be implemented. (Yes, it still irks me that councillors voted on and benefited from their own decision without reference to the voters a few years ago, and I will lobby the provincial government to make such self-service illegal). It's a matter of respect and accountability.

I am an 18 year BC government employee. I have learned a lot about the difficulties people face in our society and I have learned to respect them no matter who they are: we are all one, we all belong. Our respect for each other is what creates the magic we call "community."

Sue Stroud

FIRE HALL PUBLIC HEARING

2011-09-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

Attention CENTRAL SAANICH

All out for PUBLIC HEARING on the new fire hall, Thursday September 22, 2011 6:30 pm at the Fire Training Hall. Come have your say.

2010-07-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

Happy Nelson Mandela Day!

‎"Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom." ~ Nelson Mandela

2010-07-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Food for Thought outlines NDP farm/food proposals.

http://xfer.ndp.ca/FoodForThought/EN.pdf

2010-07-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

Vantreight Public Hearing Delivers a Clear Message

At last night's public hearing into the Vantreight Development Proposal, Central Saanich Council heard loud and clear that citizens expect them to stick to their election pledges and uphold the Official Community Plan. There was no mistaking the desire to support and save our local farms and that many creative hands will help get the job done, but developing our rural land to do it is not an option.

Speaker after speaker repeated the theme that all the Councillors had pledged to uphold the Official Community Plan when directly asked at two all candidates' meetings during the last municipal election. There is no wiggle room here. Our plan was reviewed just recently by the citizens in workshops, town halls and through surveys. It has defined urban containment areas and states unequivocally that our rural land may not be considered as merely a holding tank pending future development.
The erosion of citizens' decisions by councillors who promised to uphold those decisions is not acceptable.

2010-07-10T14:00:00.001-07:00

PUBLIC HEARING

Vantreight Farms “Hill Project”

Wednesday July 14th at 6:30 p.m.

Cedar Room, Saanich Fairgrounds

Some things to think about if you are considering speaking at the Public Hearing, or sending in a written submission to Central Saanich Council in advance.

-The proposed development is not in keeping with the Central Saanich Official Community Plan (OCP). “Staff … consider that rezoning the hilltop to RE-5 would not be consistent with the vision, objectives and policies toward rural lands found in the OCP.” (May 5, 2010, Staff Report)

-Whether this is an appropriate location for a dense urban style development must be considered separately from the issue of the viability of one farm business

-There is no guarantee to the District of Central Saanich that this Development will “save the family farm”

-The Development represents unplanned growth in a rural area, outside the identified urban containment boundary, already well established in Central Saanich

-It goes against the recently adopted Central Saanich OCP, a document that outlines the future vision for the community

-This proposal violates the spirit and intent of the Regional Growth Strategy (RGS)--an agreement entered into and agreed to by the District of Central Saanich and all member municipalities in the CRD

-Calling a development “rural” does not make it so

-The Central Saanich OCP strongly discourages subdivision of any agricultural lands in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). The Agricultural Land Commission does not usually allow for subdivision of lands in the ALR, and therefore, the Vantreight’s will not be allowed to subdivide their remaining parcels and sell them off in 10 acre pieces if the Hill Project does not proceed

-The preservation of rural land is a stated fundamental value in the OCP

-The Planning Staff at Central Saanich do not support this Development

-The CRD Planning and Transportation Committee have expressed serious concerns about the Hill Project, and Council’s decision to define it as “rural”

-Only 5% of the property will be dedicated as parkland; the common greenspace will be owned by the Strata. By comparison, the Island View Estates subdivision resulted in a donation of 60% of the property for use as public parkland

-Vantreight’s estimate of water available from the local aquifer is substantially different from that which the CRD reports: 304 gallons/minute vs 4 gallons/minute

-The proposal is for a dense urban-style development on ecologically sensitive rural land that serves as greenspace, and a crucial buffer for agricultural land

-The proposal calls for 57 single family homes, each of which may contain a secondary suite.....for a total of 114 households

-It WILL cost taxpayers to maintain the municipal road, trails and bicycle lanes

-There WILL be a loss of agricultural land, for the purpose of putting in a road and pedestrian paths

-The community garden has severe limitations due to the Golden Nematode quarantine restrictions

-The amalgamation of chunks of ALR land into two parcels is simply a redistribution of existing land, on paper

-There is no evidence that this proposal will improve agricultural viability in Central Saanich

-The ‘Hill Project’ is about bailing out one business, and ultimately could be precedent setting in Central Saanich

-The ALC Recommended Buffer zones are being ignored. There needs to be an adequate interface between active farming and development.

-The Hill Project will impact residents in the Southeast Quadrant of North Saanich, more so than any resident in Central Saanich, and yet there has been no discussion with those immediately impacted.

-There will be a huge impact on residents, particularly in North Saanich, with respect to traffic volumes. Research has shown that an additional 700 car trips every weekday can be anticipated, as a result of the Hill Project.

A motion at Central Saanich Council to refer this Development to the CRD was defeated....why?

A motion at Central Saanich Council to refer this Development for a legal opinion was defeated....why?

If Central Saanich staff, and CRD staff are saying that this proposal should not move forward, do you not think that perhaps there are some very valid reasons for it?

Central Saanich Council cannot receive any further public input after Wednesday July 14th. It is imperative that, if you would like your opinion to be heard, you provide a written submission in advance, or attend and speak at the Public Hearing.

*********************************************************

Ltr from PNR last Friday

Hill plan has 'no tangible benefits'

Published: July 06, 2010 1:00 PM

Why is Central Saanich council supporting the Vantreight hill project when

there are no tangible benefits to the community?

The proposal to build 57 luxury homes with suites on rural and agricultural

land is contrary to the vision, objectives and policies of our Official

Community Plan. It defies the principles of environmental stewardship,

sustainability and good land use planning and management.

Simply stated, it is high-density urban development in the wrong location.

So, why are the rules being changed to suit Mr. Vantreight? The proposed

subdivision is outside the Urban Settlement Area and completely contrary to

the spirit and intent of the Regional

Context Statement and CRD Regional Growth Strategy unanimously approved by

member municipalities to protect green space and prevent urban sprawl.

The development plan is based on land speculation for profit, not community

need. If approved, it would set a dangerous precedent and open the door for

others to pave over agricultural land with houses. This is not an acceptable

strategy for saving a farm or building food security.

There are also concerns about the impact of the proposal on area residents

and the aquifer, including possible contamination of wells, toxic run-off

and the sufficiency of water for such a large housing project.

If the on-site water and sewage treatment for the subdivision prove

inadequate, taxpayers can expect to pay millions of dollars in

infrastructure and servicing costs to provide sewer and water for this

development. The July 14 public hearing should be cancelled pending further

assessment.

Council has abandoned established guidelines, democracy and common sense.

The recommendations of municipal staff are being ignored, along with a

majority of citizens opposed to the project.

Clearly, a largely pro-development council is putting its aspirations and

Mr. Vantreight's business plan ahead of the best interest of everyone in the

region.

Joan Anaka

Central Saanich

Les Leyne: If John Les walks, so should bureaucrat

By Les Leyne, Times Colonist June 26, 2010 Comments (14)

It's outrageous that a former Chilliwack bureaucrat has to face criminal breach of trust charges for doing exactly what his mayor and council encouraged and subtly guided him to do.

Former Chilliwack mayor John Les was cleared yesterday of wrongdoing arising from a four-year investigation of suspicious rezonings and agricultural land exclusions.

Fair enough. If police have spent four years investigating and a special prosecutor has spent three years poring over evidence, the conclusion can be accepted.

But if Les walks away in the clear, then so should the municipal staff member whose job was to execute the will of the mayor and council. Instead, the special prosecutor elected to file three breach of trust charges against then-subdivision approving officer Grant Sanborn.

There are no allegations of bribery in the information provided. There are no allegations Sanborn's allegedly criminal decisions were made for money or personal gain.

The prosecutor's outline says that Sanborn made the decisions based on the "pro-development, can-do" culture established in Chilliwack over the years that Les was mayor. Les went on to provincial politics and was in cabinet when this case surfaced. He properly resigned and has been waiting to be cleared for two years.

Sanborn was following the prevailing ethos in Chilliwack at the time, doing what he was encouraged to do by a firm-handed mayor who was responsible for establishing the municipality's enthusiastic attitude toward growth and development.

But the ex-mayor gets cleared and the ex-bureaucrat gets booked. It's not right.

The police checked 80 development approvals and found a number of mistakes or errors in judgment that contravened plans, bylaws or rules. A lot of them alienated farmland for non-farm uses, such as subdivisions.

Les's mayoralty was all about growth. The evidence shows Les and most of his council "embraced this pro-development philosophy such that staff were encouraged, both directly and subtly, to adhere to what was described as an attitude of innovation and creativity," particularly in processing development applications.

Staff were encouraged to consider regulations and bylaws "as guidelines only, with a goal of finding creative ways to make development opportunities happen," the prosecutor found.

Sanborn is charged in connection with two specific approvals. One was for a housing project for which Les was the developer and main proponent. The mayor had a numbered company that did a sophisticated, multi-step rezoning.

The prosecutor accuses Sanborn of giving Les preferential treatment in the approval process. But he found a paucity of evidence that Les asked for it. Les declared his conflict of interest at council meetings and recused himself when his project came up.

Sanborn is essentially being charged with breach of trust for giving his boss the benefit of the doubt and not being independent enough as approving officer.

He's also charged over another approval because he didn't check compliance with flood plain restrictions. That might be a botch of his responsibilities. But it sure doesn't sound like breach of trust, given that he was operating on an "open for business" premise that was explicitly set by the mayor and council.

The exact specification in the breach of trust charges is that he "used his public office for a purpose other than the public good."

That purpose may have been against the public good. But the mayor and council set the purpose.

They went out of their way to encourage growth and development. They encouraged "creativity" by staff when it came to applying rules. They encouraged everyone to view regulations and bylaws just as "guidelines." They presided over a multitude of mistakes and errors in judgment.

But when authorities take a close look at two decisions made during that era, one of them about a development the mayor himself was fronting, they exonerate the mayor and throw the book at the bureaucrat.

Sanborn has other legal problems to do with his subsequent career as a development consultant. And an earlier report by the Agricultural Land Commission also rapped him for the way development approvals were handled under his watch.

But the special prosecutor's report goes a long way to explaining those calls. Every bureaucrat should read the special prosecutor's report on Les. It's an example of how blame follows the law of gravity.

It flows down in a hierarchy, not up.

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Leyne+John+walks+should+bureaucrat/3205744/story.html#ixzz0tJ8r1FXL

2010-06-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

Peninsula Co-op's Election Invalidated due to "Bad Faith"

This story is a classic tale of what happens when a small group gathers too much power to itself and becomes unaccountable to those it is supposed to serve.

What happened last June at Peninsula Co-op's woefully undemocratic election is also a cautionary tale for all citizens who fail in their duty to be watchful of those they elect.

Arbitrator Jakob de Villiers QC, has ruled last June's Peninsula Co-op election invalid stating that the election at the AGM was conducted "contrary to the Respondent’s Memorandum of Association, in bad faith and in a manner that was oppressive to those members that were in opposition to the incumbent board’s and senior management’s land use plans". He didn't hesitate to use the word "scurrilous" to describe some of the tactics used to blacken the reputations of candidates running against the Board's approved slate.

No one observing this election process could have reasonably doubted its irregularities. From the beginning those who were pledging to protect Central Saanich farmland from development were vilified publicly and repeatedly by the Board and Management of Peninsula Co-op and in particular its General Manager Pat Fafard. Candidates were forced to present themselves before a committee which grilled them on their positions and whose members lectured and scolded them in a classic case of bullying. This committee then released its list of preferred candidates to the membership.

Candidates requesting a copy of the membership list, the financial statements and the most recent Board minutes were refused them despite the fact that all these documents are available under the Act to any member that requests them. Allowing all candidates to have access to the membership lists is no different than allowing all candidates access to the voters' list in any other election. Without equal access the challengers had little chance of being elected.

Other irregularities included unlocked ballot boxes which were frequently emptied into cardboard boxes beneath a table; the lack of voting booths to ensure the secrecy of one's vote and the lack of scrutineers to ensure the fairness of the voting procedure and to witness the count. Allowing members to vote before the meeting was underway was inappropriate as it provided no opportunity for the candidates to be heard (even more important given that the three challengers had had no access to the membership lists) before these votes were cast.

The arbitrator has now set out rules for a new election which must be held within 60 days of the May 26th ruling.

Under these new rules "candidates or their agents may attend and observe the counting of the votes; no completed ballots may be visible to anyone before counting commences; no voting can be allowed before the meeting commences; no candidate shall be required to appear before or be approved by any nominating committee in order to be eligible to be nominated for election and most importantly, no employee of the Co-op is permitted to participate in the election campaign, whether in support of or in opposition to any candidate." So when the employees approach you to vote for their candidates or allow them to have your proxy vote be aware that they are banned from any such action whether at the gas pumps, in the stores or in any other way.

This year's Peninsula Co-op AGM and election was already underway when this ruling was made, but anyone with integrity would immediately re-set that election date and abide by the rules the arbitrator has set out for the replacement election. That has not been the case to date and in addition the Co-op is proposing a number of changes to the bylaws, some of which are blatantly undemocratic and tend to pool even more power in a few hands.

Do not vote in favour of these bylaws.

If you want to know more feel free to contact me at sue_stroud@hotmail.com.

Please also join the facebook group Friends of the Peninsula Co-op which is posting all information pertaining to these elections.

You can read the entire arbitration award at http://www.rrocss.org/ the website for the Residents and Ratepayers of Central Saanich.

2010-04-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

Paradise Threatened

A movie about the Vantreight development proposal

www.vimeo.com/10495518

If you live in Central Saanich take 20 minutes and watch this video.

2010-02-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

Drop in on the Community Action at L.E.A.D.'s first
Healthy Living Healthy Planet EXPO!
50 Exhibitors, Local Food, & special guest Guy Dauncey from 1 - 1:15.

FREE Admission. Fun stuff for kids! SAT., March 20th, 12 - 3 pm @
Brentwood Hall, 7082 Wallace Drive. (near Tru Value).

For more info: Helen @ 544-2064

Setting the Record Straight

2010-01-31T20:14:00.000-08:00

Recently, Central Saanich Councillor Ron Kubek has been on the airwaves trying to convince citizens that the Capital Regional District is interfering in the internal affairs of Central Saanich. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ron Kubek himself moved the motion (892.09, December 14, 2009), that brought the Vantreight farms issue to the CRD, and the elected councillors of Central Saanich voted on and passed that motion unanimously.

Central Saanich's elected representatives and citizens were part of the seven-year process that created the Regional Growth Strategy (RGS), including the process through which that Regional Growth Strategy would be changed and monitored. To say now that bringing something before the CRD is undemocratic is just false. We signed on to it on behalf of our citizens and we now must abide by the rules we agreed on. Muddying the waters and trying to bully the CRD doesn't help the debate.

Time to Step Aside

2010-01-31T19:16:00.000-08:00

Central Saanich Councillor Ron Kubek needs to recuse himself on the Vantreight development issue.

He publicly declares his bias in favour of the Vantreight development every chance he gets, as at the Capital Regional District meeting last week when he stated that four councillors publicly supported this project and were elected on that basis.

Speaking on CFAX and at the council table he has clearly declared a bias in favour of a project that hasn't even come to public hearing.

In fact, while it may be acceptable to take donations from anyone, councillors are expected to recuse themselves when a proposal comes forward from someone they can be perceived to be beholden to, or with whom they have a business relationship. A realtor promoting a development proposal will have a hard time banishing the suspicion that he is doing this for his own personal business interest as at some point he is likely going to be selling or re-selling those very houses.

And while it is also acceptable to state your position during an election campaign, once elected you are expected to listen to all the information provided, to treat all persons respectfully be they citizens or councillors and whether they oppose your position or support it. Bullying at the council table and at the CRD is not acceptable.

Ron Kubek has clearly demonstrated that his mind is made up on the vantreight development issue and it is time for him to step aside.

Vantreight Development Update

2009-12-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

Please have a look a the newly updated information on the Vantreight Development proposal at the link below and take action.

http://saveourruralland.blogspot.com/

It is very important that we make ourselves heard on this issue.

2009-08-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

When is a Hearing not a Hearing?

Central Saanich Council is supposed to hold a public hearing into the Vantreight development before making a decision on whether the project should go ahead.

They are supposed to attend the public hearing with open minds and listen to what citizens have to say. The public hearing is supposed to take place before the project begins (after all if the hearing is fair there should be a chance the project will not go ahead).

Although there will be a public hearing there is no chance at all that it will be a fair one unless there is a public outcry about the tainted process. Councillors who should have recused themselves because they are in conflict, and who have already made up their minds about the Vantreight development have given a virtual go-ahead to the project. Stakes are in the ground, the pro-development councillors have already made their positions clear (how can you have an open mind when you've already agreed to a Special Interest Zoning to slip the project through?).

This public hearing will be in name only and more of the same tainted processes will follow for waterlines, a new Co-op store and pretty much anything any developer wants UNLESS we all shout out together.

If you live here because it is rural and green think about what it will be like as one after the other these projects begin to creep in and eat up our farm and pasturelands. Think and then act.

It only takes a minute to write to Council (go on the website and use the email form). You can phone the Councillors, you can buttonhole them on the street and you can come to council and watch them.

We could very quickly become Gordon Head and lose everything we value.

SIZ-zle

2009-08-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

Special Interest Zoning

The pro-development majority on Central Saanich Council are making sure their donors get exactly what they paid for.

If you can't find it in the rules all you need to do is bend them like you bend the wires on a fence to make a hole to slip through.

Central Saanich has chosen to ignore the will of the citizens and allow development outside of the Urban Containment Boundary. To do this all they had to do was spot zone the area to be developed so that it doesn't have to face a vote at the Capital Region District. A single 'no' vote there would have prevented this travesty, but our creative councillors have found a way to circumvent the visionary planning of the entire region.

One wonders what they won't do?

2009-08-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

Conflicted!

Mayor Mar of Central Saanich doesn't seem to understand that being in a conflict of interest doesn't just apply in the Council Chambers. Once you have recused yourself on an issue you are supposed to be entirely silent on it outside the Chambers as well.

Although he has business dealings with Vantreight Farms and recognizes that this puts him in conflict on the Vantreight development proposal, Mayor Mar can still be heard trying to influence the media and public by talking about the issue everywhere else.

Sometimes it's a newspaper quote, sometimes it's a radio interview and sometimes it's just talking on the street: after all these years on Council you'd think he'd know enough to just keep silent.

After all these years I know he knows.

2009-08-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

Who should vote and who should leave the room?
Councillors must step aside.

At last Monday's Council Meeting (August 17, 2009), the inevitable result of the shenanigans of the last municipal election began to show themselves, and the result was less than satisfactory.

One of the standard rules to prevent any actual or preceived conflict of interest is that councillors who have a business interest or who have accepted money from someone (as in campaign money, or money for services rendered for example), should 'recuse' themselves (excuse themselves from voting), on any proposals or motions relating to anyone to whom they might be seen to be beholden.

So each time a Vantreight proposal comes up we see Mayor Mar leave the room after explaining that he has a business relationship with Vantreight Farms.

Each time the Senanus pipeline (and now the new Kubek line) comes up, we see Councillor Bryson recuse himself because he believes he is in conflict by virtue of being a leaseholder and farmer in those zones. He perceives a conflict (although no one else does, but more about this aspect later), so he steps aside.

At last Monday night's Council meeting we saw Councillors continue to sit at the table even though they had accepted election donations from the proponents of a couple of major local issues and from their companies and even though they have worked for and received remuneration from some of those proponents.

When David Wilson, a member of the public, came forward to object to this, he was threatened and bullied by Councillor Siklenka, who had the chair in the Mayor's absence. As Mr. Wilson tried to hand in his letter on the issue Siklenka said "If you take one more step Mr. Wilson, I will have you thrown out."

He repeated this several times and the whole silly scene is on tape with the Residents and Ratepayers of Central Saanich who are taping every meeting as the minutes no longer fully reflect the decision making process.

Mr. Wilson was not yelling or doing anything disruptive, he simply stated his belief that two Councillors were in conflict and should leave the meeting. The Chair's behaviour was shameful.

The only exception to this conflict rule is when a benefit resulting from a proposal is something that the greater part of the community would also share.

This is the case with Alastair Bryson who has no particular personal benefit from voting for or against these pipeline proposals. The only benefit is one that would accrue to anyone in the general neighbourhood. It is sad that he has decided to recuse himself on such a vital issue for we need his wisdom and voice to help protect our farmland and our rural ambience. I sincerely believe he is mistaken in doing this and has left the District vulnerable.

Sad times in Central Saanich. Our Official Community Plan, Urban Containment Boundary and the Regional Growth Strategy are under attack by those who think growth can continue forever and who have no respect for the decisions and concerns of the community.

2009-08-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

Co-op's Ambush of Candidates

The Co-op ambush of candidates during the civic election last November violates an important principle.

