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
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The Common Sense Canadian home page: Rise of the Electric Automobile
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: BC’s Crushing Debt Absent From Election Discussion
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Dix Takes ‘Full Responsibility’, Learns Nothing from Defeat
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Ontario’s wildlife needs continued protection
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Harper’s War on Science
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Province, Public Opposition Halt Raven Coal Mine Proposal
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Rafe Remembers Elijah Harper, Constitutional Stand-off
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Spinning out of control?
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Bean Leaves, Bedbugs and Biomimicry
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Rafe: Clark Will Break Up BC Hydro
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Piscine Reovirus Pt. 2: Evolution of a New Salmon Virus
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.
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Rafe: Dix Let Liberals Get Away with Murder
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: It’s the Economy, Stupid NDP
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
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Polls Apart: Making Sense of Surprise BC Election Outcome
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.
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Alexandra Morton: NDP Hold Best Chance for Wild Salmon
Independent biologist Alexandra Morton has been busy during the BC election campaign, traveling the province to raise the issue of protecting wild salmon from fish farms and viruses. Here, as voters prepare to go to the polls, she offers her frank assessment of what is in the best political interests
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Rafe Mair Video: Liberals Bankrupting BC with $171 Billion Debt Legacy
Watch Rafe Mair’s powerhouse speech on the upcoming BC election: “Christy Clark has on the side of her bus,’Debt Free BC’. We owe $171 Billion dollars! Since the Liberals came to power, our per capita share of debt has gone from a little over $5,000 to $40,000 – every man,
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Can Political Polls be Trusted?
Following a polling debacle in last year’s Alberta election and troubling signs in BC as voters prepare to cast their ballots, John King questions the motives and methods of pollsters and the corporate media who publish them. “Suddenly, obscure pollsters, often funded by unknown sources, are constructing the narrative that
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Damien Gillis Talks BC Election on SFU Radio
Listen to this half-hour interview by CJSF 90.1 FM’s Sylvia Richardson of The Common Sense Canadian’s Damien Gillis on the eve of the provincial election. The two compare the Liberals’ and NDP’s true economic records and their positions on pipelines and tankers, private river power projects, forestry policy, Site C
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian home page: Independent MLAs, Candidates Shake Up BC Politics
Throughout the past term, BC’s three sitting Independent MLAs – Bob Simpson from Cariboo North, Vicki Huntington from Delta South, and Abbotsford South’s John van Dongen – have proven the pundits wrong, injecting new energy and ideas into a Legislature ordinarily dominated by caucus discipline. All three incumbent Independents are
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