Must Reads from Last Week
Have Your Say About Did You Know…
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BC Electoral Reform Referendum
Referendum Ballot Questions
BALLOT QUESTION #1: Which should British Columbia use for elections to the Legislative Assembly? (Vote for only one.)
- The current First Past the Post voting system.
- A proportional representation voting system.
BALLOT QUESTION #2: (You don’t have to answer this question. If you do wish to answer, you can vote for only one choice, or you can rank your choices.)
If British Columbia adopts a proportional representation voting system, which of the following voting systems do you prefer? (Vote for the voting systems you wish to support by ranking them in order of preference. You may choose to support one, two or all three of the systems.)
- Dual Member Proportional (DMP)
- Mixed Member Proportional (MMP)
- Rural-Urban PR
Locally
Courtenay Transportation Plan Open House
DATE/TIME: June 19, 2018, 5-7 p.m.
LOCATION: Florence Filberg Centre Conference Hall
Public input wanted. “When complete, ‘Connecting Courtenay’ will include long-term plans for all modes of transportation over the next 20 years, as well as five and 10 year investment strategies.” Based on the City’s past and current mass transit service (or lack thereof) and the paving of roads but not shoulders for cyclists, public input is needed. Read more.
K’omoks National Indigenous Peoples Day
Campbell River Pride Party
DATE/TIME: June 23, 2018, 11-3 p.m. & 8 p.m.,
LOCATION: Spirit Square, Campbell River.
Events in the Square during the day, concert at the Tidemark in the evening. Read more.
World Community AGM and film premiere
DATE/TIME: June 27, 2018, 7:30 p.m.
LOCATION: Creekside Commons
Following a brief business meeting, Ed Carswell will show a sneak preview of his new film about the farmers who produce World Community Coffee. Carswell has just returned from a trip to Nicaragua and will share stories and video of his encounters at several coffee farms and co-ops in Nicaragua (the source of World Community Coffee). The farmers talk about the benefits of fairly-traded, organic coffee and what working with the co-ops has meant to their daily lives.
Kus-Kus-Sum multi-media spectacle
DATE: June 28-30, July 1, show starts at 8 – 11:00 p.m.
The Nomadic Tempest production takes place on the waterfront, on a tall ship. An “intense, beautiful, gritty, experimental and important…apocalyptic rock opera.” Tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for those under 14. Get tickets here. Read more. BRING YOUR OWN CHAIR!
Mack Laing Historical Society court challenge
We have previously provided information about this case of the Town of Comox and its fight to have the Mack Laing will ignored. The town has admitted to having misspent the money Mack Laing left for the upkeep of his heritage home and wishes to have the terms of the trust varied so that it doesn’t have to abide by Mack Laing’s wishes. Read more.
Excerpt: “The Comox mayor and council members are determined not to allow the Mack Laing Heritage Society (MLHS) to present evidence in BC Supreme Court about the future of Laing’s heritage home…And they’re spending tens of thousands of taxpayers’ money to keep the society’s information out of court.”
Provincially:
Site C
Part 1: People were out in front of Ronna-Rae Leonard’s MLA office on June 11 for the monthly Site C protest.
Part 2: There’s a new blog post out on the Witness for the Peace website.
Part 3: Bureaucrats prepared Site C dam press release a week before NDP reportedly made decision to proceed. Read more.
Kinder Morgan
Part 1: A database is tracking how Indigenous communities are affected by Trans Mountain: The Discourse, APTN and HuffPost Canada launch #TrackingTransMountain database digs into what’s really happening with Indigenous consultation for the controversial project.
Part 2: New penalties – possibly 14 days of jail time – on #stopKM protesters. Read more.
Excerpt: “Since the Canadian government decided to purchase the project on May 29, protests have increased in size, drawing crowds of over a thousand participants and have expanded Canada-wide.”
Part 3: Remember that ‘tiny’ oil spill that the Trans Mountain pipeline had just before PM Trudeau bought it on behalf of all Canadians? Well…the spill wasn’t so tiny after all. Read more.
Part 4: And just in case we didn’t have enough to worry about, most of our oil goes to the US and President Trump now wants to punish Canadians because he’s mad at PM Trudeau! What could possibly go wrong?
Part 5: The National Observer’s Robyn Allan has looked into Premier Notley’s claims of a $15 billion annual benefit to Alberta from the TM pipeline. Read more.