Candidates in a civic campaign are not talking about the policies of a party. They are there to stand as representative of their community and the only promise that matters is the pledge they should make to listen to all points of view and to decide issues in an unbiased fashion.

The Peninsula Co-op's action tried to force candidates into saying whether they did or did not support a development proposal that hadn't yet been made. This means we had to comment without benefit of the wisdom of our neighbours who sit on the Advisory Planning Committee; without the recommendations and comments of experienced and knowledgable district staff and without ever having had the chance to listen to concerns during a public hearing process.

And, as anyone knows, what ever we said would have been held/used against us after the election.

If you truly want good governance, you have to uphold fairness during election campaigns too.

2009-08-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=1888243&sponsor=

It's time for the province to clean up our dirty little civic elections secret

By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun August 13, 2009

At the rotten core of democratic elections are shady dealers who quietly or secretly finance candidates' campaigns in hopes of future favours.

It's no credit to the B.C. government that scofflaws from last November's provincewide civic elections are being investigated and may yet be charged.

Even though the Liberals revised the Local Government Act in May 2008, among its gaping holes are no spending limits and no electoral oversight by an independent body.

With unlimited cash possible, enforcement is all the more necessary. But that's left up to citizens to police, along with everything else from how ballots are counted to ensuring that campaign organizers register so that voters know who's behind a candidate's campaign.

Few citizens have the time, money or stomach for holding local politicians to account. Yet, there are those odd few willing to brave publicity, intimidation and/or ostracism to complain to police.
David Wilson of Central Saanich is one of them.

He was told by RCMP earlier this week that after 400 hours of investigating his complaint, it's recommending 19 charges be laid regarding financial reporting irregularities.

The RCMP had to investigate because the local police chief is a director of Peninsula Co-op, one of the groups that failed to register as an elector organization in a timely manner.

The recommendation has gone to local Crown counsel and it will likely be at least a month before a decision is made on whether to lay charges. Wilson doesn't know who may be charged, but expects it could include campaign contributors, financial agents or even councillors.

Three months ago, West Vancouver police forwarded their charge recommendations to Crown counsel. They investigated complaints by candidate (and now councillor) Michael Lewis and his campaign manager David Marley about the longstanding, quasi-party West Vancouver Citizens for Good Government's late registration and the Low Tax, Low Growth Association's failure to register or account for thousands of dollars spent trying to elect a slate of candidates.

In Langley, RCMP investigated and found that Parents for Independent Trustees breached the Local Government Act by failing to register as a campaign organizer after the group had spent more than $500 on candidates' campaigns.

The penalty under the act is up to $5,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
Insp. Lesley Bain, who's in charge of the commercial crime section, did not recommend any charges since the group did eventually file the requisite financial information.

Nor did Bain recommend charges against two B.C. cabinet ministers -- Rich Coleman, minister of housing and social development, and Mary Polak, minister for children and family development -- who endorsed candidates.

After consulting federal justice department lawyers and other counsel, RCMP concluded that an endorsement does not have a "fair market value" as stipulated by the act, so the ministers didn't need to register or report their contributions.

Yet, in a five-page letter sent to complainant Sonya Paterson in late June, Bain makes it clear that the act is a shambles. Officers with legal training, senior department of justice officials and B.C. ministry officials all were consulted "to ensure the accuracy of our interpretation of the provisions of the Act as well as the procedures and practices of the ministry with respect to complaints arising from the act."

Even RCMP were assured that both the Crown counsel and the ministry of community and rural development are aware of the act's problems. Bain has a senior member of the commercial crime section writing a report for the divisional headquarters outlining issues that arose during the investigation and proposing better ways to deal with similar complaints in the future.
It is no comfort at all that other provinces do little better when it comes to good legislation and transparency concerning municipal campaign financing.

Manitoba introduced legislation in June that requires full financial disclosure, sets spending limits, bans donations from corporations, unions and people from outside the province, and puts in place employee conflict-of-interest guidelines.

In Quebec, former judge John Gomery stepped into Montreal's municipal election fray this week as chair of a Montreal political party. As inquiry commissioner into the federal Liberals' sponsorship scandal, Gomery says he learned that election financing is at the root of government dishonesty.

Elections and campaign spending are too important not to be regulated and monitored closely. Here in B.C., that requires substantive legislative changes.

Most importantly, responsibility for elections must be taken away from individual municipalities and transferred to Elections B.C., which is an independent agency.

Police and Crown counsel would still be left to investigate and lay charges, but at least this would take the onus off citizens to be the watchdogs.

Within a few months of the last municipal election, Premier Gordon Campbell said he'd consider it. But nothing happened.

Now, three community development ministers later and with evidence of electoral misadventures mounting, it's time to act.

dbramham@vancouversun.com
Comment on this story at vancouversun.com/unews
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
http://www.vancouversun.com/story_print.html?id=1888243&sponsor=

2009-07-24T15:11:00.000-07:00

Something Special All Should Read

Published on Saturday, May 23, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Paul Hawken's Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009
by Paul Hawken

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." No pressure there.

Let's begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food-but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn't afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint.

And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required.

Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.

The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown - Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood - and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity.

Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers,and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But forthe first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation.

And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms.

The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life.

This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years.

Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss.

The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author. His books include Blessed Unrest.

Help Build a New Long House!

2009-07-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

Friday night our friends and neighbours at Tsawout lost their longhouse to fire. Let's show our community spirit and help them rebuild.

Please donate to:

Tsawout First Nation
7725 Tetayut Rd
Saanichton BC V8M 2C3

Ph: 250-652-9101

It's time to help our neighbours folks!
Thanks
Sue

2009-06-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

Peninsula CO-OP AGM

Wednesday June 24

Saanich Fairgrounds 1528 Stelly's X Road

5:30 pm registration and social

6:30 meeting begins

Recently many members of the Peninsula Co-Op have been increasingly dissatisfied with a number of decisions made by its leadership. Reasons for the dissatisfaction include:

· The decision by the Co-Op to become involved in last November’s municipal elections WITHOUT the knowledge or approval of the general membership,

· The decision to proceed with plans to undertake a major commercial development on rural land on West Saanich Road that is inconsistent with the Official Community Plan and the Community’s urban containment boundaries,

· A lack of information and dialogue from Co-Op management in keeping with the values and principles of member-owners, and

· The lack of a vision for a green economy supporting alternative energy sources and sustainable local food production.

You can help change this. Each year three Directors are elected to the nine-member board. This year there are three candidates who are committed to: engaging the entire membership, promoting ethical business practices, protecting the rural environments in the communities the Co-Op serves, supporting local agriculture, ensuring sustainable food security, and promoting transparent dialogue with the membership.

Those candidates are:
Alicia Cormier Dave Lawson David Wilson
A communique outlining their positions is attached. Also attached is a copy of the Bio for each of member candidates outlinning their individual qualifications.
Please attend the AGM on the 24th of June 2009 at the Saanich Fairgrounds and vote for these candidates who support positive changes at your Peninsula Co-Op.

Help bring democracy back to the entire membership.

2009-06-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

Welfare report Suppressed during election campaign
Justine Hunter
Victoria — From Monday's Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jun. 23, 2009 10:22PM EDT
The provincial bureaucracy suppressed a routine report during the spring election campaign that shows the province is facing a significant increase in welfare costs this year.
The data tracking the number of people on income assistance put added strain on Premier Gordon Campbell's assertion that his February budget is on track for a $495-million deficit.
An internal government e-mail exchange shows that a Web services analyst was preparing the monthly update of welfare statistics on April 21 when the public affairs bureau stepped in.
“Hi John – Can we please hold off on posting these updates until after the election? Thanks for your help,” wrote government communications officer Amanda Thambirajah.
Read the e-mails, accessed under a freedom of information request
Download this file (.pdf)
Ms. Thambirajah was invoking “interregnum” as the basis for keeping the information out of the public realm during the election – the notion that the civil service should act as a caretaker between one reign and the next.
“It was determined the best approach was to remain neutral and non-partisan about all information except for information about public safety,” Ben Stewart, the minister responsible for the B.C. government's public affairs bureau, said in an interview Monday.
He said the government's entire force of 32,000 civil servants was aware of the protocol, but could not produce a copy of the edict because it does not appear to have been written down anywhere. It was left to the communications directors in each government ministry to prevent the publication of any statistics, reports or other information during the 28-day campaign.
The analyst, John Paul Johnson, sparked a cascade of e-mails when he notified the public affairs bureau that the monthly welfare statistics would be ready to post on the government website on April 30.
His initial e-mail was written the day before Mr. Campbell issued a mid-election campaign assurance that the budget was on track. “Our budget that we brought in in February is a solid budget,” Mr. Campbell said at the time. “We will perform to that budget.”
The statistics show that welfare claims in March had swelled by 26 per cent compared to March, 2008. New Democratic Party Leader Carole James said that information would have been helpful to voters in an election campaign that was focused on the state of the economy. She called the decision to keep the numbers secret until several days after the May 12 vote “disturbing.”
According to budget documents, every 1 per cent increase in welfare cases costs the treasury an additional $3.5-million.
The government so far has allocated an additional $61-million to cover increased welfare costs, a government official has confirmed.
The e-mail trail was obtained through a freedom of information request by former New Democratic Party MLA David Schreck, who turned them over to the opposition. Ms. James noted Monday that the government also prevented health authorities from delivering their proposed health-care cuts until after the election.
“What else did they keep from British Columbians during an election campaign?” she asked. “It's pretty clear that we're in a difficult situation in British Columbia, and the public deserves to know that information.”
Some things were not covered by the unwritten protocol. For example, BC Stats, the government's main statistics agency, released seven economic reports during the campaign. As well, the Liberals announced in the first week of the campaign that the new Port Mann Bridge would open to traffic a year earlier than promised, and the next week, Mr. Campbell opened a new $4.6-million B.C. Visitor Centre.
The finance ministry is preparing an updated budget for Sept. 1, but has not provided any economic update since the election despite warnings from economists that the recession has dealt the government's fiscal health a substantive blow.

2009-06-23T20:47:00.000-07:00

Scandalously indefensible, this colossally corrupt government breaks yet another law with impunity.

Four years of B.C. cabinet e-mails erased
Electronic records requested by defence aren't recoverable, lawyer representing Premier in BC Rail case tells court
Mark Hume
GLOBE and MAIL
Vancouver — Tuesday, Jun. 23, 2009 05:01AM EDT
The provincial government may have destroyed all cabinet e-mails between 2001 and 2005, opening a huge gap in the official record despite a law that electronic files must be kept for at least seven years, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has learned.
Michael Bolton, who is defending one of three former government employees in a political corruption case stemming from the sale of BC Rail, said outside court Monday he was stunned to hear the e-mails aren't available.
“This is troubling…this potentially is a very serious matter. We never expected this,” said Mr. Bolton, who is defending Dave Basi, who was a ministerial aid in 2003 when the government sold BC Rail to CN Rail for $1-billion. The controversial deal, which was the first big privatization undertaken by the B.C. Liberals, closed in 2004.
In an application filed two weeks ago defence lawyers sought the disclosure of the e-mail records of several members of cabinet, key executives, and of Premier Gordon Campbell, from June, 2001 to 2005.
But George Copley, a lawyer representing the Executive Council, which includes both the Premier's office and cabinet, told court the electronic records aren't recoverable.
Mr. Copley said officials who oversaw a search reported the material couldn't be found, implying it had all been purged from the data system.
“There are backup tapes. They are kept for a certain period of time…[but] in the normal course of operation they don't keep more than 13 months backup,” he told Justice Elizabeth Bennett.
Kevin McCullough, who is defending co-accused Bob Virk, a former aid to the transportation minister, told court he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
“It's vanishing point,” he said. “Everything is gone. The records are irrecoverable.”
Mr. McCullough said government officials should be called to explain why the material isn't available.
But Justice Bennett said she was reluctant to do that, because the defence has yet to establish that the material is relevant.
“I'm not keen on having these individuals [responsible for managing government records] cross-examined…If the documents are not recoverable it doesn't mean anything unless you [first] establish likely relevance,” she said.
Justice Bennett told the defence to argue the relevance issue Tuesday, while submitting a set of written questions to Mr. Copley to get more details on what exactly was done to search the government records.
Leonard Krog, NDP justice critic, said it is “extremely troubling” that important government files may have been destroyed.
“The Document Disposal Act requires that [electronic records] be kept for seven years,” he said. “It raises incredible suspicions and someone farther up the political chain that Mr. Copley is going to have to appear in court and explain what happened.”
The government of B.C. has a detailed protocol covering both the preservation and destruction of its records.
Formal records can be destroyed, but only after the action has been approved by a public documents committee, the legislative assembly or the attorney general.
The Corporate Information Management Branch, which provides guidelines for government employees, states that e-mails must be copied to a central document management directory before individuals delete them from their personal files.
The guidelines say only “transitory” e-mails, which are clearly trivial in nature, can be deleted by individuals.
“Examples of this type of e-mail would be ‘Is this morning's meeting still on?' ”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/four-years-of-bc-cabinet-e-mails-erased/article1192835/

Belt-tightening for CEOs FIRST!

2009-05-16T16:05:00.000-07:00

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/01/01/7896541-cp.html

Top CEOs earn average Canadian annual salary in hours
By Colin Perkel, THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - As many Canadians nurse their post-New Year's Eve hangovers and ponder what further economic storms await, Canada's top corporate executives can take some comfort in knowing they have already earned as much as the average worker will earn in all of 2009.

A new analysis by the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives concludes the country's richest corporate executives will have pocketed an average of $40,237 by 9:04 a.m. Friday morning.

"By the time your computer has finished booting up on your first day back after the New Year's holiday, the average CEO would have already banked what took the average Canadian worker an entire year's worth of work to earn," the report states.

"Many of the top 100 include Canada's big bank CEOs, who recently received billions in federal government bailout money to purchase mortgage loans." Prepared by economist Hugh Mackenzie, the report finds the top 100 CEOs of publicly traded corporations averaged more than $10 million in pay apiece in 2007, the last full year for which figures are available. That kind of money would buy 44 high-end Porsches or five $2-million condos.

The collective billion-dollar bonanza - a 22 per cent increase over the year before - set a record and followed a decade of unprecedented pay increases, the analysis finds. Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, said the gap between low-end and highest-end earners began growing in earnest in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s, something Martin attributed essentially to greed.

The question for CEOs changed from how much they felt they needed to earn to how much could they could "possibly extract" from their companies, an attitude detrimental to the company and their employees.

"Rank-and-file employees will increasingly feel like, 'Wow, I'm working hard to make that guy really, really rich. Do I like that?"' Martin said.

The report is based on disclosures made by companies trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The compensation includes salaries, bonuses, proceeds from stock options and other payouts.

The top earner, according to the report, was Michael Lazaridis, head of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion based in Waterloo, Ont., who pocketed more than $51 million.

Martin said current ways of thinking about CEO compensation are "just dead wrong." "A lot of the CEOs have a compensation formula that still compensates them wonderfully while they're not creating value or even destroying value - laying off people and the like," Martin said.

Incentives they are offered tend to encourage unhealthy and even disastrous risk-taking as senior executives seek to maximize their own earnings, often at the expense of shareholder interests, Martin said.

Despite the market meltdown and hammering of the economy that is costing thousands of workers their jobs, Mackenzie said CEO earnings for 2008 could be as high as they ever were.

"In a rational world, you would expect a big drop in executive compensation in 2008 and again this year," Mackenzie said in an interview.

But in a rational world, he said, one wouldn't expect to see the average pay of the top 50 executives rising from 104 times the average income in 1995 to almost 400 times.

Martin said CEOs should suffer along with employees and shareholders when times are tough.

Repercussions from the economic crisis may yet force them to do so. The report notes a backlash in the United States against huge salaries and severance packages paid to executives even as their company share prices and performance plummet.

"It's only a matter of time before this new reality takes root in Canada," the report says. -

Some facts about the top 100 Canadian CEO earnings

TORONTO - An analysis out Friday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives finds top earnings for Canada's top 100 CEOs have soared in recent years.

Some facts (figures based on 2007 unless otherwise noted):

Average annual CEO earnings: $10,408,054
Increase over previous year: 22 per cent

Average annual pay for Canadians: $40,237

Number of CEOs to earn total income of Nunavut: 25

Point at which CEO earns annual salary of average Canadian: Jan. 2, 9:04 a.m.

Quote: "A lot of the CEOs have a compensation formula that still compensates them wonderfully while they're not creating value or even destroying value - laying off people and the like."

- Roger Martin, dean of Rotman School of Management. Source: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Sign the salmon petiton!

2009-05-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Alexandra Morton.

If you care about salmon, bears, orca, dolphins, wolves, old growth forest, or fishermen and haven't signed this letter yet, please do it now. Wherever you are in the world, we need your signature to pressure our government into action.

Petition at:http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cEkxX3p3MGFBbWNVVGNVU3lxQnBwQmc6MA ..

Background at: http://www.adopt-a-fry.org/

Forwarded message:

Dear Folks
Our letter has become too big to send to all of you, I will try to post it later today on www.adopt-a-fry.org. This email below and the letter went to the Minister and the Premier a few minutes ago.Please see the Globe and Mail article below. I believe we will need 2-3 times the signatures we have now to move government to do the right thing.My deepest thanks to all of you alexandraDear Minister of Fisheries the honourable Gail Shea and Premier Campbell:As noted in the Globe and Mail this morning, I have been sending you this letter for a month with no reply. What began with 100 signatures from local fishermen has grown to 7,309 signatures from around the world, but predominately British Columbia (5,785).Premier Campbell, your government has allowed this industry to expand in the face of the most alarming wild salmon declines we have ever seen on this coast.Minister Shea, this is not a situation of your making, but you have the opportunity to bring reason to this mess.I will continue to take signatures to help you move past status quo and bring salmon “farming” into compliance with the laws of Canada. BC Supreme Court ruled they are no longer “farms,” they are a fishery. There is debate now as to whether Marine Harvest and the other salmon “farming” companies actually own their fish when they put them into Canadian waters,All we are asking is for the Fisheries Act to be applied to this industry. As wild salmon decline all the other related fisheries have been increasingly restricted.....except the marine feedlot fishery. This is a threat to our coastal communities and the economy of British Columbia.Standing by,Alexandra MortonTo sign the petition to apply the Fisheries Act to fish farms the way it is applied to fishermen please click on the link below. http ://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cEkxX3p3MGFBbWNVVGNVU3lxQnBwQmc6MA. .

The Globe and Mail
Fisheries ignored 500 names. Can it ignore 5,000?

by Mark Hume March 23, 2009

VANCOUVER -- The form letter that Premier Gordon Campbell and federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea keep ignoring is just getting longer. In circulation for only a few weeks, it already has nearly 5,000 signatories, and more names are being added daily as it circulates on the Web.

When it first went to the politicians, 500 names were affixed. It was ignored, so it went back into circulation and soon was resubmitted with 2,000 names, then with 4,000. It's making the rounds again this week, and is still growing.

Started by research scientist and fisheries activist Alexandra Morton, the letter asks the government to take decisive action to protect wild salmon from the threats posed by salmon farms. One of the key requests is that salmon farms be moved away from wild salmon migration routes because of the transmission of sea lice from caged fish.

The people who signed the letter worry that salmon farms are an unacceptable risk to wild stocks. And that fear is about to be heightened by a study being released today that shows juvenile sockeye from the Fraser River are encountering fish farms at an alarming rate.

Michael Price, a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and Craig Orr, executive director of Watershed Watch, studied 800 wild sockeye collected in 2007-08 in northern Georgia Strait. About 70 per cent of those fish had one to 20 sea lice attached to them. And the fish caught near farms were the most likely to be infected.

"The lice levels appear to be higher near farms," said Mr. Price, who is still analyzing the data.Past studies by Ms. Morton have documented the spread of lice from farms to wild pink and chum salmon in the Broughton Archipelago, an area off Vancouver Island's northeast shoulder. But the study by Mr. Price and Dr. Orr looks at sockeye, and for the first time uses DNA analysis to trace the infected fish to their watershed of origin.The researchers conclude most of the sockeye they caught migrating near salmon farms (60 per cent in 2007 and 99 per cent in 2008) came from the Fraser River.

Sockeye are the most valuable of all salmon species because they draw a higher price on the market and because they are the fish of choice for native food and ceremonial fisheries. Mr. Price and Dr. Orr have now linked the most valuable fish, from B.C.'s most important salmon river, to farms and lice. Mr. Price said juvenile sockeye can follow three routes as they migrate through Georgia Strait on the outward leg of their journey to the Gulf of Alaska.

"But all these routes converge before the Broughton Archipelago [at the north end of Georgia Strait] where there are a dozen farms," he said. "It's clear that no fish can make this journey without encountering a farm."

Mr. Price said studies have shown that one to three lice can kill a juvenile pink salmon, so it's fair to assume sockeye are dying as well. Could this help explain the collapse of Fraser River sockeye stocks? Some people will no doubt find this an alarming possibility.

