Tag: Common Sense Journalism

B.C. appears to be pinning its economic hopes on natural gas – much of it obtained by fracking. While the world should be turning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy and conservation, we’re poised to dig ourselves deeper into the climate-altering carbon hole. Taking a cue from the liquidation-sale policies

There’s a battle rumbling south of the border. And it’s one Canadians aren’t hearing a lot about unless they plumb the news feeds online. It started for Tesla Motors during the 2012 U.S. presidential race. As the electric car company paid off its governments loans earlier this month, American government

At the end of fiscal 2012, total provincial liabilities reported by the provincial government were $70.358 billion, or 100% greater than when the Liberal government first came into power. What was even more distressing was the government’s deliberate non-disclosure of “Contingencies and Contractual Obligations”, which the BC Auditor General publicly

BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix issued a statement Tuesday, offering an explanation and form of apology for the surprise provincial election loss he presided over recently. In the letter, published here, he accepts responsibility for the loss, acknowledging a common criticism of the campaign – levied often in these pages

Despite the evidence that endangered species laws are effective, governments in Canada are proceeding with deregulation and abdicating their responsibilities for wildlife habitat protection, often quietly. After all, only a few environmental watchdogs such as the David Suzuki Foundation are looking out for creatures that otherwise have no voice. But

If Canadians knew the full extent of the Harper government’s  war on science, they would be clamouring for the reinstatement and full funding of dozens of federal scientific programs and hundreds of scientists axed over the past year. Since the passage of omnibus budget Bill C-38, the Harper Cabinet has moved at blitzkrieg

Having gone through the early stages of environmental assessment, the Raven Coal Mine – proposed amid a thriving shellfish industry in Vancouver Island’s Fanny Bay – was stopped in its tracks last week. A jubilant Jonn Snyder of CoalWatch Comox Valley – a group formed to deal with the threat

Brian Mulroney needed political help in Quebec and persuaded all the premiers to support a set of constitutional reforms – labelled the Meech Lake Accord – whereby all the other premiers would postpone their constitutional ambitions until Quebec was settled nicely away with its “Distinct Society” designation AND a veto

It can hardly come as a surprise to anyone that governments – like corporations – employ spin to portray their actions in the best possible light (and to cast their opponents in the worst possible light). Nor is it news that many corporations – and the PR companies they employ

Scientists often come up with new discoveries, technologies or theories. But sometimes they rediscover what our ancestors already knew. A couple of recent findings show we have a lot to learn from our forebears – and nature – about bugs.Modern methods of controlling pests have consisted mainly of poisoning them

Within the next four years, BC Hydro, once as good a power utility as there was in the world, will be broken up. It is, you see, presently bankrupt by private corporation standards, and only keeps, barely, afloat because it can and does go to us the taxpayers and consumers

Strange things can happen when salmon eat chickens. Such a diet is unprecedented and bizarre, a violation of the biological order that has occurred over millions of years of evolutionary history. Nature, it seems, does the unusual when human ingenuity tampers with its traditions. And the consequences can be dire.

With over two weeks to go in the election, I wrote in thetyee.ca and on this website: “It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like ’09 all over again. Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice

The annals of contemporary political history make one thing clear: Elections are invariably won and lost on a single issue – and that issue is most often the economy. The NDP lost this election for three reasons – all of which relate back to that one central point: 1. Despite

Premier Christy Clark was right when she told the Canadian Press it’s, “the people of British Columbia that choose the government.”…Politicians have known for a long time that the news media makes a lot of money during political campaigns and elections, and they make even more when elections are close.