Excerpt: “Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has consistently repeated that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is worth “about $15 billion a year” — a figure her office says she picked up from a Scotiabank report released last February….If Ms. Notley’s claimed benefits from Trans Mountain’s expansion were credible, it would be reasonable to expect that her formal budget document would provide more insight into how the figure was developed. So I checked. It does not. Instead, Ms. Notley’s Budget says the exact opposite of what she claims will come from Trans Mountain’s expansion. According to the Budget, Trans Mountain’s expansion will produce no benefit at all — that’s right, no benefit.”
Part 6: Video of Elizabeth May speaking at a Salt Spring fundraiser in support of the nine Islanders arrested on Burnaby Mountain.
Part 7: HE SAID WHAT?? So now Kinder Morgan protesters have been given notice that they may be killed. David Dodge, former governor of the Bank of Canada, said in the Edmonton Journal, “We’re going to have some very unpleasant circumstances. There are some people that are going to die in protesting construction of this pipeline. We have to understand that … Nevertheless, we have to be willing to enforce the law once it’s there … It’s going to take some fortitude to stand up,” citing “religious zeal, “flouting of the law,” and “that fanaticism.” Of course, he’s not talking about the protesters needing fortitude – he’s saying the police will need fortitude to enforce the law … by killing protesters?!
What may cause your head to spin, though, is the final paragraph of the article where they quote Dodge as saying, “We have to understand this is a resource where the long-term viability isn’t there, not because we’re running out of muck in the ground, but because we actually, collectively, as the globe, are going to have to stop using as much of this stuff.” So…why is he suggesting it may be necessary to kill protesters to ensure we keep using this stuff that he says we have to stop using.
Nationally:
Pride Month
As part of Pride Month in Canada, check out this article in the Globe and Mail and its Heritage Minute celebrating the fight for LGBTQ2 equality rights in terms of spousal and pension benefits. Jim Egan and his partner, Jack Nesbitt, lived in Courtenay from the 1960s until their deaths in 2000. Read this article in the Comox Valley Record, which gives more local colour.
Pipeline battle in Nova Scotia
BC isn’t the only province fighting a pipeline. The plan “would see the Northern Pulp-owned Abercrombie Point mill in Nova Scotia move up to 90 million litres of effluent a day via a 10.5 kilometre pipeline across the floor of Pictou Harbour and then release it through six pipes into the Northumberland Strait.” There’s going to be a rally organized by Council of Canadians, on July 6 against this one. “After years of pumping 70 million litres of treated wastewater a day into lagoons on the edge of the Pictou Landing First Nation reserve, Northern Pulp wants to pipe it into the nearby Northumberland Strait.” (Pipeline News)
Green Party of Canada Biennial Convention
DATES: September 28-30, 2018. Read more. Convention 2018 is Sept 28-30 in Vancouver! Join us and help us build for success in 2019. Info and registration here.
Native Land
Check out this map that breaks down the Indigenous peoples who lived on all the lands throughout Canada. This map is huge in its reach and is being put together by input from users, so it’s not a ‘scientific’ map but rather a map drawn from the memories of the indigenous peoples themselves in various parts of the world. Striking is Australia and how many different peoples they have, as does Canada. This is very interesting. Also check out their Facebook page.
Globally
Global food security in the face of climate change
Some countries are starting to address this important issue. Read more. Read this from 2015, and this from 2016.
Harassment/Assault/Rape: Hatred of women in the age of #MeToo
Mitchell Anderson of The Tyee has written a challenge to all the men out there who support women in their fight not only for equality, but for basic respect and safety. Read more.
Excerpt: “While most men do not commit sexual assaults, most men also seem blissfully unaware of the low-level state of fear that women exist in on a daily basis due to creepy, predatory or violent behaviour by those that do… A word to my fellow guys: this is not complicated. Women — like all humans — deserve basic rights of feeling safe and respected. If women feel unsafe or not respected they are unlikely to want to be around you, especially if you are obviously a creep.”
In 1943, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was born
Check out the history from 1943 to 1954. From September 6-9, 2018, they will be having their Special 75th Anniversary Reunion. EVERYONE IS INVITED! You can even buy jerseys, hoodies and onesies. Read this great story of two Vancouver women who joined the League in 1944.
Excerpt: “We were supposed to play like men,” Helen Callaghan once told People magazine, “but look like women.”
And don’t sweat it…Constant anxiety won’t save the world
“Anxiety is not a necessary prerequisite for action.” Read more. Fear is contagious. Let’s try love, as Mark de Bruijn said in his address to the crowd last week at the #stopKM rally. (If you didn’t listen to the video of his speech, check out last week’s Must Reads. The link is there.)
Thought of the day:
If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito. (Dalai Lama)