The form letter, triggered by concerns about pink and chum, describes wild salmon as "the backbone of the B.C. Coast," and urges both Ms. Shea and Mr. Campbell to protect migrating wild stocks from fish farms. So far, the politicians have been able to ignore the ever-growing letter. But the new study can only ratchet up the pressure. Now that people know it's not just pink salmon, but Fraser River sockeye stocks that are at risk, one has to wonder how many more names will get added to that letter.

2009-05-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

LET THEM EAT CAKE! The Real BC Scandal.

The most important issue facing this province is being almost totally neglected in this campaign.

In eight years the Campbell Liberals have built no subsidized housing for families even though the dire need grows daily. Thousands of people, most of them children, are waiting for safe, healthy housing that is subsidized so that parents aren't spending 80% of their income on shelter. Thousands are living in mouldy, rat-infested units that compromise health and safety. Thousands are living in crowded conditions, in run down homes with electrical and plumbing problems. Thousands go hungry to keep an inadequate roof over their heads.

How do children grow and what do they learn when society leaves them in these shameful conditions? The private market can’t help these children. This is the job of government and if we weren't wasting the money on mega-projects we would easily be able to care for the vulnerable folks among us.

I don't know about you, but I expect my taxes to be used to keep my fellow citizens healthy and safe.

The real scandal isn't speeding tickets and drunk driving. The real scandal is the "let them eat cake” attitude of the ignorant, arrogant Campbell Liberals.

NDP Platform

2009-04-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

If you want to find the NDP platform for this provincial election just go to bcndp.ca

The NDP Candidate for Saanich North and the Islands is

Gary Holman

Campaign office #5-7816 East Saanich Road, Saanichton

Phone 250-652-6611

We'ew taking back BC because everyone matters!

The Regina Manifesto

2009-04-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

The Regina Manifesto
Adopted at First National Convention Held at Regina,
Saskatchewan, July, 1933.

The CCF is a federation of organizations whose purpose is the establishment in Canada of a Co-operative Commonwealth in which the principle regulating production, distribution and exchange will be the supplying of human needs and not the making of profits.
We aim to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition, and in which genuine democratic self-government, based upon economic equality will be possible. The present order is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main stimulus to economic effort, our society oscillates between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic depression, in which the common man's normal state of insecurity and hardship is accentuated. We believe that these evils can be
removed only in a planned and socialized economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people.
The new social order at which we aim is not one in which individuality will be crushed out by a system of regimentation. Nor shall we interfere with cultural rights of racial or religious minorities. What we seek is a proper collective organization of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen.
This social and economic transformation can be brought about by political action, through the election of a government inspired by the ideal of a Co-operative Commonwealth and supported by a majority of the people. We do not believe in change by violence. We consider that both the old parties in Canada are the instruments of capitalist interests and cannot serve as agents of social reconstruction, and that whatever the superficial differences between them, they are bound to carry on government in accordance with the dictates of the big business interests who finance them. The CCF aims at political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination of our political life. It is a democratic movement, a federation of farmer, labour and socialist organizations, financed by its own members and seeking to achieve its ends solely by constitutional methods. It appeals for support to all who believe that the time has come for a far-reaching reconstruction of our economic and political institutions and who are willing to work together for the carrying out of the following policies:
1. Planning
The establishment of a planned, socialized economic order, in order to make possible the most efficient development of the national resources and the most equitable distribution of the national income.
The first step in this direction will be setting up of a National Planning Commission consisting of a small body of economists, engineers and statisticians assisted by an appropriate technical staff.
The task of the Commission will be to plan for the production, distribution and exchange of all goods and services necessary to the efficient functioning of the economy; to co-ordinate the activities of the socialized industries; to provide for a satisfactory balance between the producing and consuming power; and to carry on continuous research into all branches of the national economy in order to acquire the detailed information necessary to efficient planning.
The Commission will be responsible to the Cabinet and will work in co-operation with the Managing Boards of the Socialized Industries.
It is now certain that in every industrial country some form of planning will replace the disintegrating capitalist system. The C.C.F. will provide that in Canada the planning shall be done, not by a small group of capitalist magnates in their own interests, but by public servants acting in the public interest and responsible to the people as a whole.

2. Socialization Of Finance
Socialization of all financial machinery--banking currency, credit, and insurance, to make possible the effective control of currency, credit and prices, and the supplying of new productive equipment for socially desirable purposes.
Planning by itself will be of little use if the public authority has not the power to carry its plans into effect. Such power will require the control of finance and of all those vital industries and services, which, if they remain in private hands, can be used to thwart or corrupt the will of the public authority. Control of finance is the first step in the control of the whole economy. The chartered banks must be socialized and removed from the control of private profit-seeking interests; and the national banking system thus established must have at its head a Central Bank to control the flow of credit and the general price level, and to regulate foreign exchange operations. A National Investment Board must also be set up, working in co-operation with the socialized banking system to mobilize and direct the unused surpluses of production for socially desired purposes as determined by the Planning Commission.
Insurance Companies, which provide one of the main channels for the investment of individual savings and which, under their present competitive organization, charge needlessly high premiums for the social services that they render, must also be socialized.

3. Social Ownership
Socialization (Dominion, Provincial or Municipal) of transportation, communications, electric power and all other industries and services essential to social planning, and their operation under the general direction of the Planning Commission by competent managements freed from day to day political interference.
Public utilities must be operated for the public benefit and, not for the private profit of a small group of owners or financial manipulators. Our natural resources must be developed by the same methods. Such a programme means the continuance and extension of the public ownership enterprises in which most governments in Canada have already gone some distance. Only by such public ownership, operated on a planned economy, can our main industries be saved from the wasteful competition of the ruinous overdevelopment and over-capitalization which are the inevitable outcome of capitalism. Only in a regime of public ownership and operation will the full benefits accruing from centralized control and mass production be passed on to the consuming public.
Transportation, communications and electric power must come first in a list of industries to be socialized. Others, such as mining, pulp and paper and the distribution of milk, bread, coal and gasoline, in which exploitation, waste, or financial malpractices are particularly prominent must next be brought under social ownership and operation.
In restoring to the community its natural resources and in taking over industrial enterprises from private into public control we do not propose any policy of outright confiscation. What we desire is the most stable and equitable transition to the Cooperative Commonwealth. It is impossible to decide the policies to be followed in particular cases in an uncertain future, but we insist upon certain broad principles. The welfare of the community must take supremacy over the claims of private wealth. In times of war, human life has been conscripted. Should economic circumstances call for it, conscription of wealth would be more justifiable. We recognize the need for compensation in the case of individuals and institutions which must receive adequate maintenance during the transitional period before the planned economy becomes fully operative. But a CCF government will not play the role of rescuing bankrupt private concerns for the benefit of promoters and of stock and bond holders. It will not pile up a deadweight burden of unremunerative debt which represents claims upon the public treasury of a functionless owner class.
The management of publicly owned enterprises will be vested in boards who will be appointed for their competence in the industry and will conduct each particular enterprise on efficient economic lines. The machinery of management may well vary from industry to industry, but the rigidity of Civil Service rules should be avoided and likewise the evils of the patronage system as exemplified in so many departments of the Government today.
Workers in these public industries must be free to organize in trade unions and must be given the right to participate in the management of the industry.

4. Agriculture
Security of tenure for the farmer upon his farm on conditions to be laid down by individual provinces; insurance against unavoidable crop failure; removal of the tariff burden from the operations of agriculture; encouragement of producers' and consumers' cooperatives; the restoration and maintenance of an equitable relationship between prices of agricultural products and those of other commodities and services; and improving the efficiency of export trade in farm products.
The security of tenure for the farmer upon his farm which is imperilled by the present disastrous situation of the whole industry, together with adequate social insurance, ought to be guaranteed under equitable conditions.
The prosperity of agriculture, the greatest Canadian industry, depends upon a rising volume of purchasing power of the masses in Canada for all farm goods consumed at home, and upon the maintenance of large scale exports of the stable commodities at satisfactory prices or equitable commodity exchange.
The intense depression in agriculture today is a consequence of the general world crisis caused by the normal workings of the capitalistic system resulting in:
Economic nationalism expressing itself in tariff barriers and other restrictions of world trade;
The decreased purchasing power of unemployed and under-employed workers and of the Canadian people in general;
(3) The exploitation of both primary producers and consumers by monopolistic corporations who absorb a great proportion of the selling price of farm products. (This last is true, for example, of the distribution of milk and dairy products, the packing industry, and milling.)
The immediate cause of agricultural depression is the catastrophic fall in the world prices of foodstuffs as compared with other prices, this fall being due in large measure to the deflation of currency and credit. To counteract the worst effect of this, the internal price level should be raised so that the farmers' purchasing power may be restored.
We propose therefore:
1. The improvement of the position of the farmer by the increase of the purchasing power made possible by the social control of the financial system. This control must be directed towards the increase of employment as laid down elsewhere and towards raising the prices of farm commodities by appropriate credit and foreign policies.
2. Whilst the family farm is the accepted basis for agricultural production in Canada the position of the farmer may be much improved by: (a) The extension of consumers' cooperatives for the purchase of farm supplies and domestic requirements; and (b) The extension of cooperative institutions for the processing and marketing of farm products.
Both of the foregoing to have suitable state encouragement and assistance.
3. The adoption of a planned system of agricultural development based upon scientific soil surveys directed towards better land utilization, and a scientific policy of agricultural development for the whole of Canada.
The substitution for the present system of foreign trade, of a system of import boards to improve the efficiency of overseas marketing, to control prices, and to integrate the foreign trade policy with the requirements of the national economic plan.

5. External Trade
The regulation in accordance with the National plan of external trade through import and export boards
Canada is dependent on external sources of supply for many of her essential requirements of raw materials and manufactured products. These she can obtain only by large exports of the goods she is best fitted to produce. The strangling of our export trade by insane protectionist policies must be brought to an end. But the old controversies between free traders and protectionists are now largely obsolete. In a world of nationally organized economies Canada must organize the buying and selling of her main imports and exports under public boards, and take steps to regulate the flow of less important commodities by a system of licenses. By so doing she will be enabled to make the best trade agreements possible with foreign countries, put a stop to the exploitation of both primary producer and ultimate consumer, make possible the coordination of internal processing, transportation and marketing of farm products, and facilitate the establishment of stable prices for such export commodities.
6. Co-Operative Institutions
The encouragement by the public authority of both producers' and consumers' cooperative institutions
In agriculture, as already mentioned, the primary producer can receive a larger net revenue through cooperative organization of purchases and marketing. Similarly in retail distribution of staple commodities such as milk, there is room for development both of public municipal operation and of consumers' cooperatives, and such cooperative organization can be extended into wholesale distribution and into manufacturing. Cooperative enterprises should be assisted by the state through appropriate legislation and through the provision of adequate credit facilities.

7. Labour Code
A National Labour Code to secure for the worker maximum income and leisure, insurance covering accident, old age, and unemployment, freedom of association and effective participation in the management of his industry or profession
The spectre of poverty and insecurity which still haunts every worker, though technological developments have made possible a high standard of living for everyone, is a disgrace which must be removed from our civilization. The community must organize its resources to effect progressive reduction of the hours of work in accordance with technological development and to provide a constantly rising standard of life to everyone who is willing to work. A labour code must be developed which will include state regulation of all wages, equal reward and equal opportunity of advancement for equal services, irrespective of sex; measures to guarantee the right to work or the right to maintenance through stabilization of employment and through unemployment insurance; social insurance to protect workers and their families against the hazards of sickness, death, industrial accident and old age; limitation of hours of work and protection of health and safety in industry. Both wages and insurance benefits should be varied in accordance with family needs.
In addition workers must be guaranteed the undisputed right to freedom of association, and should be encouraged and assisted by the state to organize themselves in trade unions. By means of collective agreements and participation in works councils, the workers can achieve fair working rules and share in the control of industry and profession; and their organizations will be indispensable elements in a system of genuine industrial democracy.
The labour code should be uniform throughout the country. But the achievement of this end is difficult so long as jurisdiction over labour legislation under the B.N.A. Act is mainly in the hands of the provinces. It is urgently necessary, therefore, that the B.N.A. Act be amended to make such a national labour code possible.

8. Socialized Health Services Publicly Organized Health,
Hospital and Medical Services
With the advance of medical science the maintenance of a healthy population has become a function for which every civilized community should undertake responsibility. Health services should be made at least as freely available as are educational services today. But under a system which is still mainly one of private enterprise the costs of proper medical care, such as the wealthier members of society can easily afford, are at present prohibitive for great masses of the people. A properly organized system of public health services including medical and dental care, which would stress the prevention rather than the cure of illness should be extended to all our people in both rural and urban areas. This is an enterprise in which Dominion, Provincial and Municipal authorities, as well as the medical and dental professions can cooperate.

9. B.N.A. Act
The amendment of the Canadian Constitution, without infringing upon racial or religious minority rights or upon legitimate provincial claims to autonomy, so as to deal effectively with urgent economic problems which are essentially national in scope; the abolition of the Canadian Senate
We propose that the necessary amendments to the B.N.A. Act shall be obtained as speedily as required, safeguards being inserted to ensure that the existing rights of racial and religious minorities shall not be changed without their own consent. What is chiefly needed today is the placing in the hands of the national government of more power to control national economic development. In a rapidly changing economic environment our political constitution must be reasonably flexible. The present division of powers between Dominion and Provinces reflects the conditions of a pioneer, mainly agricultural, community in 1867. Our constitution must be brought into line with the increasing industrialization of the country and the consequent centralization of economic and financial power—which has taken place in the last two generations. The principle laid down in the Quebec Resolution of the Fathers of Confederation should be applied to the conditions of 1933, that "there be a general government charged with matters of common interest to the whole country and local governments for each of the provinces charged with the control of local matters to their respective sections".
The Canadian Senate, which was originally created to protect provincial rights, but has failed even in this function, has developed into a bulwark of capitalist interests, as is illustrated by the large number of company directorships held by its aged members. In its peculiar composition of a fixed number of members appointed for life it is one of the most reactionary assemblies in the civilized world. It is a standing obstacle to all progressive legislation, and the only permanently satisfactory method of dealing with the constitutional difficulties it creates is to abolish it.

10. External Relations
A Foreign Policy designed to obtain international economic cooperation and to promote disarmament and world peace
Canada has a vital interest in world peace. We propose, therefore, to do everything in our power to advance the idea of international cooperation as represented by the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization. We would extend our diplomatic machinery for keeping in touch with the main centres of world interest. But we believe that genuine international cooperation is incompatible with the capitalist regime which is in force in most countries, and that strenuous efforts are needed to rescue the League from its present condition of being mainly a League of capitalist Great Powers. We stand resolutely against all participation in imperialist wars. Within the British Commonwealth, Canada must maintain her autonomy as a completely self-governing nation. We must resist all attempts to build up a new economic British Empire in place of the old political one, since such attempts readily lend themselves to the purposes of capitalist exploitation and may easily lead to further world wars. Canada must refuse to be entangled in any more wars fought to make the world safe for capitalism.

11. Taxation And Public Finance
A new taxation policy designed not only to raise public revenues but also to lessen the glaring inequalities of income and to provide funds for social services and the socialization of industry; the cessation of the debt-creating system of Public Finance
In the type of economy that we envisage, the need for taxation, as we now understand it, will have largely disappeared. It will nevertheless be essential during the, transition period, to use the taxing powers, along with the other methods proposed elsewhere, as a means of providing for the socialization of industry, and for extending the benefits of increased Social Services.
At present capitalist governments in Canada raise a large proportion of their revenues from such levies as customs duties and sales taxes, the main burden of which falls upon the masses. In place of such taxes upon articles of general consumption, we propose a drastic extension of income, corporation and inheritance taxes, steeply graduated according to ability to pay. Full publicity must be given to income tax payments and our tax collection system must be brought up to the English standard of efficiency.
We also believe in the necessity for an immediate revision of the basis of Dominion and Provincial sources of revenues, so as to produce a coordinated and equitable system of taxation throughout Canada.
An inevitable effect of the capitalist system is the debt creating character of public financing. All public debts have enormously increased, and the fixed interest charges paid thereon now amount to the largest single item of so-called uncontrollable public expenditures. The CCF proposes that in future no public financing shall be permitted which facilitates the perpetuation of the parasitic interest-receiving class; that capital shall be provided through the medium of the National Investment Board and free from perpetual interest charges.
We propose that all Public Works, as directed by the Planning Commission, shall be financed by the issuance of credit, as suggested, based upon the National Wealth of Canada.

12. Freedom
Freedom of speech and assembly for all; repeal of Section 98 of the Criminal Code; amendment of the Immigration Act to prevent the present inhuman policy of deportation; equal treatment before the law of all residents of Canada irrespective of race, nationality or religious or political beliefs
In recent years, Canada has seen an alarming growth of Fascist tendencies among all governmental authorities. The most elementary rights of freedom of speech and assembly have been arbitrarily denied to workers and to all whose political and social views do not meet with the approval of those in power. The lawless and brutal conduct of the police in certain centres in preventing public meetings and in dealing with political prisoners must cease. Section 98 of the Criminal Code which has been used as a weapon of political oppression by a panic-stricken capitalist government, must be wiped off the statute book and those who have been imprisoned under it must be released. An end must be put to the inhuman practice of deporting immigrants who were brought to this country by immigration propaganda and now, through no fault of their own, find themselves victims of an executive department against whom there is no appeal to the courts of the land. We stand for full economic, political and religious liberty for all.

13. Social Justice
The establishment of a commission composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, socially minded jurists and social workers, to deal with all matters pertaining to crime and punishment and the general administration of law, in order to humanize the law and to bring it into harmony with the needs of the people
While the removal of economic inequality will do much to overcome the most glaring injustices in the treatment of those who come into conflict with the law, our present archaic system must be changed and brought into accordance with a modern concept of human relationships. The new system must not be based as is the present one, upon vengeance and fear, but upon an understanding of human behaviour. For this reason its planning and control cannot be left in the hands of those steeped in the outworn legal tradition; and therefore it is proposed that there shall be established a national commission composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, socially minded jurists and social workers whose duty it shall be to devise a system of prevention and correction consistent with other features of the new social order.

14. An Emergency Programme
The assumption by the Dominion Government of direct responsibility for dealing with the present critical unemployment situation and for tendering suitable work or adequate maintenance; the adoption of measures to relieve the extremity of the crisis such as a programme of public spending on housing, and other enterprises that will increase the real wealth of Canada, to be financed by the issue of credit based on the national wealth
The extent of unemployment and the widespread suffering which it has caused, creates a situation with which provincial and municipal governments have long been unable to cope and forces upon the Dominion government direct responsibility for dealing with the crisis as the only authority with financial resources adequate to meet the situation. Unemployed workers must be secured in the tenure of their homes, and the scale and methods of relief, at present altogether inadequate, must be such as to preserve decent human standards of living.
It is recognized that even after a Cooperative Commonwealth Federation Government has come into power, a certain period of time must elapse before the planned economy can be fully worked out. During this brief transitional period, we propose to provide work and purchasing power to those now unemployed by a far-reaching programme of public expenditure on housing, slum clearance, hospitals, libraries, schools, community halls, parks, recreational projects, reforestation, rural electrification, the elimination of grade crossings, and other similar projects in both town and country. This programme, which would be financed by the issuance of credit based on the national wealth, would serve the double purpose of creating employment and meeting recognized social needs. Any steps which the government takes, under this emergency programme, which may assist private business, must include guarantees of adequate wages and reasonable hours of work, and must be designed to further the advance towards the complete Cooperative Commonwealth.
Emergency measures, however, are of only temporary value, for the present depression is a sign of the mortal sickness of the whole capitalist system, and this sickness cannot be cured by the application of salves. These leave untouched the cancer which is eating at the heart of our society, namely, the economic system in which our natural resources and our principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated for the private profit of a small proportion of our population.
No C.C.F. Government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full programme of socialized planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Cooperative Commonwealth.

2009-03-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

The banana republics of B.C. politics

Citizens are left on their own to guard against electoral irregularities in municipal elections

By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun, March 21, 2009

Even the provincial minister responsible for municipal legislation did not believe that citizens would have to spend their own money to overturn an unfair election but he learned he was misinformed.
The B.C. Liberal government has gone far beyond convention in silencing opposition during the May election campaign with its gag law on third-party advertising. Yet the same Liberal government allows a virtual free-for-all during municipal elections.
Civic elections are "the Wild West," says Simon Fraser University political scientist Patrick Smith, who has concluded that more than four times as much money per voter is spent than in provincial or federal elections.
Yet, it's left up to citizens to enforce the electoral rules. There is no independent oversight, which gives municipal elections in British Columbia some of the hallmarks of voting in banana republics.
The Liberals did amend the Local Government Act a few months before the November civic elections. For the first time, groups and individuals supporting candidates or slates of candidates were required to register. But the legislation has no enforcement mechanism. No one is responsible for policing it. If citizens believe there are electoral irregularities, they have to spend their own money to ensure that unfair elections are overturned and transgressors either lose their seats or are banned from participating in the next election.
It's a serious oversight that renders the legislation so lame that even former community development minister Blair Lekstrom couldn't believe it.
In an interview the day before the Nov. 15 provincewide elections, Lekstrom assured me that his department had it wrong. Lekstrom, a former mayor, said it couldn't possibly be that it would be left up to citizens to police and prosecute any election irregularities. He said that is the role of the police.
Over in West Vancouver, Kash Heed, who recently resigned as chief constable, agreed. Police are continuing their investigation into complaints of election irregularities including the failure of at least one lobby group -- Low Taxes, Low Growth Association -- to register as a campaign organizer even though it spent thousands of dollars attempting to get a slate of candidates elected. It also didn't file a financial disclosure by the March 16 deadline.
However, mayoral candidate Vivian Vaughan noted on her financial disclosure form that the association donated $1,000 to her campaign.
Another group, Preserve West Vancouver, filed a financial disclosure claiming to have raised $3,550. Vaughan is listed as having contributed $1,200 to it and two council candidates -- Carolanne Reynolds and Danielle Charlton -- donated $500 and $300 respectively.
But Preserve West Vancouver's listed expenditures do not include a $3,200 donation to Charlton that she lists on her financial disclosure.
Apparently, Lekstrom -- who has since moved on to become the energy minister -- was set straight by his staff after the elections were over. In an e-mail to David Wilson, a Central Saanich resident who alleges irregularities in that municipality's election, Lekstrom said Wilson should take his concerns to court.
But there may be no better illustration of the ramifications of this electoral regulatory gap than Central Saanich. The local co-op was heavily involved in endorsing and stumping for council candidates, who would look favourably on a rezoning needed for its new store.
During the election, Peninsula Co-op sent out letters to all of the candidates asking if they would support a rezoning of four residential lots to allow construction of a 27,000-square-foot grocery store adjacent to its gas centre. It told the candidates that their responses would be distributed to its membership.
Without seeking the permission of its membership, the co-op sent out letters to some, if not all, of its 28,000 members urging them to vote for the candidates who would support the rezoning. It had posters printed and prominently displayed in its grocery store listing the candidates who supported and those who opposed it.
Formal investigation sought
Peninsula Co-op registered as campaign organizer on Nov. 6, only nine days before the election, even though its campaign began weeks earlier and even though Central Saanich chief electoral officer Sara Ribeiro says that groups and individuals must register as soon as they have spent $500.
The Co-op spent a total of $16,488 endorsing and stumping for council candidates.
David Wilson, the resident whom Lekstrom corresponded with, recently wrote to Attorney-General Wally Oppal and Solicitor-General John van Dongen, asking for an formal investigation into the co-op to determine whether it acted improperly both under the Local Government Act, the B.C. Co-operatives Act and the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act by spending more than $500 and using the co-op's membership list to try to influence the election's outcome -- all without ever having sought the approval of the members.
"Normally, I would officially file this complaint with the local police department in Central Saanich," Wilson wrote. "But unfortunately, Chief Constable Paul Hames is a member of the Peninsula Co-operative's board . . . . How can the chief constable investigate a local organization's action, when he is part of that organization's executive board? If I ask Chief Hames to investigate, there is a potential for a conflict of interest."
Hames is on the co-op's finance, membership and community relations committees. Cathie Ounstad, one of the members of the police board, is also on the co-op board.
Wilson goes on to say that he's concerned about his safety and that of his family, having raised his concerns with the mayor, the municipality's chief electoral officer, the co-op's general manager and the police chief. Other concerned citizens, he alleges, have been threatened with lawsuits.
He then goes on to state what seems to be obvious: "If the law has been broken, it needs to be investigated by unbiased law enforcement officials and our democratic rights as citizens should be protected without threat of persecution."
The concerns don't end with Central Saanich and West Vancouver where the police investigation is continuing.
Not a single campaign organizer or elector organization registered in Summerland. Yet, there were at least 15, quarter- and half-page ads that ran in the Summerland Review. Similar ads also ran in the Penticton Herald and the Western News.
"Some concerned residents and business owners of Summerland urge you to please get involved and support candidates who are not against some growth in this town . . . . Please get out and support those whose politics will not result in anti-business, anti-family and anti-Summerland by way of their anti-growth, one perspective politics!" says one ad, which gives no indication of who the concerned residents or business owners are or who paid for the ad.
Citizens for Smart Governance ran ads in support of mayoral candidate Janice Perrino. Only two days before the election, there was a full-page ad for Perrino that was paid for "by a generous donation" as well as two quarter-page ads opposing smart growth that had no indication of who had paid for them.
There was also a quarter-page ad endorsing the Perrino slate that included the names of 90 supporters, including a number of realtors and developers.
Some of those supporters' names were also among a longer list of names on a pamphlet endorsing the Perrino slate. The entire slate was elected.
A full-page ad in the Review is $856.52 plus GST; a half-page is $459.62 and a quarter-page is $225.12 plus GST.
So, even in smaller municipalities, it doesn't take long to run up a $500 tab. And $500 is the threshold amount. Any person or group spending $500 or more is legally required to register with the chief electoral officer as either a campaign organizer or an elector organization and file financial statements within four months of the election.
But no one is responsible or legally required to check up on them. Except citizens. And, as Wilson noted, in small communities standing up and complaining can be an uncomfortable, lonely and even frightening proposition.
'Mistakes were made'
Brian Sadler is one of those citizens. Sadler and another unsuccessful candidate for Gibsons' town council, along with two other residents did go to B.C. Supreme Court after last November's municipal election, asking for the election to be declared invalid.
They alleged all kinds of irregularities in the vote-counting -- the most serious of which was that 327 votes suddenly appeared two days after the election during a recount that was done without scrutineers and without the knowledge of any of the candidates.
Even though Justice Bruce Cohen disagreed with the complainants, he did note in his written judgment, "It is far from clear who opened the ballot boxes" when the deputy chief electoral officer did a "review" of the ballots two days after the election.
He even wrote, "Certainly mistakes were made in tabulating and calculating the election results. However . . . there is no evidence of bad faith, only inadvertence and the errors made were discovered and corrected before the official election results were declared."
Cohen concluded that rather than asking for the election to be declared invalid, the complainants should have asked for a judicial recount.
But Sadler contends that a judicial recount wouldn't have solved the mystery of where those extra 327 votes came from. It wouldn't change the fact that there was no voters' list and volunteers at polling stations weren't even given electoral maps to determine whether voters' addresses fell within the municipal boundaries.
The court case cost close to $20,000 and, for the citizens' trouble, Sadler says they have been "bad-mouthed around town."
They considered an appeal. Not only was the cost prohibitive, Sadler says it would have paralyzed the town council for most of this year and as a taxpayer and resident he didn't want to do that.
Still, the case did result in some positives. In exchange for Sadler and the others dropping their appeal, the town agreed not to sue them for costs. Plus, the council unanimously agreed at its March 3 meeting to do a complete electoral process review.
It's a step. But as Sadler says, it's up to the provincial government to fill the vacuum that exists because of no formal monitoring of the due process required in elections.
"This is crap. We have a banana republic going on right here," Sadler says. He knows a thing or two about that. He spent five years in Bosnia as a political officer for the United Nations and election oversight was included in his duties.
dbramham@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

2009-02-12T19:37:00.000-08:00

A Violation of the Public Trust

Citizens expect a certain standard of behaviour from those who call themselves public servants at every level of government.

We expect to be treated respectfully and for our concerns to be taken seriously. We expect our requests to be handled efficiently and fairly. Fairly. That’s the most important word. We all want to believe that those who serve us are doing so in an unbiased fashion, but that isn’t always the case.

Recently a freedom of information request netted a document that must be of concern to every citizen in Central Saanich for it appears to show quite clearly that the culture of our municipal hall is not one of open, honest service to the taxpayers. In fact it would suggest that certain agendas are being fast-tracked for some citizens over the concerns of others.

As you will see when you open the link below, the proponent of the Senanus waterline is being told by the financial officer for Central Saanich that they will be expediting his project, even going so far as to say “we will have the bylaws ‘in our back pocket’ regardless of the solicitor’s advice.”

That she has discussed this with Gary Nason, our Chief Administrative Officer and her boss, certainly suggests that this procedure has met with his approval.

The letter continues with an appalling lack of respect for citizens who have shown every willingness to find a rational solution to the problem including through mediation for which the provincial government has twice promised to foot the bill.

Sometimes you just have to read it to believe it! Don't forget to read from the bottom up.

http://senanus.net/00-foi/2008-06-Let-RTanner2Towler.pdf

2009-01-27T21:02:00.000-08:00

Drought-hit California farmers abandoning vegetable fields

Last Updated: Monday, January 26, 2009 10:48 AM ET
The Associated Press
Consumers may pay more for spring lettuce and summer melons in grocery stores now that California farmers have started abandoning their fields in response to a crippling drought.California's sweeping Central Valley grows most of the fruits and vegetables in the United States in normal years, but this winter thousands of hectares are turning to dust as the state hurtles into the worst drought in nearly two decades.Federal officials' recent announcement that the water supply they pump through the nation's largest farm state would drop further was enough to move John (Dusty) Giacone to forego growing vegetables so he can save his share to drip-irrigate 400 hectares of almond trees."Taking water from a farmer is like taking a pipe from a plumber," said Giacone, a fourth-generation farmer in the tiny community of Mendota. "How do you conduct business?"The giants of California agribusiness are the biggest economic engine in the valley, which produces every cantaloupe on store shelves in summer months, and the bulk of the nation's lettuce crop each spring and fall.This year, officials in Fresno County predict farmers will only grow around 2,400 hectares of lettuce, roughly half the area devoted to growing greens in 2005.That alone could cause a slight bump in consumer prices, unless lettuce companies can make up for the shortage by growing in areas with an abundant water supply, or the cost of cooling, packaging and shipping the crop suddenly goes down, experts say."Lettuce comes off the field and goes straight into the market, and if there's nothing coming off the field then the marketing chain goes dry, and prices go up," said Gary Lucier, an agricultural economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.
Restricted flow to California also hits farmers
While the dry weather has exacerbated the problem, farmers' water woes are not all drought-related.Supplies for crops and cities also have been restricted by several court decisions cutting back allocations that flow through a freshwater estuary called the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the main conduit that sends water to nearly two-thirds of Californians.Environmental groups and federal scientists say the delta's massive pumps are one of the factors pushing a native fish to the brink of extinction. Last year, federal water deliveries were just 40 per cent of the normal allocations, fallowing thousands of hectares and causing nearly $309 million US in crop losses statewide.That prompted California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to issue a disaster declaration, ordering state water managers to expedite any requests to move water around the state, in part so high-value crops like wine grapes, almonds and pistachio trees would stand a chance of surviving.Federal reservoirs are now at their lowest level since 1992.With such a grim outlook, many California farmers including Giacone are investing millions to drill down hundreds of metres in search of new water sources.Depending on how much it rains this winter, federal water supplies could be slashed down to nothing this year, forcing farmers to rely solely on brackish well water. But the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation won't make an official decision until late February, said Ron Milligan, the agency's Central Valley operations manager.
Concerns over possible job losses
The state's Department of Water Resources, which also ships farmers water, has promised to deliver 15 per cent of the normal allocations in October, but conditions are so dire that that's now in doubt, too."The consequences are expected to be pretty horrible in terms of farmers' revenue, but what's really disconcerting are the possible job losses," said Wendy Martin, who leads the agency's drought division. "Those communities that can least weather an economic downturn are going to be some of the places that are hit the hardest."Richard Howitt, a professor of agriculture economics at the University of California, Davis, estimates that $1.6 billion US in agriculture-related wages, and as many as 60,000 jobs across the valley will be lost in the coming months because of dwindling water.Analysts haven't yet provided any estimates of crop losses this year. But Bill Diedrich, an almond grower on the valley's parched western edge, said he's already worried he may lose some of his nut trees in the drought."The real story here is food security," Diedrich told Milligan and other officials speaking at a conference in Reno, Nev. "It's an absolute emergency and anything to get water flowing quickly is needed."In the meantime, the forecast appears to be worsening: meteorologists are predicting a dry spring, and a new state survey shows the population of threatened fish is at its lowest point in 42 years, more imperiled than previously believed."This has devastating effects not only for the guys out there in the fields with the weed whackers, but it affects the whole farming industry," said Thomas Nyberg, Fresno County's deputy agricultural commissioner. "I'm just praying for rain."
© The Canadian Press, 2009

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FARMER

2009-01-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

TREES DOWN, TREES DOWN, TREES DOWN!

Dear friends and neighbours,

I urge every one of you to go see the latest clearcut in Central Saanich. Just west of the corner of Keating and Kirkpatrick, Randy Sewell of Raven Metals has cut a grove of large and lovely cedar trees down. Look down beside the first white house and you will see the damage that has been done to our environment.

There is a bright STOP WORK order posted on the fence, far too little, far too late. The order wouldn’t be there if this was an allowable action by Mr. Sewell. Randy Sewell lost his attempt to change the Official Community Plan (OCP). It seems he has now decided to take matters into his own hands, but he is not above the law.

We must insist that the District amend the tree bylaw so that pre-emptive cuts are punished severely. The scofflaw should not be allowed to profit from the sale of the wood (nor should the District, lest they become complacent). The wood should be confiscated, sold by auction and the proceeds should be used to educate this community on the importance of the trees to our lives.

Last summer Randy Sewell held a public meeting to discuss his wish to expand the industrial zone and at that time he was cautioned by Terry Stewart of the Chamber of Commerce who told him that he was going about things the wrong way and needed to be more respectful of the rest of the community. Clearly Randy did not hear Terry’s strictures.

Please email Mayor and Council at municipalhall@csaanich.ca or phone the hall at 652-4444. Let them know that you’re tired of the trees coming down. Remind them its science not opinion.

P.S. The district has also taken a couple of very large Douglas firs from the top of the hill on Keating just before you go down the slope to the highway. These were 100 year old trees.

2009-01-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

Transit Mtg Feb 24th 10 am

I will be speaking to the Transit Commission Tuesday February 24th and I invite everyone from Central Saanich to be there. We need to show them that we mean what we say. Our route needs to be rebuilt, we need more runs, we need the loop back, we need the bus to start downtown and run all the way out to Sidney as it once did. Tanner ridge needs a minibus to connect people to the other routes. Our businesses need late night runs so they can put on extra shifts (and then they won't need to expand (sprawl) acros our farmland and rural land.

Come out and show them you care.

2008-12-31T16:45:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
132 days until Election Day in this province and boy do we need a serious change of government.
We need:

housing for the homeless
more money for public education
housing for single parents
more money for public health care
housing for families
a ban on P3s (public private partnerships aka boondoggles)
housing for seniors with no health problems
a $12 minimum wage & a guaranteed income for all
training programs
green programs that really are green
help for families of drug abusers to cope with the stress
a stronger social safety net
a universal dental care plan
more drug coverage under our health plan
a limit on the size of homes that can be built

We need so much more than this, a top to bottom overhaul and a commitment to fight greed and respond to need.

2008-12-21T10:16:00.000-08:00

Clearing Snow!

Why are the crews clearing the paths through the parks while leaving the main sidewalks up to the businesses? Obviously most businesses aren't clearing so make the sidewalks the main priority and bill the businesses for it. It's treacherous walking just to get to the bus stop because the sidewalks have been allowed to turn into ice sheets.

2008-12-20T12:40:00.001-08:00

It Doesn't Take Long for Promises to Break!

Councillors Kubek and Siklenka managed to break major promises at their very first regular council meeting on December 15th by voting IN FAVOUR of adding water cut-offs to the actions Council could take against those homeowners/suite owners who will not obey an order to shut down an illegal dwelling or suite.

I spoke out against this motion during the election campaign as did both of these candidates, but their tune changed as soon as they became councillors and were persuaded by staff to change their position.

Luckily for all concerned Councillors Bryson, Olsen, Garrison and Mason kept their promise to vote against this terrible plan. Cutting off water will not be in the toolbox in Central Saanich.

Too bad some of our new councillors are so quick to change their positions.

2008-12-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

THE FARMLAND DEFENCE LEAGUE’S VIEW OF CHRISTMAS DINNER

Half of the turkey consumed in British Columbia each year is consumed during the Christmas season.

BC has 56 turkey producers who generated $41.9 million in turkey sales in 2007

BC is pretty self-reliant when it comes to turkey. We import less than 2% of the turkey we produce domestically.

British Columbians are the third largest turkey gobblers in Canada (behind Ontario and Quebec). We consume twice the amount of turkey that Albertans do.

Relish the Thought
12% of the cranberries being served on tables around the continent this holiday season came from BC, and more specifically from 88 cranberry farms in the Fraser Valley, where the mild climate and wet flood plain provide ideal growing conditions for BC’s top berry crop.

Although the packaging doesn’t show it, BC’s cranberry producers, like Barnston Island’s Opus Cranberries, are major suppliers to Ocean Spray Cranberries.

The Fort Wine Company in Fort Langley has shown that cranberries also make excellent wine.

Holiday Ham instead of Turkey?
BC’s 175 pork producers raise about 300,000 hogs/year. Yet between 70 -75% of the pork eaten in BC is imported.

An Eye for an Eye
Serving russets or nugget potatoes this holiday? In fact, British Columbia produces 35 different varieties of potatoes.

The largest field vegetable crop in the province, BC produces 71,000 tonnes of potatoes annually. But we import 107,753 tonnes (worth over $59.3 million) each year, mostly from the US (Washington State and Idaho).

72% of BC’s table potatoes are grown in the Fraser Valley.

While BC is a net importer of potatoes, we are a net exporter of seed potatoes. Known as “Spud Valley”, the Pemberton Valley’s rich volcanic soils enable it to produce the largest variety of seed potatoes in the world, providing potato farmers around the globe with BC seed potatoes.

Apple or Pumpkin Pie?

In 2002, just 11,000 acres of orchards in the Okanagan, Similkameen and Creston Valleys produced $72.3 million for the BC economy – and a billion apples. BC produces 30% of the apples grown in Canada.
We consume only 25% of those. The average British Columbian eats only 75-100 apples/year – far less than the apple a day recommended to keep the doctor away.

That means that BC exports about 75% of the apples we grow. Yet we import a lot, too. Our biggest competitor for our own and international markets is Washington State which, although they have similar climate and growing conditions, produces up to 20 times the amount of apples that BC does.

If your holiday pie is pumpkin instead of apple, chances are the pumpkin was grown in the USA. Although BC produces approximately 3 million pounds of pumpkins annually, most of those are the large stock used for Hallowe’en jack-o-lanterns. Canada imports the vast majority of pumpkin used for human consumption.

Vegetables

Holiday salad? Although Canada produces 78 tonnes of lettuce a year, we import 305 tonnes. Most of our imports come from the US, and predominantly California (the “1,000 mile Caesar salad”).

In 2001, 659 acres of BC farmland produced 6.1 million pounds of Brussells Sprouts, representing $2.4 million in farm gate receipts.

BC grows 50 types of vegetables and 90% of the province’s vegetables are grown in the Fraser Valley.

In 2002 BC fresh & processed field vegetable production was worth $32 million, while our imports were more than 10 times that or $332 million.

The US represents 80% of all fresh field vegetable imports and 85% of processed field vegetable imports to BC, and California alone makes up 72% of that. Global warming and domestic water consumption are causing severe water shortages in California that are expected to significantly affect agriculture.

Global food shortages in 2008 saw riots and conflict around the world. BC has experienced some increases in food prices, but not as much as Washington State, where prices rose 15%.

Although the food security crisis has not reached BC’s marketplace yet, we are vulnerable. Less than 5% of this province’s land base is suitable for agriculture.

Between 2002 and 2007, BC lost 10,200 acres of farmland from its Agricultural Land Reserve, with most of those losses from the Fraser Valley where rich alluvial soils combine with a mild climate and long growing season to provide the province’s best agricultural productivity. Of the 7.500 acres added to the ALR during this same period, most of the lands were of lowest soil ratings and were located in northern parts of British Columbia, which has colder climate and a shorter growing season.

Thousands of additional acres of farmland were lost to “non-farm uses” including roads and highways, port and airport expansions and country estates.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s British Columbia Food Self-Reliance Report (2007) indicates that BC will need 240,000 additional acres of farmland near urban centres (for irrigation) and 1 million acres of rangeland to meet the needs of our population by 2025.

Let’s make 2009 the year we draw a hard edge around the ALR. Happy holidays everyone.

Directors
Farmland Defence League of BC

2008-12-12T07:21:00.001-08:00

Mayor Mar Introduces Further ANTI-DEMOCRATIC Procedures Bylaw Amendments

In A Democracy We Have An Absolute RIGHT TO KNOW Who Is Putting Forward What Motions And Who Voted Yea or Nay To Each One.

1. The names of movers and seconders of motions will not be posted in the minutes (not on the record).

2. Councillors can no longer ask to have their vote recorded.

3. All correspondence and presentations go to the end of the agenda and won't be moved forward.

4. During committee meetings you could move a motion and no seconder was required. This allowed for a new concept to be debated on its merits rather than being simply shut down. This is no longer the case. All motions in committee will now require a seconder.

There will be an attempt to suggest that it is poor form for new councillors to vote in favour of this before they have seen the old system at work: voting on things they don't know in other words.

This will not likely get far as Kubek will simply say he's been to many council meetings in the gallery and will vote with Mason, Mar and Garrison. 4 votes, game over. Surprise me!

As we all know Mayor Mar couldn't have thought this up on his own...a fine old hand appears to be behind this.

This bylaw amendment must go through 3 readings and a public hearing...be prepared for a call out to attend the meetings.

2008-11-18T19:46:00.000-08:00

No Recycle Day

for December

See you January 24th!

9-12 noon

Municipal Hall, Saanichton

2008-11-17T17:41:00.000-08:00

Thank you!

Thanks to all those who donated, supported, door knocked, leafletted, put up signs, expressed support and voted. You are all wonderful people and I hope you'll be there next time as we bring Central Saanich home to its farming & family roots.

We're not done yet!
Haiska
Haiska
Thank you all so very much, you can't imagine how much I appreciate you.

Sue

2008-11-12T14:42:00.000-08:00

Where I Stand

My name is Sue Stroud and you already know me as someone who cares about community issues and community values.

This election is about working together because our community is at a crossroads: it can remain true to its heritage as a land of peaceful plenty, or it can quickly become just another cookie cutter cityscape.

We chose our urban containment areas with great care. Now, together, we must assess carefully any proposed development because growth is expensive, both environmentally and fiscally. I do not support building outside the urban containment areas for reasons outlined below.

Every development requires both an initial outlay for infrastructure services and an ongoing maintenance cost for those services: sidewalks, lights, sewers, water, electricity, crosswalks and more. These are the things that increase our taxes. We are told that developments increase the tax base, but the reality is that it is rare for that increase to cover the true cost of a development over time.

The country road I took to school is now a thriving industrial park. But we need to make better use of this park and build up within it rather than sprawling out from it. There are many underutilized spaces for expansion in this site.

I have seen the pressures of urbanization and the conflicts as we spotzone on the buffers that divide the residential and industrial lands from farmlands and the food security they provide us. Those buffers make good neighbours and when they are encroached on the district becomes swamped with complaints about noise and smells and smoke.

We have been characterized as a ‘go slow’ municipality by some, but slow is in fact exactly the right speed for us. We need slow roads, slow growth and slow use of our natural resources, because the slow route is the wise route. Going slowly gives us time to measure our footprint and to correct and change our path as needed.

I support Panorama because it is a full service rec centre with activities for all ages. My father uses it; I have recently booked one of the skating rinks for the BCGEU Children's Xmas Party; my nephews have played hockey and taken swimming and scuba lessons there: nearly everyone I know goes to Panorama at some point.

Panorama has served us well and is a necessary part of our community well-being. It is unfortunate that upgrading Panorama and other such structures is so expensive, but that is why we take care of such things collectively.

This election is not about 'common sense' which too often isn't very common. It is about a sense of community which we must build and nurture.

Our municipality includes old and young, First Nations and new immigrants, those with no financial concerns and those struggling to maintain their housing in the face of rising expenses. We must include everyone when we deliberate about how we will meet the financial and environmental problems we are facing and we must have a thought for those who come after because we are only stewards here "in this green and pleasant land."

2008-11-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

How can we help our farmers ?

We need to recognize the incredible importance of local food farming to our region.

Recently, our own Nobel Prize winning scientist, Dr Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, stated that we have already passed the tipping point for global warming. This means that we are looking at entirely new scenarios for farming on the Peninsula. Farming is now the single most important business in our region because we are soon going to have to learn to feed ourselves.

At the beginning of the 20th century nearly 50% of Canadians were farmers. At the beginning of the 21st century only 3% of Canadians still farm and many of these farms belong to big corporate interests and are not serving the needs of the local populations. This decline in farming has been exacerbated by the Green House Gases (GHGs) created partly by the way in which we farmed and the unnecessary transportation of food from one region to another spreading crop diseases along the way.

On our Peninsula, farmers have struggled with the overvaluation of land, the increasing costs of fuel and the unfair competition of the gigantic food wholesalers who fill our stores with their products and squeeze out the small local producer. Local farmers have also simply been forgotten by the vast majority of urban dwellers who are so disconnected from the land they have no idea where their food comes from.

As a result of the changes that global warming will bring we will no longer be able to rely on California to provide us with the abundance to which we are accustomed. California will become much hotter and much drier and, since they have already nearly drained their aquifers and other water supplies, the melting of the glaciers and snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains will mean the end of farming or at least the end of any extra available for export.

Farming is rapidly going to become a life or death issue just about everywhere on the globe including in our own back yard.

We need to strengthen the Agricultural Land Reserve and recognize that it serves more than one function. Recently it was pointed out to me that the ALR creates buffers around our urban areas so that we don’t become one massive sprawling city like the Seattle to Oakland corridor. It should be much more difficult to remove land from the ALR and we should ensure that each region is putting land back into the reserve as time goes on. Land can be rehabilitated and yes it takes time, but we will have to do it. Dig up unused roadbeds like the one running parallel to East Saanich Road and set it up for community gardens. Search the region for brownlands and waste sites and start the longterm rehab programme now.

We need to ensure that golf courses and hobby horse farms cannot be built on reserve lands.

We need to ensure that what is grown is healthy, sustainable and meets our basic needs. To do this we must lobby the federal government to fully fund the experimental farm on East Saanich Road to provide useful research and assistance for local farmers as we begin the change to global warming preparedness.

A local Central Saanich farmer reminded me that “government could help through property tax breaks that encourage property owners to provide habitat, as well as food production: the combination makes healthier land-use.” This means that farmlands that are not currently in use aren’t taxed differently than lands that are currently cultivated. It also means that farmers will be able to leave treed areas as habitat because they won’t be penalized through their taxes for doing so and when a grandchild wants to return to farming, this land will still be available to them. “Returning the land to woodlot for 15-20 years could give turn-around time, provide green space, wildlife habitat and still keep the land available for future generations. It's a small thing, but a change in the ALR could be very good for preserving family farms”.

These are only a few thoughts and I have been actively promoting growing organic vegetables in your own backyard through the BCGEU CoolCommunities Campaign by having Robin Tunnicliff and Mat Kemshaw make presentations to BCGEU members. I am hoping after Christmas to follow up with workshops by Cathy Rasmussen of the BC Fruit Tree Growers Association and by having a presentation on First Nations food gathering by Greg Sam.

It is imperative that we each take steps to begin the learning process and that we recognize the valuable work of the local farmers on the Saanich Peninsula.

2008-11-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

Letter to Times-Colonist

Dear Editor:

Iain Hunter’s comments in “The petty meanness of municipal politics”, November 10th, are just plain wrong when he suggests that rocky or boggy ground in Central Saanich should be okay to build on. He suggests “a few modest houses” would provide farmers “with income and new tenants the pleasures of country living.”

First of all the houses proposed are rarely ‘modest’ and will cost the taxpayers a great deal of money over time because of the provision and maintenance of infrastructure and other services outside our carefully community-chosen urban containment boundaries.

It’s not the farmer, but the developer who will get most of the money and those who move in will immediately begin complaining about the farm odours, the smoke from burning, the early morning machinery start-ups etc. We have these buffers between farmland, industrial land and urban areas for a reason.

We are one of the only countries in the world that so easily writes off land as ‘unfarmable’ to say nothing of the other values embodied in that land. The rocky hillside at Vantreight farms was visited by a snowy owl just this week and the arbutus and garry oaks that clothe that hillside are protected species providing a safe haven for what’s left of the wildlife in our area.

As for anyone who wants to build homes on a bog, they’d best check with insurance companies first. We have several homes built on old bogs or floodplains and the natural water problems they have throughout the winter are only increased by those who have built upslope from them. This will only worsen with the increase in rain that is predicted for this area as a result of climate change.

It would be nice if those judging our municipality attended our council meetings and read our Official Community Plan before commenting.

2008-11-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

Tree-Lined Streets 'Cut Asthma'

Children who live in tree-lined streets have lower rates of asthma, a New York-based study suggests.

BBC News

Columbia University researchers found that asthma rates among children aged four and five fell by 25% for every extra 343 trees per square kilometre.

They believe more trees may aid air quality or simply encourage children to play outside, although they say the true reason for the finding is unclear.

The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
US rates of childhood asthma soared 50% between 1980 and 2000, with particularly high rates in poor, urban communities.

In New York City, asthma is the leading cause of admission to hospital among children under 15.

The researchers found the city had an average of 613 street trees per square kilometre, and 9% of young children had asthma.

The link between numbers of trees and asthma cases held true even after taking into account sources of pollution, levels of affluence and population density, the researchers said.

However, once these factors were taken into account, the number of trees in a street did not appear to have any impact on the number of children whose asthma was so severe that they required hospital treatment.

Exposure theory
Some experts believe that children who are exposed to few microbes in early life are at an increased risk of asthma because their immune systems do not get the practice they need at fighting infection. Therefore, if a tree-lined street encourages outside play, it might help reduce the risk of asthma by maximising the odds that children will be exposed to microbes.

However, trees are also a source of pollen, which may potentially exacerbate asthma symptoms in vulnerable children.

Lead researcher Dr Gina Lovasi admitted the effect, if any, of trees was far from clear.

She said: "There may be something else healthful about the areas that had more trees. "For example, trees could be more abundant in areas that are well maintained in other ways."

Leanne Male, assistant director of research at the charity Asthma UK, said: "Previous research looking at the influence of the environment on levels of asthma has focused on negative aspects, such as pollution and chemical exposure. "This innovative report is the first to look specifically at the potentially beneficial effects of trees in urban areas and raises some interesting issues. "However, there are a number of other factors that have not been considered, for example whether the families involved have pets.

"Despite the need for further work, this is a positive first step into a new area of research linking the environment and asthma."

New York City is planning to plant 1 million extra trees by 2017.

TreeLink
352 S. Denver St., Suite 315
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
Office 801-363-3435
Fax 801-363-3532
Cell 801-971-7101
www.treelink.org
Join Our Mailing List!

The Campaign Leaflet

2008-10-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

"Hello, I'm Sue Stroud:

As your neighbour in Central Saanich, I am running for Council to give you a voice at the table. Our community is at a crossroads. We can develop every parcel of land and leave nothing for future generations, or we can protect rural and agricultural land to help ensure food security for all.

I will work to protect the environment, the rural character of Central Saanich and our quality of life. Together we can build a strong, vibrant and sustainable future for our community."

Why You Should Vote For Me

As a 38-year resident of Central Saanich, I am familiar with the complex and varied issues of interest and concern to citizens. I am committed to working on your behalf in the best interest of the community. Having attended and participated in regular Council and Committee meetings and other local government proceedings over a period of six years, I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience that I believe will enable me to be an effective member of Council.

A Proven Record of Commitment, Dedication and Service to the Community

· Former Member of the Central Saanich Heritage Committee
· Member of the Central Saanich Energy Committee and Transportation Management Association
· Member of the Central Saanich Delegation that presented the community’s public transportation concerns and Tanner Ridge citizens’ petition to BC Transit
· Member of the successful ‘Save Our Ferry Committee’ that worked to retain the Brentwood Bay-Mill Bay Ferry Service
· With other community members, collected 1660 signatures in an attempt to persuade Council to save the village trees during the Brentwood Bay Revitalization Project
· Secured the necessary insurance funding for the new soft plastics recycle depot initiative at the Municipal Hall
· Advocate for subsidized and affordable housing

What You Can Expect in the Future

Community Building and Co-operation: A Commitment to Include Citizens in the Decision-Making Process
· Repeal the undemocratic motions from Sept 2007 that made it harder for citizens to be heard and participate in decisions affecting them
· Create new citizen committees to advise Council on environmental issues and other matters of importance to the community
· Develop a dispute resolution system to assist Council, District Staff and neighbours to resolve difficult issues
· Initiate a process of regular tri-governmental meetings with First Nations to ensure they are included in the discussions

Preservation: A Commitment to Rural Central Saanich

· Lobby senior levels of government for more help for farming families such as buyouts, lease-backs, tax changes to protect wildlands and habitat, strengthening the ALR & pensions
· Lobby provincial government for funding for a full-time environmental planner to assess all projects, search for grants, advise on sustainability issues, report on the state of our environment and provide periodic measurements and analysis
· Find more funding and support for community groups seeking to protect and restore our environment and to build community gardens and food forests
· Encourage more community workshops on the environment with a focus on sustainable farming, and protection of Saanich Inlet from over-development
· Protect our heritage -- not just our history, culture, traditions and buildings -- but the natural environment that gives Central Saanich its character and ambience and makes it a special place to live

Conservation: A Commitment to Responsible Fiscal Management, Sound Decision-Making and Sustainable Principles

· Use our financial resources wisely and carefully and live within our means
· Find less costly, more sustainable ways to maintain our infrastructure and public assets
· Respect our natural environment and conserve land and water resources
· Assess the community’s carbon footprint and find ways to collectively reduce it; report out regularly on our progress
· Make the Precautionary Principle the first measure and bottom line of everything we do

Saturday November 15th
Vote for Sue Stroud

All Candidates meetings:

Thursday Nov 6th, 7 to 9 pm at Bayside School, hosted by the Chamber of Commerce and the Peninsula News Review

Wednesday Nov 12th, 7 to 9:30 pm, Seniors Centre, 1229 Clarke Road (beside the Library), hosted by the Central Saanich Ratepayers’ Association

You can vote at the Municipal Hall 1903 Mt. Newton X Road or at the Cultural Centre at the Library.
You can vote early on Nov 5th or 12th at the Municipal Hall.
For details see http://www.centralsaanich.ca/hall/Departments/Administration/election.htm or call the Municipal Hall at 250-652-4444

Contact Sue at 250-652-3278 or by emailing sue_stroud@hotmail.com
See also http://centralsaanichnewsviews.blogspot.com/ for further information

2008-09-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

The Tortoise and The Hare: A Parable for Central Saanich

We have been characterised as a ‘go slow’ municipality by some, as if that were a bad thing. In fact ‘go slow’ is exactly what Central Saanich should be doing given the changes we are facing. It’s time to be sure we have assessed what we have and what we need for future generations. It’s time take an environmental inventory of our water, our trees, our wildlife, the stresses on our land and on our air.

Are we willing to say goodbye forever to the eagles who grace our skies and rest in our tree tops? Are we willing to say goodbye forever to the salmon and the seals and the otters in the inlet? Do we care if our aquifers are draining and recharge is impossible because we’ve over paved? Do we care about the overheated microclimate we’ve created because we took down so many trees? Do we care about the costs incurred in terms of more frequent paving and the need for more storm drains because we cut the trees?

The accelerated pace of consumption has blinded us to the need to conserve finite resources. There is a total disconnection between what we buy and the resources used to make these products. We buy tomatoes from California because we think they are cheaper when, in fact, they are more expensive than local tomatoes because we are not factoring in all the costs, such as the cost to the environment of hauling chemically ripened fruit long distances in polluting vehicles.

The same goes for the setting of our municipality. We say we love its green coolness and its rural ambience, but then we want to build outside our urban containment areas and buffer zones and we claim that we only want to build on unfarmable land as if that were the only test with which we need to concern ourselves.

It’s time we looked more closely at climate, food security, rural preservation, conservation of resources and whether we have a moral right to use up everything and leave nothing for the future. It’s time we measured our ‘success’ in terms of need rather than greed. It’s time we hired an environmental planner with the power to overrule excessive footprinting.

So remember the tortoise who beat the hare and take your time to go slow, measure and set a sustainable pace!

2008-09-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

Saving Trees Saves Taxes

Trees are good citizens and if looked after wisely they can help a municipality like ours save large sums of money that could then be redirected for other purposes.

Costly Pavement
“The asphalt paving on streets contains stone aggregate in an oil binder. Without tree shade, the oil heats up and volatizes, leaving the aggregate unprotected. Vehicles then loosen the aggregate which grinds down the pavement. Streets are overlaid or slurry sealed every 7-10 years over a 30-40 year period, after which reconstruction is required. A slurry seal costs approximately $0.27/sq.ft. or $50,000/linear mile (US figures) but because the oil does not dry out as fast on a shaded street as it does on a street with no shade trees, this street maintenance can be deferred. The slurry seal can be deferred from every 10 years to every 20-25 years for older streets with extensive tree canopy cover.” (Tree Guidelines for San Joaquin Valley Communities 1999)

Expensive Storm Water Management
“In Milwaukee, where urban trees cover about 16 per cent of the city, trees reduce storm water flows by 22 per cent. The city saves an estimated $15.4 million by avoiding the construction of additional retention capacity. In Austin, heavy rains make storm water management a priority issue. Austin's tree canopy, almost twice that of Milwaukee's at approximately 30 per cent, reduced storm water flow by 28 per cent, providing the city with an estimated $122 million in savings.” (MacDonald, 1996)

“The canopy of a street tree absorbs rain, reducing the amount of water that will fall on pavement and then must be removed by a storm water drainage system. In one study, an 8-year old Cork Oak intercepted 27 percent of the gross rainfall, while a 9-year old Bradford Pear intercepted 15 percent. Savings are possible since cities can install surface water management systems that handle smaller amounts of runoff.” (Xiao, et. al., 2000)

Thrifty Shading and Protecting
“One tree that shades your home in the city will also save fossil fuels, cutting CO2 build-up as much as 15 forest trees.” (National Arbor Day Foundation–US)

Placing deciduous trees on the south and west sides of your home will shade you in the summer and allow sunlight in, in winter. Fir trees on the north side of your home will protect you from cold winter winds.

Research reports savings of between 10 and 15 % on winter heating costs thanks to trees acting as windbreaks, and cooling cost reductions of 20 & 50% in summer due to shade and cooling through evapotranspiration.” (Heisler, 1986)

Cleaning Up Our Environment
“Poplar & cottonwood trees can break down carcinogenic groundwater contaminants such as trichloroethylene (TCE) and Atrazine into harmless compounds.” (Black, 1995; EPA, 1996)

“Trees, especially those with large leaf surfaces, absorb and trap airborne dirt and chemical particles such as nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone. Trees also help by reducing wind speed so that heavy particles settle out.” (Nowak 1994, Harris 1992)

Decreased Crime
Studies in the US show that developments with large trees have less crime: “compared with apartment buildings that had little or no vegetation, buildings with high levels of greenery had 52 % fewer total crimes, including 48% fewer property crimes and 56 % fewer violent crimes.”

“Residents from buildings with trees reported using more constructive, less violent ways of dealing with conflict in their homes.” (Kuo and Sullivan, 2001 & 1999)

Increased Real Estate Values
“Several studies have shown that the value of homes in neighbourhoods with trees are higher than in those of comparable neighbourhoods without trees. In addition, neighbourhood green spaces or greenways typically increase the value of properties located nearby.” (Theriault et al, 2002)

Trees added $9,500 US, or more than 18% to the average sale price of a residence in a suburb of Rochester, New York. (D.J. Nowak, Benefits of Community Trees, USDA)

Increased Economic Sustainability
Businesses leasing spaces in treed developments find their workers more productive and absenteeism reduced. Trees enhance community economic stability by attracting businesses and tourists. People linger and shop longer along tree lined streets. (Michigan State University Extension, Urban Forestry; University of Washington Study)

Traffic Calming
Tall trees give the perception of making the street feel narrower, slowing people down. (National Arbor Day Foundation-US)

Costs Vs. Benefits
A study of the benefits and costs of tree planting in Chicago found that the projected value of trees (e.g. pollution reduction, energy saving, property value) is nearly three times greater than the projected costs. (McPherson et al., 1995)

“Each of us is responsible for over 4,600 pounds of carbon per year…In one year a single acre of trees can absorb as much carbon as is produced by a car driven 26,000 miles…The death of one 70 year old tree would return over 3 tons of carbon to the atmosphere.” (International Society of Arborists)

Priceless: Health & Well Being
Trees create a sense of well being that relaxes you, lowers your blood pressure and slows you down. “In laboratory research, visual exposure to settings with trees has produced significant recovery from stress within five minutes, as indicated by changes in blood pressure and muscle tension.” (Ulrich, 1984)

Symptoms of children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) are relieved after contact with nature. The greener the setting the more the relief. By comparison, activities indoors such as watching TV, or outdoors in paved, non-green areas leave ADD children functioning worse. (Taylor, et al., 2001)

“Trees purify the air; they also purify the mind……if you want to save your world, you must save the trees.”
The Trees of Endor

Quotes and statistics used in this piece may be found at
http://www.treesaregood.com/home.aspx
http://www.treelink.org/docs/about.php
http://www.coloradotrees.org/benefits.htm
See also City of Saskatoon, Urban Forestry branch
This leaflet has been prepared by Sue Stroud

2008-09-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

Community Vision.Org

Take time to sign a very important petition at http://www.cscommunityvision.org/RCSPetition.aspx

Changes proposed to the Regional Growth Strategy will create pressure for more development. This election will be about development vs environment. It will be about the size of our footprint and whether we intend to leave anything for future generations. It will be about maintaining the rural community we love or becoming just like all the other rubberstamped towns like Langford.

Think about it.

2008-09-10T17:28:00.000-07:00

Apple Pie in a Regional Context: a lesson for all

The Central Saanich Regional Context Statement explains how our Official Community Plan fits into the Regional Growth Strategy of the Capital Region. The current proposed wording says we would provide municipal services outside the urban containment areas for four reasons only: health, environment, agriculture and fire suppression. On the face of it, this sounds easy as apple pie.

But right now, not only is there no recipe for the pie, we don’t know if we have any of the ingredients. What should we be checking for?

First, we don't know the carrying capacity of our land and water table. How much 'growth' is okay? Or too much? How much do we preserve for future uses? What are the climate change predictions for this area, and their impact on our carrying capacity? What are regional water consumption trends, and their longer-term affect on us? Will the proposed services help or just delay the inevitable? For these questions alone, we need a full time environmental planner to carry out environmental impact studies – with regular followups to capture and measure any changes.

Second, we have no way to measure the true need for requested exemptions – other than what is in a submission. At the very minimum, effective guidelines should require every submission be accompanied by receipts or professional reports to demonstrate they have done everything reasonable to mitigate the problem prior to requesting municipal services – and, as a matter of public interest, available at the municipal hall. The municipality should be putting together a list of expectations--acceptable proofs and acceptable third party verifiers--for those wishing services to follow. Among the expectations would be robust covenants that prevent a provision of service from becoming a ‘thin edge of the wedge’, leading to unsustainable development that further drains our resources.

Third, we need clear and unequivocal information about the impacts (health, fiscal, effectiveness of services) of proposed extension of services, and alternatives to the proposed service extension.

Fourth, guidelines embedded in the OCP. We all appreciate that using guidelines based on policies of the council would save time (and public hearings). But council policies, no matter how good, can be easily overturned by the next council. Poor foundations for the certainty needed by both citizens and developers. Rather like dicing a few crab apples into the bowl.

Given what’s riding on their decisions, we really need the cooks to overcome any temptation to improvise.

Our new OCP falls short because of vague concerns about being ‘too prescriptive.’ However, prescriptions have a role in maintaining our health and wellbeing – and may be necessary to establish the clear and constant guidelines so essential to preserving our ‘green and pleasant land’.

This isn’t about denying people clean and healthy water. This isn't about denying someone a piece of the pie. It is about making sure the tree that provides the apples is there for the next generation.

2008-09-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

September 3, 2008

Dear Mayor and Councillors,

I am really becoming more and more concerned that we are preparing policies that will do great environmental harm to our community, destroying its agricultural and intrinsic value right when we most need to be protecting it. I know this is not what any of you intend, there is not one of you that would knowingly harm Central Saanich, but this what may result if we don’t stop and gather scientific information before we go any further.

How can we allow something like the Regional Context Statement to go through when we don't even know what the baselines of sustainability are in our community? We have nothing to tell us how many homes, businesses and farms our water table can handle or whether our land will be seriously depleted of nutrients as a result of climate change. We do know that all around us others are building willy-nilly and they are undoubtedly depleting the water and other resources that are available to us all.

We have nothing to measure any of the four criteria with, we are simply trusting what others have done, who themselves have no way to measure what the environment around us can sustain. It’s not anyone’s fault that we don’t have these measures, we never understood that we needed them before, but now we know that we are in trouble and need to conserve the resources we have.

Maybe we need to take a step back and develop measures using the best science available (Dr. Weaver at UVic would be a good person to guide this process).

We have an obligation to be sure that we are doing no further harm to our environment and that what we pass on to the youngsters in our community is in the best condition possible. We have an obligation not to continue with business as usual when we can’t say with certainty that what we are doing will do no harm.

Changes need to be made immediately and going slowly is probably the most important first step we can take. We have to look at the long term and not be persuaded by immediate pressures.

The problems we are facing are global in scale, but we need to find local government solutions if we are to overcome them. The time we have to make the change is short. Will we continue to grow when growth is contra-indicated or will we have the courage to stop, examine and make the changes that are needed?

Sue Stroud

2008-08-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

Municipal Mail in Ballots
-with thanks to Sara Ribeiro at Central Saanich Municipal Hall

In July, a report was presented to Central Saanich Council with an accompanying Election Procedures Bylaw to incorporate mail-in ballot voting and mobile voting for the 2008 local government election. Below is an excerpt from that Bylaw pertaining to mail-in ballot voting for your information. Please note S. 16 which stipulates who may participate in the mail-in ballot voting opportunity.

PART 3 – MAIL BALLOT VOTING
Authorization

16 An elector who:
(1) has a physical disability, illness, or injury that affects his or her ability to vote at another voting opportunity, or
(2) expects to be absent from the District on general voting day and at the times of all advance voting opportunities may vote by mail ballot.

Application procedure

17 A person wishing to vote by mail ballot may apply in writing by providing their name and address to the Chief Election Officer, during the period commencing seven (7) days before the first day of advance voting and ending at 4:00 p.m. on the date two (2) days before general voting day.

18 Upon receipt of a request for a mail ballot, the Chief Election Officer shall, between the first day of advanced voting and 4:00 p.m. on the date two (2) days before general voting day:
(1) make available to the applicant by mail or in person, a mail ballot package containing the ballots, forms, envelopes and other documents required under the Local Government Act ; and,
(2) immediately record and, upon request, make available for inspection the name and address of the person to whom the mail ballot package was issued; and,
Voting procedure

19 In order to be counted for an election, an elector’s mail ballot must be mailed or delivered to the Chief Election Officer at the address specified on the outer envelope provided in the mail ballot package so that it is received no later than the close of voting on general voting day.
Ballot acceptance or rejection

20 Upon receipt of mail ballot packages before the close of voting on the general voting day, the Chief Election Officer shall record the time and date of its receipt and shall examine the certification envelope.

21 If the Chief Election Officer is satisfied as to:
(1) the identity and entitlement to vote of the elector whose ballot is enclosed; and
(2) the completeness of the certification, the Chief Election Officer shall mark the certification envelope as “accepted” and shall mark the voting book to indicate that the elector has voted.

22 The unopened certification envelopes marked as “accepted” shall remain in the custody of the Chief Election Officer until the close of voting on general voting day, at which time the Chief Election Officer shall, in the presence of at least one other election official, in addition to any scrutineers present:
(1) open the certification envelopes;
(2) place the unopened secrecy envelopes together into a ballot box;
(3) open the secrecy envelopes and remove the ballots within; and
(4) insert the ballots into the vote counting unit.

23 The Chief Election Officer shall retain all certification envelopes together with the voting books and for the purposes of document retention and destruction shall treat the certification envelopes in the same manner as a voting book.

24 If:
(1) upon review of an outer envelope, the Chief Election Officer is not satisfied as to the identity of the elector whose ballot is enclosed or the completeness of the certification; or
(3) the outer envelope is received by the Chief Election Officer after the close of voting on general voting day, the certification envelope shall remain unopened and the Chief Election Officer shall mark such envelope as “rejected” and shall note the reasons for the rejection..

25 Any certification envelopes and their contents rejected in accordance with Section 24 of this Bylaw shall remain unopened and shall not be counted in the election.
Challenge of elector

26 Between the time an elector requests a mail ballot package and the time that the mail ballot package is hand delivered or mailed to the elector requesting it, the elector’s right to vote may be challenged under section 116 of the Local Government Act.
Replacement of spoiled ballot

27 Where an elector unintentionally spoils a mail ballot before returning it to the Chief Election Officer, the elector may request a replacement ballot by advising the Chief Election Officer of the ballot spoilage and by mailing or otherwise delivering by any appropriate means, the spoiled ballot package in its entirety to the Chief Election Officer.

28 The Chief Election Officer shall, upon receipt of the spoiled ballot package, record such fact and issue a new mail ballot package to the elector.

For more info call Central Saanich Municipal hall at 652-4444 or check out the website:
http://www.centralsaanich.ca/hall/Departments/Administration/election.htm

2008-08-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Published on Monday, August 18, 2008 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Loss Looms in Seattle’s Urban Forests
by Nancy Dickeman
Fir, cedar, pine: trees that tower, weaving a grove, bringing us the forest. Willow, ash, birch, elm: trees that bend to the wind, the gusts spinning branches. Apple, hawthorn, dogwood, plum: bearers of blossoms and fruit.

This is the litany of trees that carry wind through branches and cradle the nests of birds.These are trees that have come of age, the trunk’s rings telling their years, that in Seattle are disappearing by human design. City leaders boast of a goal for 30 percent tree canopy, yet strive towards it with the curious strategy of deforestation, followed by the planting of saplings.In this scheme, trees and forests are not treasured for their intrinsic value, for their role as anchors in a chain of habitat.

The role a mature tree plays in stemming climate change is dismissed with a wink and a nod to the new shoots of saplings — 70 times less effective in their role in reducing pollution. Little heed is given to the fact that thoughtless new construction abets the forces of climate change.

Beyond the service trees provide us is the home they make to wildlife. In the Maple Leaf neighborhood, near Waldo Woods, I watched an eagle land on the tallest fir. Waldo Woods is one of Seattle’s three remaining urban forests. On land once owned by Camp Fire, and the site of the former Waldo Hospital, much of the forest is slated for clearcutting, making way for new town home construction. While the developer touts that part of the grove will be saved, there is no mention that 72 trees will be lost, nor concern for the fate of the remaining trees. Once the interlocked system of roots is broken, the trees left behind are imperiled by the loss of their collective whole.

North of Maple Leaf, at Ingraham High School, a second remaining urban forest is scheduled to be torn down as part of the high school’s renovation. Despite available land on-site that would avoid the trees’ destruction, the renovation’s design zeroed in not only on requiring new construction but also on the specific piece of land where 84 trees stand. The school district and the city seem indifferent to tearing them out.

These native forests — that have grown over decades, extending from the land, forming a silhouette in the sky, protecting our air and water — cannot be replicated by saplings that will take decades to mature. They are ornamentals often chosen to match a designer’s cardboard visions, more suitable for blueprints than neighborhoods.An Eastern Washington judge recently sentenced a citizen to prison for the destruction and theft of dozens of mature cedars, saying “it is like stealing a part of the history of our country.”

Yet in Seattle, the mayor, Seattle Public Schools and Camp Fire, conjoined with developers, are all too eager to raze two of three of our city’s remaining urban forests, to steal our history and the Earth’s riches, in the quest for excessive density and a quick buck.

Driving through Seattle, the city still hints of neighborhoods graced with green. Yet if we continue with plans to tear down these groves of trees, we will discover too late what it means to destroy something irreplaceable.

If we are not careful, we may turn the Emerald City into a barren city of asphalt and stone.Nancy Dickeman lives in Seattle.

©1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

2008-08-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

People who will not sustain trees will soon live in a world which cannot sustain people.
-- Bryce Nelson

2008-07-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

On Trees: Save or Cut? A Loss We Can't Repair

Trees have been going down at a great rate in Brentwood Bay this year. It seems the municipality set a precedent by cutting the beautiful trees on our main street despite 1600+ mostly local signatures asking them not to, and now some developers and homeowners have decided to follow suit.

The Bickford trees pictured here are some of those still left on site after many trees were cut earlier in preparation for a new multi-family development just above Trafalgar Square. These are unquestionably heritage trees of an age and size that should make them untouchable. The developer says he has an arborist's report and a hydro report that say they should come down. Have you ever heard of an arborist's report or hydro report that says the trees should stay? Rarely if ever, I'm sure.

It is very easy to set the stage for removing a tree that took decades to reach this size. As you can see the power lines run in front of the trees and the trees are not encroaching. These are healthy trees and should not be taken down.

The maple on the property that the Brentwood Inn is about to turn into 6 condos at $1.4 million each is to be saved apparently, but citizens will have to be watchful. What is the value of a tree like this? It is priceless. Its roots hold our storm waters in the ground and thereby help prevent flooding. Its leaves breathe for us, cleaning our air of the GHGs from the cars along the road and the off-gassing of the pavement itself. Its shade cools the pavement keeping the pavement from creating unpleasant micro-climates that heat us up further. Its branches and trunk provide homes for the birds that eat mosquitoes and other annoying pests. When we cut down a tree we throw the balance of nature out in that spot. Dan Behune has stated that he always intended to make every effort to save the maple and the other native trees on the property and for that we should thank him. It's important to let people know that we are watching and we are concerned.

What will happen to the trees along Mt Newton if the Senanus pipeline goes through?

What will happen to the "mostly-treed" properties along Keating that some would to use to expand the industrial corridor?

Every time you cut one tree you are interfering with others in the interdependency that makes a forest even in an urban setting.

If we have any understanding at all of the global emergency we are facing we would know that we need to keep every tree we can. We need to build around our trees. We need to plant more fast growing, drought tolerant large trees (not ornamentals in need of much watering and bred to stay small).

We need our Council to start saying no to cutting and start saying yes to making sure we keep our lovely village and rural countryside green.

2008-07-06T17:13:00.000-07:00

How Do Our Councillors Rate?

We have to start thinking about rating our Councillors’ performance. So from first to worst here are my observations after 6 years of regular Council attendance (they are listed alphabetically where tied) :

Do they make sure we can see how they voted on every issue or do they go out of their way to hide this most important information, including trying to change procedures to eliminate any sign of how they voted; do they actively try and make the votes more transparent?

1. King
2. Bryson
3. Graham, Mar
4. Garrison, Mason
5. Thompson

Do they sincerely care about the environment or are they just greenwashing their own and our District’s record (this includes doing research, making proposals, finding funding and proposing tougher bylaw & OCP wording vs watering down, creating loopholes and refusing to reconsider when a bad decision has been made)?

1. King
2. Bryson
3. Graham, Mar
4. Garrison, Mason, Thompson

Did they provide a welcome atmosphere for citizens coming to council with ideas and problems, or did they whine about too many citizens showing up or that the same ones show up regularly (this includes placing letters at the end of the agenda and finding other ways to muzzle citizens; interrupting, being rude, rolling their eyes, belittling in the media etc)?

1. Bryson, King
2. Graham
3. Mar
4. Garrison
5. Mason
6. Thompson

Are they only interested in their own ‘perspective’ or are they actually listening to the community?

1. Bryson, King,
2. Graham, Mar
3. Thompson
4. Mason
5. Garrison

Special mention needs to made of Councillor Bryson’s reminders that applause and scornful comments may intimidate some of the speakers at Council and that is undemocratic. His wise and thoughtful comments on many issues are very helpful.

Councillor King is far and away the most concerned about our environment and although the vote is almost always against him he never gives up trying to put forward ideas that are for the benefit of our community. He is also the champion of citizen participation and inclusiveness as he encourages people to bring their thoughts, ideas and concerns to Council and to participate on both citizen-initiated and council committees.

I find Councillor Graham and Mayor Mar to be sincere and hardworking, willing to listen to what citizens present for the most part and willing to stand up and be counted on difficult issues. I don't always agree with their decisions, but I do respect them.

Almost all the Councillors have had a 'shining moment' at some point, but this list is meant to be reflective of the general state of affairs.

Someone spoke to me the other day about their anger over part of the new draft Official Community Plan. I pointed out to them that it is a draft only at this point and there is still plenty of opportunity for input and change. Councillors did not make all (or even most of), the suggestions that went into the draft: staff, citizens and the consultant have all added pieces to the document, so saying the Council should be thrown out because the document contains bits you don’t like is quite unfair.

It's interesting to note (see the articles below, especially that on the Civic Leagues and one called 3 Unfair Motions and Their Implications from September 2007) that the sense that Councillors' are hiding the votes so we can't know who stands for what is quite universal in the region, and in fact, in Guelph, Ontario citizens got the Council to buy a voting machine to record the vote as it is cast and project it on the wall for all to see. Knowing how they voted is fundamental to any democracy. Without it we have only a sham.

I guess we need the machine too.

2008-07-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

"The earth provides enough to satisfy every one's need, but not every one's greed." - Mahatma Gandhi

For a long time I've been pondering need and greed, wondering how some can be so cavalier about taking more and more as if by right while the rest of us have trouble just getting by.

It's a problem that we all understand when we think in terms of the world: we see the unbearable poverty of Africa and the flaunted billions of the corporate baronetcy, but we don't seem to recognize the same disparity in our own little piece of paradise.

How can it be acceptable for someone to come to Central Saanich Council because they need variances for a 10,000 sq ft home on prime farmland?

How can others lobby for a water pipeline to serve 7-bathroom homes, homes with spas and indoor/outdoor pools, water features and other frills even though our aquifers are being drained and neighbours with more modest lifestyles are deprived of water they always had before the greedy came along?

It seems that our greed is boundless: as long as we can leverage the money we will do what we want.

We need a Council willing to say no to this kind of unsustainable 'lifestyle.'

We need bylaws that limit the size of houses (Oak Bay recently passed a bylaw to limit homes to 3,000 sq ft and other jurisdictions have had such limits for years).

We need environmental standards in place and we need them enforced: for water, for trees, for recycling and for every other environmental concern..

The best way to do this would be to hire an environmental planner for the District, whose job it is to prepare new bylaws; research new methods of water conservation, power production and reduction and other environmental innovations; find the funding to help homeowners, businesses and the District to get the job done; and to put in place tests, measures, reviews and enforcement to be sure we are doing what we should be doing.

Some have suggested funding as a problem, but Councillor Zeb King showed that if the time is spent doing the research and preparing the applications there is money to be had from senior levels of government and from foundations and organizations dedicated to environmental preservation.

Nothing is impossible.
Only greed will fail.

2008-07-01T15:52:00.000-07:00

S-P-R-A-W-L: Undermining the Regional Growth Strategy

If the Senanus waterline is passed by Council we will have set a dangerous precedent that undoes the Regional Growth Strategy, endangers our Official Community Plan and sets up a bleak and overbuilt future for rural Central Saanich.

To satisfy the ‘needs’ of people with 7 bathrooms in one house, indoor and outdoor pools and, in one case, a home spa the owner had featured in Western Living Magazine earlier this year, the District of Central Saanich is preparing to build a waterline which will see those not on the line paying unfair amounts to provide service to those whose need appears frivolous at best. Keeping in mind that these homes were bought by people who knew that they were outside the Urban Containment Zones and therefore not eligible to receive services, we have to ask how this pipeline fits into the protection of our rural environment. Everyone is entitled to the basics, but when the basics become this ostentatious one wonders what the ‘need’ is.

Alternatives used by other neighbours along Mount Newton are not enough apparently for these homeowners. Options include wells and cisterns, rainwater harvesting, greywater recycling, green roofs for cooling and for storm water catchment and permeable surfacing so rainwater recharges the aquifer rather than running down the road into storm drains and then into the Inlet. Rain gardens also store water and of course a bit of water 'belt tightening' so that so much isn’t required wouldn’t hurt either. The following material is from the Capital Region District website.

Regional Growth Strategy

The CRD Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) was adopted by the CRD Board on August 13, 2003. The strategy represents an agreement, developed and approved by the member municipalities and the regional district in partnership, on social, economic, and environmental goals and priority actions.

The RGS includes eight strategic initiatives that together express a 25-year program for this joint partnership.

The eight initiatives are:

Keep urban settlement compact
Protect the integrity of rural communities
Protect regional green and blue space
Manage natural resources and the environment sustainably
Build complete communities
Improve housing affordability
Increase transportation choice
Strengthen the regional economy

Regional Context Statements

The Local Government Act Section 866 requires municipalities within a regional district to prepare a Regional Context Statement (RCS) within two years of the adoption of a regional growth strategy (RGS). The purpose of the Regional Context Statement is to outline how the municipality's Official Community Plan is consistent with the RGS or how it may be made consistent over time. The intent is to develop a level of consistency between municipalities and the regional district to achieve common visions and shared goals.

Our Regional Context statement is here: http://www.crd.bc.ca/regionalplanning/growth/documents/CentralSaanichRCS.pdf

2008-06-20T15:12:00.000-07:00

Civic Leagues: Citizens Organize

Last night saw the start of what could be a significant change in the way municipalities connect with citizens throughout this region. An overflow crowd of 200 plus met at the Vancouver Island Ballroom of the Hotel Grand Pacific to discuss how the Guelph Ontario Civic League was formed and how it creates interest in local elections. The sheer size of the crowd pleased (and startled) the organizers who included the Victoria Labour Council, the Dogwood Initiative and the Columbia Institute as well as the newly minted Saanich Civic League.

Topics that sound all to familiar to Central Saanichers came up from every region (judging by the applause!):

-There is no recorded vote for future reference and therefore no accountability
-There is little or no communication with the public on important issues
-There is no warning of changes as local government advertising is minimal at best
-Unresponsive councillors are the norm, those who really listen are rare
-Citizens don’t know what’s going on at Council and don’t know how to find out
-Voter turnout is dismal as people feel disconnected and unheeded

Solutions include:

-Citizens doing surveys to determine what the community values
-Watching council, recording votes and publishing a voting record measured against these values -Keeping the Civic League non-partisan to allow everyone’s input and feedback
-Communicating online, by phone, by postering, by contacting local community groups etc
-Hosting events: serious ones to discuss civic engagement and fun ones to build community
-Fundraising to sustain the effort

One of the speakers asked for a show of hands for each of our local government areas: the room was about 40% Saanich, 40% Victoria and 20% everybody else.

Everyone was delighted to hear that the Guelph Civic League had managed to get its Council into electronic voting with the recorded vote projected on the Council wall instantly. This has not impeded or curtailed discussion, but it does mean that Councillors have to make their own decisions and not wait to see which way the wind is blowing.

Check it out:
http://www.guelphcivicleague.ca/

http://saanichcivicleague.ca/

http://www.coquitlamcivicleague.ca/

Fairness and Accountability

2008-04-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

Central Saanich has once again affirmed that a Councillor can ask for a statement or a set of questions to be recorded as an official part of the minutes.

Gary Nason, Chief Administrative Officer of Central Saanich, made it clear that there is nothing in any act that prevents a Councillor from adding information 'for the record' and that it has been Central Saanich tradition to allow this practice.

Of late, it has been used to clarify important information which could otherwise be misconstrued, misrepresented or mistaken. It's unfortunate that the minutes are not reflective of the debates at Council and it is long overdue for their to be a council "Hansard" with fully recorded votes and statements so that the public can have a record of the decision making process.

I'm glad to see that Central Saanich will continue to allow an open record at least when a councillor specifically asks for one.

Councillor Thompson's pretence that allowing others to record their positions is 'time-consuming' or 'politicking' hides the fact that Councillor Thompson wishes to muzzle the active voice at Council. His position in this instance is no different than his continued attempts to silence the citizens who wish to participate in our democracy.

Our Council needs to be more open, accountable and inviting to all.

Bob Thompson's Bad Memory

2008-04-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Councillor Thompson says he can't remember telling people to get their OCP changes in in the form of motions even though he stated very clearly in the Fireman's Training Hall a few weeks back that 'the more specific the motion the more likely it was to be dealt with." Bob's bad memory is starting to impede the citizens' business as he adds layer after layer of confusion to the process of receiving public input for Council and the OCP. Make sure you take a look at the earlier motions Councillor Thompson promoted last fall to shut down public input.

Game's over Bob - we're on to you! More to follow shortly...

DRAFT OCP is Online - May 7th Open House

2008-04-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

The draft of the new Official Community Plan is online at http://www.centralsaanich.ca/ and click on OCP Update under District Projects down the right hand side. This document is quite long and you will not be able to get the gist of it at the Open House if you haven't taken time to read it before hand.

If you have changes you think should be made send a very specific motion to "Mayor and Council" at municipalhall@csaanich.ca

For example here is one I sent:

Re: Policy 4 page 24 of the draft OCP

Moved that the following line be added at the end of Policy 4: Affordable housing shall include low income subsidised housing administered by the District of Central Saanich or by BC Housing, Capital Region Housing or any of the other non-profit housing societies in the region.

The sooner you send in your ideas the better. Remember community is a verb!

Don't Privatize BC Rivers - Keep BC Hydro Public

2008-04-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

This is the most important and urgent video I have seen. Please pass it on to your friends and neighbours, have house parties, whatever it takes. Our public power is at stake and we must stop the corporate goldrush to privatize our rivers.

http://ashlu.info/video/bcrivers.html

A Parable for Woodwynn Therapeutic Community

2008-03-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

Starfish on the Beach - A Parable for Woodwynn Farm

Once upon a time there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day he was walking along the shore. As he looked down the beach, he saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself to think of someone who would dance to the day. So he began to walk faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man and the young man wasn't dancing, but instead he was reaching down to the shore, picking up something and very gently throwing it into the ocean. As he got closer he called out,"Good morning! What are you doing?" The young man paused, looked up and replied, "Throwing starfish in the ocean." "I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?"

"The sun is up and the tide is going out. And if I don't throw them in they'll die."

"But, young man, don't you realize that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it. You can't possibly make a difference!"

The young man listened politely. Then bent down, picked another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves and said, "It made a difference for that one."

I saw this story on the Rockridge Institute website. We can make a difference, we can save lives.

Soft Plastics recycling takes Central Saanich by storm!

2008-03-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

Have a look at this lovely and funny video of the soft plastics recycling kids from McTavish elementary who inspired our community. Pitching in, working together, laughing and having a good time is what community is all about. Together we can be the change we want to see. Well done!

Councillor Bob Thompson in the TC: A Response

2008-03-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

Councillor Bob Thompson is way off the mark when he defends Central Saanich’s record on affordable housing and homelessness.

The “search for regional solutions” that he refers to should mean that we all provide subsidized housing in our own backyard, not that we slough it off to “the urban core.” Providing money so that Victoria could build wasn’t the reason I stood up at Council so many times and asked them to join the Capital Region Housing Trust Fund (with Bob Thompson voting against the motion over and over). We need subsidized housing built in Central Saanich and every other municipality has a right to complain about us. We are not doing our share. Not by a long shot.

When the homeless count was done twenty-two of the homeless interviewed said that they regularly slept in Central Saanich. Anyone who checked out the waiting lists for housing would discover many individuals and families from Central Saanich waiting for the security of an affordable roof over their heads. Seniors and young people alike are being driven out of our community because we won’t do what’s just and fair and decent.

Too many people in Central Saanich are too comfortable and have no realistic understanding of the housing pandemic around us. Homelessness and the fear of homelessness creates severe physical and mental health problems, policing problems, family breakups and delinquency. The cycle of instability creates depression and inertia and a sense that a family has been abandoned by its community. We are driving people away from their support systems into areas where they will inevitably become addicted or ill, or where they may die.

Central Saanich could and should be making the provision of subsidized housing units a condition of development in our community. I have suggested that 10% of the units of any development or cash in lieu for developments under 10 units, be the standard. Based on the developments just completed, or still in the works this would give us roughly 20-30 units to work with and a considerable sum of cash to cover the additional infrastructure costs. Councillor Thompson regularly raises objections to this idea asking how will we administer it, who will be chosen to live there and what does ‘affordable’ mean? All of his questions have been clearly handled by many other jurisdictions, but he continues to ask the same questions.

Councillor Thompson is our representative to the Capital Region Housing Trust Fund. He has not asked council to allow him to put forward a request for funding for any type of subsidized housing in Central Saanich. Yes, Council would have to work out what it wanted, who would build it and who would house it, but this is never on our agenda. No committee has been struck. No work is being done.

Yes, Central Saanich has created a new secondary suites bylaw. That is not nearly enough considering the backlog of affordable housing needed in our community. And while the bylaw has come in, Central Saanich is still shutting down older, less expensive suites rather than providing long-term, no interest loans to the homeowners so the suites can be remodelled to meet the new bylaw. This is because we have no coherent housing plan for our community. Nor do we speak up and call for the provincial and federal governments to make housing plans and provide funding.

‘Let someone else do it’ should be our civic motto.

Earth Hour: An Opportunity to Make a Statement

2008-02-26T19:56:00.000-08:00

It started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change?
The answer: Ask the people of Sydney to turn off their lights for one hour.

On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney's energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for a year.
With Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off, and unique events such as weddings by candlelight, the world took notice.

Inspired by the collective effort of millions of Sydneysiders, many major global cities are joining Earth Hour in 2008, turning a symbolic event into a global movement. Manila, Toronto, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Brisbane and many more are turning out the lights for one hour March 29, 2008.

We can too. From 8 pm to 9 pm live by candlelight. http://www.earthhour.org/about

Muzzling Councillors

2008-02-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

The motion below (in blue) is coming before council in an attempt to muzzle some of our councillors and prevent them from handing in statements, asking that questions, answers and votes be recorded etc. All this does is undermine our right as citizens to know what is going on at Council. Councillors aren't regularly asking for this and surely a couple of times a month can't be onerous for staff (and if it is we need to hire more staff not punish councillors and voters). A large part of the next election will have to be about transparency and openess. Councillors ask for these things for the sake of clarity so that everyone can know what the debate was about, that due diligence was done as far as questioning is concerned and that Councillors decisions can be rightly interpreted.

That Staff review the ‘Central Saanich Council Procedure Bylaw No. 1094, 1993’ as amended, particularly in regards to the practice of including in the minutes verbatim comments and questions from individual members of Council during the course of Council or Committee deliberations.

Please send letters protesting any further attack on our Councillors rights to be heard and our rights as citizens to know what is going on. Between this and the 3 motions last September it has become harder and harder to trace how decisions are being made. Address letters "To Mayor and Council" and send to municipalhall@csaanich.ca

Councillor King's statement on the Woodwynn vote

2008-02-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

Attached is a statement by Councillor King regarding the recent Council motion to confirm Woodwynn farm as agricultural land and to prohibit any institutional zoning:

"1st. I wish to make it clear that the vote on this motion authored by Councillor Graham is NOT a rejection of Mr. Leblanc’s idea. Nowhere in the motion does it mention Mr. Leblanc’s idea – which has not been received as an application.

2nd By voting in favor of the motion I am not indicating that I am opposed to Mr. Leblanc’s idea as I have not seen details or yet received an application.

I ask that the media and the public NOT characterize this motion as a rejection, but rather it should be seen as a re-affirmation of the existing zoning given limited information.

Voting opposed to Councillor Graham’s motion does not indicate support for Mr. Leblanc’s idea just as a vote in support does not indicate rejection. It is important to follow what the motion says and not attach extra-meaning to it.

If Council wishes to clearly reject a proposal it should wait for an application and then make a clear motion to deny the request. Council must maintain Mr. Leblanc’s “right to an unbiased decision maker” and must keep an “open mind”, which means that it must accept evidence before making final decisions – such as an application.

I believe that Councillor Graham’s motion is premature but is valid given the limited information before council. This means that I can vote in support of the obvious nature of the motion given the lack of an application or information to the contrary. In order to not have a “closed mind” I ask that it be recorded that I recognize that this motion does not bind my hands or the hands of council if presented with information in the future.

1) This motion is therefore unnecessary… AND I move to postpone the motion until an application is received for deliberation.

2) I move that Council indicate it has not made a decision on the idea presented by Mr. Leblanc AND that Council remains “open minded and unbiased” if Mr. Leblanc wishes to proceed with an application… "

Note that the link attached to this article will take you to the minutes for the Feb 11 Planning and Development Committee meeting where you can look at the motion that was passed, Richard Leblanc's presentation and Councillors King's 12 questions with Mr. Leblanc's answers.

http://www.centralsaanich.ca/__shared/assets/08Feb11_Planning___Development_Minutes1623.pdf

Water Sermon

2008-02-02T15:59:00.000-08:00

This is part of a sermon a friend of mine gave to her church a couple of weeks ago:

What is our story today? What needs to be cured in our society today. Do those waters of Jordan that restored the skin of Naaman and brought about his spiritual renewal still baptize communities of faith?

What if Naaman needed to bathe in the river today? In biblical times the river represented freedom from bondage and renewal of spirit. In 1964 Israel began operating a dam that diverts water from the Sea of Galilee, a major Jordan River water provider, to the national water carrier, according to Hillel Glassmam, a stream expert at Israel's Parks Authority. Also in 1964 Jordan constructed a channel that diverted water from the Yarmouk River, another main tributary of the Jordan River. This resulted in great damage to the ecosystem. Syria has also built reservoirs that catch the Yarmouk's waters. In a year, the Yarmouk's flow into the Jordan River will dwindle to a trickle, once Syria and Jordan begin operating a dam they jointly built, he added. The three countries replenished the river with sewage water, agricultural runoff and salt water, Glassman said. The freshwater foliage that once flourished along the river's banks has been replaced with saline vegetation.

What if our local communities need personal and spiritual renewal from our rivers? Will we pay Naaman’s thirty thousand pieces of silver, 10 thousand pieces of gold and 10 changes of clothes? In British Columbia, many of our communities are now receiving their power from private energy corporations. The BC government has granted 'water licenses for power production' on hundreds of British Columbia Rivers & creeks to private energy corporations.
These licenses are for 40-year renewable terms with a very minimal royalty & rent payback to the government. They involve a massive transfer of water- energy and wealth to private corporations, some of who are positioning themselves to be merged or bought by giant U.S. energy corporations.
Prior to the election of the current government virtually all water licenses for power production and all transmission lines were owned by BC Hydro and Power Authority. That means you and me were the owners. This 'integration' allowed British Columbia to have one of the lowest rates for electricity in all North America. Additionally, BC Hydro would often earn tens or hundreds of millions from power exports and that money was turned over to the government for other public expenditures.
The licensing of water for power production to private energy companies represents an extremely significant shift in public policy. While this 'shift' may result in more 'green energy' production, there are enormous environmental, fiscal and political implications that have received little to no examination or debate, either amongst indigenous peoples or other affected communities.
Ask yourself these questions:
Despite an increased demand for electrical energy the current BC government has passed laws which prevent BC Hydro from constructing any more power projects, saying instead that BC Hydro must buy all its future power needs for BC consumers from private energy corporations.
In Alberta residential consumers buy their electrical power from private energy companies, such as EnMax Corporation, at aconsiderably higher prices then what is available from BC Hydro. That scenario is soon coming to British Columbia. Has the government asked you if you want to buy your electricity directly from private energy corporations at whatever price the 'continental electrical energy' market assigns to that energy?
Is it just that the enormous wealth that comes from selling the energy from our rivers & creeks be captured primarily by private corporations when there have been so many closures of schools, hospitals and community care facilities for seniors?
Is it just that the BC government allows private corporations to make such an incredible 'bundle of money' from our rivers and creeks while there is such a high degree of poverty and homelessness in British Columbia, when there is a huge need for more public low-cost housing? Why is it that the government has decided to seek minimal payment of rents, charges and royalties from these private energy corporations?
Is it just that legislation allows these energy corporations to sell-out to bigger United States energy corporations, which implies that our water and energy could come completely under foreign control? Is this good for BC's long-term energy security?
Is it just that the BC government has removed all legal barriers to the export of energy produced in B.C. which implies that there is nothing to stop these companies from directly exporting the power from our rivers/creeks to the United States so as to earn a higher revenue payable in U.S. dollars?
Has the government properly investigated the environmental impact of these private power projects on hundreds or rivers/creeks in British Columbia
Is the broader public interest better served by having our rivers/creeks and 'green' electrical energy production under public ownership and control, or is it better served by private energy corporations?
In low-water flow years how much of our water in those projects will be 'reserved' for power production and how much has been set aside/ 'reserved' for other needs such as wildlife, recreation, etc. ? Can the water licenses be amended or upgraded to give the corporations even more rights to water?
Why have not the the implications for British Columbia been investigated and reported in our mainstream newspaper and television media? Is it just that there is such a monopoly ownership of the mainstream media? Why the cover-up?
Why has not the current BC government made public the information and engaged in a "Conversation on Energy' with British Columbia before allowing this sell-out? Why the secrecy?
Why has the Water Comptroller decided NOT to hold public hearings prior to granting hundreds of water licenses for power production, as he is entitled to do under the Water Act? Where is the accountability? Are there terms and conditions attached to those water licenses, if so, what are they?
Is it just that many of BC's private energy corporations have made significant monetary contributions to the BC Liberal party, and that their 'organization' the "Independent Power Producers" enjoy an extremely close relationship with the Premier and some Cabinet ministers? In your mind do such dealings serve to increase your trust and confidence in the practice of democracy - or not?
When the Squamish Regional District voted twice to deny a private corporation the permission to build a hydroelectric facility on the Ashlu River, the provincial government passed Bill 30, overturning the right of local governments to legislate over local power production projects. Presently, Ledcor, a private energy corporation is building a private hydroelectric generation facility on the Ashlu River. Is this how a democracy should function?
Finally, ask yourself this fundamental question, who pays and who benefits from this enormous shift in 'ownership and control' of public water and energy resources? Do you think that this 'shift' will create a more just, a more equal society or does it set the conditions for a few to benefit privately. Does this 'shift' create the kind of legacy you wish to leave your children and grandchildren?

Where is God in this picture? When is the welfare of the community to be considered?

In these times, however, we have different ways of dealing with politicians who worship false idols. We vote them out. Let us share that God within us and build a community that shares its resources. The next time I fish, swim or seek spiritual renewal in a BC river, I want to give thanks to God and my community, not to a P3.

Liquid Gold

2008-01-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

Liquid Gold: Energy Privatization in British Columbia
by John Calvert

In case you think the Premier’s climate action commitment is anything more than a hoax let me tell you a bit about the incredibly dirty privatization of BC Hydro.

Just before Christmas I took a day long economics course sponsored by the BCGEU and taught by John Calvert. One part of the course was devoted to the changes made to BC Hydro by the BC Liberals and the costs we will all be facing as a result. John has just published an excellent book on the topic called Liquid Gold: Energy Privatization in British Columbia, and I urge everyone to take the time to read it. It will teach you just how our government goes about taking apart our public institutions and using them to make billions for their buddies.

The BC Liberal government has decided to destroy BC Hydro, W.A.C. Bennett’s public power corporation, for the benefit of their friends and corporate backers. No other privatization in Canada comes close to the cost, size and underhanded trickery involved in this one.

Bennett built this corporation because there was no other way to ensure the development of our natural resources, the costs involved were too prohibitive for private businesses to take on. What resulted was a crown corporation that provided clean, extremely cheap electricity to business (far too cheap), and inexpensive electricty for taxpayers. We have had the second lowest rates in North America for the last 20 years and this common asset is the reason.

Gordon Campbell, always attuned to the wails of the corporations who said that BC Hydro had an unfair advantage, decided to open up the goldmine. IPP's (Independent Power Producers), were given insider information in the form of a comprehensive study paid for by taxpayers as to where to place their ‘run of the river’ power plants which were touted as a wonderful environmental innovation. These profiteers have taken out 535 licenses most of which are on First Nations land claims and for which no compensation is planned.

The projects are unquestionably an environmental nightmare. The Parks Act has been changed to allow these smooth operators to clearcut transmission lines through the pristine wilderness of our parks just by asking for the park boundaries to be changed. The projects are small often only in comparison with huge hydro dams. They are not small in any environmental sense. They require large holding reservoirs, access roads -- all the usual disturbances -- and our salmon runs and other wildlife habitat will vanish all the faster as a result.

BC Hydro has been forced to give up it’s transmission lines to a separate corporation called BC Transmissions. Hydro is no longer allowed to create new power. It must now leave this task to private businesses: the run of the river projects. Even worse, BC Hydro is now forced to buy uneconomic power (power that is inconsistently available) from the projects:

“Private developers can thus obtain prices through BC Hydro contracts that are much higher than either the price BC Hydro would pay if it generated the energy itself or the price it would pay to out-of-province suppliers if permitted to rely on this market for some of its future energy requirements [BC Hydro buys low from outside BC in low use hours and sells high during peak hours because the market price of energy fluctuates hourly according to use]. In short the government’s policy framework has resulted in a very sweet deal for private power interests in B.C.”

Citizens can stop this. Unlike columnist Bill Tieleman of The Tyee internet news, I do not believe what the Liberals are doing cannot be stopped and cannot be undone. We will have huge court battles, but if we stick to the principle of 'no taxation without representation' I believe we can fight these multinationals. We must point out that our governments signed trade agreements behind closed doors, with no public input, no due diligence, no public debate and against the public will (polling has proved this time and time again). Therefore our public assets are being sold illegally under the guise of fair market or free trade.

I believe the courts will ultimately uphold this as the basic principle of democracy. Citizens are not less than their governments: governments only serve at the pleasure of the citizens. When we elect them, they do not become our parent and we are not unschooled children. Government is a tool meant to carry out our vision. Did any of us envision massive raw log exports, salmon killed by sea-lice and oil tankers slopping their poison down our coasts? Of course not. Nor did we authorize the sale of our rivers and the destruction of our BC Hydro assets.
The whole idea that BC is facing a power crisis has been manufactured for profit. Read the book and find out the real reasons your BC Hydro rates are about to make a huge jump!

Climate Solutions Institute?

2008-01-29T21:45:00.000-08:00

Gordon Campbell Announces $94.5 Million Cutting Edge Climate Solutions Institute: Believable Conversion or PR Exercise?

Encourage this new BC government initiative, support it, promote it if you wish, but be aware that while Gordon Campbell is making this announcement he is speeding up the processes which allow this province and its resources to be ransacked and pillaged by his corporate friends. While Gordo fiddles a pretty tune, the province continues to burn. It's unfortunate but true that the good people he is hiring are rapidly becoming ‘Nero's guests.’ If citizens want this institute to work they are going to have to watchdog its every step. Otherwise the bulk of this money will likely be spent on buildings, staff, flashy media announcements, meaningless conferences and letterhead.

If this is a true cutting edge institution it will require none of these things, only video conferencing and emailing as needed and some major solutions within the year.

If Campbell really meant to do anything about environmental issues he would have convened a special session of the legislature months ago and introduced bills to enforce climate change and compliance on his corporate friends. He would have already completely revamped government so that floatplane and helijet use is banned, to give just one example of the government addiction to fossil fuels that must be overcome. Do you hear any corporations or government nabobs squealing yet? Until they are you can bet nothing is happening. Campbell isn’t passing the ‘squeal test.’

If he cared at all he would have created a financial cushioning commission at arm’s length from the government for those people and businesses who will suffer due to change. All drive-throughs would have been closed immediately. Fast food outlets would have to prove that their food came from BC and that their packaging was minimal and fully recycled. He would have set up recycling depots in every city and town that would take everything, no ifs, ands, or buts. All environmental initiatives would be fast-tracked and full environmental assessments would be made for every project, public or private. David Suzuki or a lawyer chosen by him would have been hired as an environmental watchdog reporting every breach to the Legislature immediately and with the power to punish infractions severely.

And Campbell would most definitely not be supporting TILMA or any of the other trade agreements that have been made without citizen input. These agreements are his ‘out’--he can promise the moon because he doesn’t have to deliver.

He has changed the Parks Act so that any 'run of the river' company can ask to have the park boundaries changed to clearcut for transmission lines. There will be no public hearings. Liquid Gold by John Calvert should be mandatory reading for every voter in this province. He has allowed his Minister of Forests to take land from TFLs and sell it to developers. It's true we may have saved Jordan River, but none of the other sales have been stopped yet. Ask West Coast Environmental Law and the Sierra Club about the rest of the Island. He is building a hugely dangerous liquid natural gas terminal for Texada against the wishes of the residents. Prince Rupert is being built into a major oil and gas shipping port with tankers spilling oil all down our coast. Ask the Dogwood Initiative.

You can list these things all day long: raw log exports are higher than they have ever been while mills close and stumpage rates drop. Sea lice kill off wild salmon while the government denies the studies are real. Proposals are being made for uranium mining in the interior and the flooding of the Similkameen to provide more power to sell to the US (ask the thriving winery industry how they feel about this). The sacred headwaters of the Stikine are going to be covered with gas and oil rigs if people can't stop it. More and more roads are being pushed through the Lower Mainland destroying farmland.

So look closely at this announcement, with giant understated government surpluses of $4 billion per year only a miniscule fraction, not even $100 million, is to be spent incrementally ($4 million per year) to do research: Not to start changing what we already know we have to change, but to do research. That’s fine in itself, but it is not the most urgent move that government needs to make. Much of the research we need is already done. Northern Europe is far ahead in implementing changes. They have roads that act as solar panels and also keep themselves clear of snow, passive heating so your body and your toaster warm your house. Paris has 10s of thousands of bicycles in place and London has fees for driving in the centre of town rather than coming in by bus or rail.

I am concerned about the number of times this announcement and it’s background paper talks about private partners.

Budget Season

2008-01-24T20:54:00.000-08:00

It's the time of year when a governing body's thoughts turn to budgets. That also means it's the time of year when citizens need to be watching the budget process and participating where they can.

Central Saanich, School District 63 and the provincial government are all about to wow us with numbers. Having spent the last week here at the Canadian Labour Congress Winter School studying budgets I am going to be more than ordinarily interested in this year's offerings.

How big will the provincial allocation be to our Board of Education? Does our Board hold any funds in Board Companies (bodies which Boards have set up to profit from international students)? Will we hear of shortfalls: projected losses which often never materialize, bogeymen meant to rush us into accepting all kinds of unnecessary cuts? On the other hand school boards aren't allowed to run deficits without the permission of the provincial government (deficits are real and refer to expenditures that have already taken place).

Will our municipal budget finally tell all about the Brentwood Revitalization's costs and how much we will have to pay to rebuild our drained reserves? Did you know that last year three of our councillors (Bryson, King and Graham) voted against the budget because of concerns related to the Revitalization? Bravo!

And will our provincial budget demonstrate real action on climate change by setting up an arm's length compensation commission to help businesses when they have to convert or shut down because they are unsustainable? Drive-throughs must go, we must have legislation banning catalogues and junk mail once and for all, most environmental action will have to come through legislation: we can't wait any longer.

It's going to be quite a ride so sharpen your pencil and whip out your note pad.

Our Farms Need Help Not Development

2008-01-22T17:04:00.000-08:00

The policy choices of our government are to blame for the battle between those who would keep our farmlands and our wildlands intact for future generations and those who will build massive structures over every square inch for nothing but profit if we let them.

Our governments routinely collect huge but understated surpluses. If we had a provincial GDP of -1% this next year our surplus would still be two billion dollars. Instead of using this bonus creatively to fund the things people need our government uses it to pay down the debt. This is wasteful. Do you pay off your whole mortgage every year? No! You pay a certain amount regularly on the mortgage and you use the remainder of your available funds for things your family needs like efficient appliances, a new hybrid car etc.

Our government could be using that huge surplus to buy up all the farmland at something near the going rate and hand it over to municipalities who could then lease it back to farmers to grow our food supply.

This would give the municipalities both income and incentive to protect farmlands. It would give farmers who wish to retire fair recompense for their land and it would make farming more economical for those who continue to till the fields.

This is only one idea and it came from a wise Central Saanich farmer I know. I bet there are more great ideas out there for using our surplus to sustain us. We need a return to the practical creativity that gave us the Agricultural Land Reserve in the first place.

Those Who Show Up Win

2008-01-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

It's always amazing to see who shows up for the really hard votes.

Tonight saw the Vantreight proposal come to Central Saanich Council. The whole world of Central Saanich was watching to see whether our Councillors would stick to the votes they cast last week at the Committee meeting. (Remember that was a UNANIMOUS vote of all of Council except the Mayor who recused himself for a perceived conflict of interest).

Tonight the long awaited motion came to the table and two Councillors were not there for the vote.

Councillors Mason and Thompson were no shows tonight. So the honours for doing the right thing for the community go to Councillors Bryson, Garrison, Graham and King. Good work folks and thanks for showing up for Central Saanich!

Accountable Voting

2008-01-20T22:19:00.000-08:00

In the recent vote on the Vantreight Proposal a great deal of confusion was caused by the fact that our elected officials don't have to publicly state how they are voting. Many people thought Councillor Mason voted against the motion, thus supporting the Vantreight Proposal when in fact she voted with the rest of the Council making the result unanimous.

The trouble lies in the voting procedure. If you are voting for a motion you do not have to raise your hand or signify your intentions in any way. By doing nothing you are assumed to have voted for the motion.

To vote against the motion you need to raise your hand, but your hand can easily be missed.

To abstain you need to make a statement to that effect.

In any case the vote itself is not recorded only the result (passed/failed/referred etc). Unless a Councillor specifically asks for their vote to be recorded no notation is made.

As a result our Councillors can easily hide contentious votes and we the citizens are deprived of a very basic democratic right.

Our MPs and MLAs votes are available to all, but our Councillors are not held accountable. It's time for a change. Democracy only works if the process is transparent. Councillors should have to raise their hands for each stage of a vote (yea, nay or abstain) and raise them high enough for everyone to see.

Vantreight Proposal Vote

2008-01-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 21, 2008

Municipal Council Meeting - Vantreight Proposal

The final vote on this incarnation of the Vantreight Proposal takes place tonight. Councillors were UNANIMOUS at last week's committee meeting and there is no way their votes should change tonight. They voted that the Official Community Plan and Regional Growth Strategy should stand.

Nothing in the ensuing week should change this principled position.

2008-01-10T20:25:00.001-08:00

Friday Night is Coffee Night at JJ's

in Brentwood Bay

7 pm to 9 pm

Come sit and talk about local and global issues

with Sue Stroud & friends

We have lots of laughs, come up with some good ideas

and it's a chance for you to meet some good neighbours.

Come and join us!

2008-01-10T14:28:00.000-08:00

Free Rice!

http://www.freerice.com/

Have you ever heard of Free Rice?

It's a vocabulary gamesite belonging to the United Nations.

For every word you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated to feed the world (the rice is paid for by site sponsors).

Once upon a time we had a Prime Minister named Lester B. Pearson who won the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the man who recommended that nations give .07% of their national income to help feed the rest of the world. I think he would have enjoyed the Free Rice site.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1957/index.html

One thing Lester Pearson would not have liked is the fact that his own beloved Canada has not yet met that .07% goal. Please help us get there by sending this letter to Prime Minister Harper.

http://www.poverty.com/letters/canada.html

2008-01-06T17:11:00.000-08:00

Municipal Meetings:
Please note the following important dates:

Regular Council meetings will take place on the 7th and 21st of January.
Committee night is the 14th and that is where the Vantreight proposal appears next.

On January 28th there will be a Special Admin and Finance Meeting which is labelled budget/financial sustainability.

This year’s Strategic Planning Workshop will take place January 30th from 7 to 9 pm and January 31st from 9 am to 4 pm. This is open to the public. It used to be held on the weekend so the public could attend, but as with so many other Central Saanich items it has been moved to a time more inconvenient for public scrutiny…all part of a pattern as you can see if you look under “Three Unfair Motions and Their Implications” below.

A copy of the agenda package for Council and Committee meetings is available at the library on the Friday before each meeting.

2008-01-06T13:50:00.000-08:00

To Mayor and Council

There are letters circulating on the internet to the effect that Mr. Vantreight is preparing to offer affordable housing as part of his proposal to build housing on farmland. He has made this offer before.

I have been actively seeking affordable housing for Central Saanich by encouraging the Council to ask developers to make 10% of the units they are proposing low-income subsidised housing.

I have spoken to this issue at Council many times over the years. Each of you knows that I care deeply about the provision of true affordable housing for Central Saanich. But I am opposed to building new houses on farmland.

This farmland is outside of our carefully chosen urban areas. We need this land to stay farmland. We need to preserve the garry oak and arbutus groves that our own staff have identified as important aspects of the hillside. It's value will increase as the climate changes we are facing become more apparent.

Furthermore it is too far outside our urban areas to be useful to the families who need affordable housing in our community. These are families without cars; families who must rely on bus transportation to get to stores, our hospital and their work. Affordable housing needs to be in our urban centres to make it convenient for the people it is meant to serve. We need a more wholistic approach to planning housing.

More importantly I would like it noted that when Mr. Vantreight suggested to me that he would give $100,000 per year for five years to build affordable housing he quickly added "but not in my development." He was clear and honest about his intentions.

We know that we cannot control what happens once we sign over farmland for development, land can be flipped and all the promises can vanish in an instant. Farmland needs to be used for farming. If Mr. Vantreight wanted to convert existing buildings to house farm labour maybe I'd be willing to look at that. That could be of some benefit to a farm and to our farming community. But this proposal benefits neither the farm nor the community.

Peter Parsons was right when he said we were witnessing a masterful shell game. The shells are still moving around, but we must keep our eye on the nugget underneath. Our farmland must be farmed.

Municipal Candidate Speech 2005

2007-11-11T15:18:00.000-08:00

My name is Sue Stroud and it's what's in my heart that I want to talk to you about tonight.

What's in here is a deep and abiding love for this place called Central Saanich.

I love the beauty of this place. I love her heritage and I love her people.

I came here as a teenager 35 years ago. For 30 of those years I have lived right here on Tanner Road, in Saanichton and in Brentwood Bay. I know our community well. I went to Mt. Newton School, picked strawberries on the Querin's farm on Veyaness, climbed Bear Hill for picnics at Elk Lake, and biked to Mt Newton to visit my friends. I have always had very happy memories of this place.

And they are rural memories, memories of the smell of berry stained fingers, and the look of the farms in the morning and the song of the skylarks that have flown away from here now.

When I'm at work, and need a break from the demands of the computer and the phone, I close my eyes and picture the Inlet & the Malahat in the sunset or Mt Newton Valley in the mist.

It is this sense of place that makes me ask you for a seat at the table. I can't promise that I will have all the answers, I know for sure I don't. But I can promise that I will listen and study and learn, and then listen to you some more.

I know that the issues are often difficult and contentious and that sometimes there is no right answer. But I also know that good people, working together, can build a community that works for everyone.

I support the Official Community Plan and I see it as our vision for our community. We need to take that vision and cultivate it. We need to make sure all of our citizens are involved in it.

When I was a student at Mt Newton I helped build the trail in Centennial Park. Five years ago I helped save the Brentwood Bay ferry and I can't believe we have to do it again already. Two years ago I helped my mother and her friends get a solar powered light for the crosswalk up the street. I am now part of a group of people who would like to develop some community gardens so everyone can enjoy their own harvest.

I believe we need to be building REAL affordable housing so that people who love this place won't be driven away. Those who wish to develop here, should have to dream our dream--we are not Langford, we are not Sidney, we are ourselves.

We do need more chance to talk and dream together and gently tend what nature has given us.

We need to value our farmers and their farmland and make sure that the land is safe, the farmers are prosperous and that there are new farmers to tend our breadbasket. This means engaging the schools in our rural dream. Farming is science, and art, and heritage and mechanics. And it is vital to our well-being.

We need to respect our First Nations neighbours. Their elders have as much to teach us as any textbook. Their life-experience is full of this place. They call the mountain Lau wel naw, Place of Refuge. I see the whole of Central Saanich as a place of refuge from the noisy world outside. When I hear the drums at pow-wow I hear the heartbeat of the land beneath us.

I am of this place. I will, with your help, take care of this place.
Thank you.

Remembrance Day 2007

2007-11-11T13:44:00.000-08:00

I think we likely all agree that those who serve in the military deserve to be 'honoured' for their sacrifices. But maybe we don't always understand that that means we must ensure that they receive all the health care and other social supports they might need for however long they need it. Maybe we forget that they have left behind families in need of housing, comfort and care.

Today 1 out of every 4 homeless men in the US is a veteran (there are, as yet, no stats on homeless female veterans).

In 2004 there were 1.8 million veterans and their families (another 3.8 million people) without medical coverage in the US.

In Canada most veterans are not in that kind of trouble yet, but the situation is worsening.

Rightly or wrongly our military men and women have been sent by our government into danger. They go because they believe it is their duty. They go because they believe they and their families will be taken good care of whatever happens.

Unfortunately our government doesn't reciprocate that same sense of duty.

Today a new ombudsman begins his job fighting for the care and attention veterans and their families need. He says he is expecting 5,000 complaints a year. That's a lot of people having problems with their government after having served their country dutifully. That's a lot of families left high and dry after losing a loved one.

I don't support our role in Afghanistan. I don't believe in the Arctic sovereignty military build-up or in our government's attempts to militarize us, to restrict our freedoms, to make us afraid of the rest of the people on this earth and to destroy our environment to supply the military and fill the pockets of the already overly rich and greedy bankers and corporate executives.

But I do believe that our rank and file military folk do what they do out of a sense of duty to their country and their fellow citizens.

They and their families deserve our support. We are all going to have to be alert and help wherever we can. As long as we have a government that simply does whatever the US tells it to do we will have to stand up for people in trouble and that includes veterans.

Municipal Comittees & Dates to Remember

2007-11-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

Please note that our Mayor has publicly stated that he supports LEED platinum as the standard for new building in Central Saanich. (Bravo Mayor Mar- that's real leadership!) . Those in attendance at the last mtg in October witnessed this statement being made. Interestingly however, the motion to learn more about LEED standards was defeated even though the Councillors said they did not have enough understanding of what it meant. Then they voted to set the municipal standard at LEED silver! Truly 'a little learning is a dangerous thing'.

There are a few municipal matters to have a look at.

First
Please note that the Official Community Plan review is still underway and you can hand-in workbooks from the focus groups or letters and comments anytime. We were assured at Council that all will be considered whenever they arrive. There won't be a full draft until February 2008 but there will be a draft of a couple of sections in January. There will be more opportunites for input in an open house and a public hearing as well. If you have something to say please take the time to put your thoughts on paper and hand it in at the municipal hall.

Second
There was an interesting discussion at Council about monies set aside for Councillors to attend workshops, meeting, functions etc. About $1900 per councillor is budgetted for this over the course of the year.

Councillor Thompson seemed to be trying to put forward the idea that a Councillor who has used up their 'share' can no longer attend things at the municipality's expense. It was pretty clear to me where this was going. Councillor Thompson had started this line of thought earlier in the evening when Councillor King mentioned the Federation of Canadian Municipalities green building policy development workshop he was interested in attending on Nov 22.

However the others united in agreement (and were supported in this by CAO Gary Nason) that this was never looked at in the past as a specific share which a Councillor could not exceed. It was intended as a budgeting tool only and some councillors used less than $1900 while others needed more. In the end Nason said we have rarely used all the funds budgetted for this item and "it all balances out".

2007-09-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

The Earth’s Blanket by Nancy J. Turner
Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living

The Earth’s Blanket is a book full of humour, lessons learned, lessons not yet learned and an urgent message for the world.

Nancy Turner, who teaches at UVic, uses First Nation’s stories and personal experiences to illustrate her point, or rather, nature’s point, that everything is one. Once you’ve read this you’ll never look at a mountain, a woven basket or a field of wildflowers the same way again. It’s the story of people who used everything around them so sustainably and successfully that the first new arrivals who met them didn’t think they were using much of anything. A culture for whom ‘using’ would come to mean ‘using up’ couldn’t understand the incredibly complex relationship between the First People and the land they inhabited.

Once you’ve read it you’ll be able to answer those who think it is no big deal to destroy Bear Mountain. One friend said to me “they just call everything sacred.” Yep, they do, but for very good reasons.

Mountains are sacred because the clearest, freshest waters flow down their slopes. The closer you get to the source, the closer you get to the creator. The best blueberries are found near the treeline. Climbing a mountain brought you closer to the giver of these gifts. Mountains are full of medicinal plants. It seems an irony that a Ronald McDonald House is being built on Bear Mountain at the expense of the sacred land and the plants that are the medicines of the aboriginal people in our midst.

In this book you’ll read about the giggling berry boys who try and hide themselves from the ‘foul-mouthed woman’ and the elegant steps required to make a good halibut fishhook. You’ll start to understand why words like q’waq’wala7owkw (“keep it living”), need to become part of our daily vocabulary if we are to continue to be a part of the planetary organism.

First Nation’s had the tools to destroy the environment, but after thousands of years living on this land they had learned to preserve and not destroy (until we came to tempt them with trade goods). They had weirs with a large hole at one end so that many of the fish could escape to spawn. They used controlled burning to refresh the food and tool supply. They knew that fire reduces insects and that the new shoots that come up after a fire are tasty for both humans and the wildlife they need for meat. They knew that berry plants produce heavily a couple of years after a fire and they understood the sequence of growth and re-creation that followed fire. First Nations were careful and rotated their activities “burning one hill and using the other.”

This is a book about philosophy and practicality; about truly integrated resource management and agro-ecosystems where the natural and the domesticated are blended to create beautiful and useful Garry Oak Meadows full of edible camas flowers and glacier lilies.

T’ekilakw means “place of manufactured soil” and refers to the root gardens cultivated on the tidal flats: gardens that were tended carefully and staked out to mark ownership. Aboriginal agriculture was “not only sustainable, but actually restorative” says the author. They understood that destructive practices would be punished either through supernatural means or the direct loss of the resource. A careless person could be killed for polluting a stream. The aboriginal peoples of British Columbia understood the importance of gratitude and of giving thanks to the flora and fauna that fed and clothed and healed them. First Foods ceremonies greeted the first berries and salmon each year. Little gifts of tobacco or string were left as offerings at berry sites. Prayers were said before taking medicinal plants and you were restricted as to how many stems or pieces you could take. Showing gratitude taught people not to take the earth’s gifts for granted.

Hishuk ish Tslawalk, “everything is one” is the title of the chapter on interconnectedness. Once you’ve read it you’ll understand that every woman, child, man, plant, animal and landscape worked together to create an incredibly rich First Nations culture. You’ll learn that some salmon are named after flowers that are blooming when that specie’s run begins.

The people were indigenous: they knew and understood the total landscape linkage from the tops of the mountains to the gravely beds of the streams feeding down into the bountiful ocean. They knew it was wrong to log at the edge of the mountain streams because the water would heat up and the salmon wouldn’t return to spawn in warm water. The land and all it produces is part of who these people are. When nature is destroyed so is the knowledge, art, medicine and heart of the people. When the wild cranberry bog (the lowlands below Stelly’s School in Central Saanich) were drained by the farmers to create more fields, the local First Nations’ families mourned the loss of a traditional harvest site: a site that was a part of themselves.

“’Everything is one’ is a profound concept. The complex webs that connect the past with the future, the oceans and rivers with the land, the plants with the animals, and the people with them all are breaking down. As they fragment and erode so does the earth’s capacity to sustain us all.” We are unravelling Earth’s blanket. This is a book about choices and consequences. Read it. Understand it. Give it as a gift.