We are losing our forest assets
Re: “Forest sector’s significance can’t be overstated,” comment, March 7.
I’m an organic farmer, following in the steps of generations of Ukrainian peasants, and I wish to share my Baba’s old adage with Bob Brash and the Truck Loggers’ Association.
Her wise words warned: “No hoof, no horse, no plow, no wheat, no eat.” It sounds more lyrical in the mother tongue, but the message is clear; protect your assets and you may continue to reap their benefits.
Brash is a proponent of the B.C. government’s and logging industry’s failed clear-cutting/farming experiment to turn all native forests into fake pine-tree farms. I wish to remind him of this province-wide failure and landscape scale disaster. Half the logging jobs in BC are gone, 220 mills have disappeared, logging-dependent communities are struggling and the industry complains of no trees. Local mills like San Group have difficulty sourcing wood as they watch raw logs leave Crofton. Fake forests don’t make the cut, allowable annual cuts cannot be achieved, sustainability is a myth and the industry is surviving on nostalgia and perpetuating fiction. This cannot be overstated.
B.C. needs deferrals, or industry will take every last stick of old growth, then move on to defective second growth, then skip town to avoid a bevy of lawsuits as in Grand Forks.
If Brash believes “a strong forest sector is essential to B.C.’s strong economy,” a reminder: “No hoof, no horse, no plough, no wheat, no eat” or, if over-clear-cut logging continues, “no trees, no forests, no mills, no jobs, no forest industry.”
Taryn Skalbania
Peachland
A pass on the ‘bearhug,’ convoy protesters
So James Bauder is calling this supposed convoy Bearhug B.C.?
Bedbug B.C. is more like it, if he is talking about anything like the Ottawa occupation, and it appears he is.
Pests with bullhorns. Thanks for the notice.
Lots of time for the authorities to make a plan to keep the barbarians outside of the gates so we can prepare the boiling oil.
I’m out of metaphors for now, but it’s all they deserve anyway.
Sandy Szabo
North Saanich
Stop bleating and try braying
Isn’t it ironic that those willing to stand up for what they believe are either scolded by virtue-signalling writers or banished to a country the very likes of which these so-called protesters are trying to make sure we don’t become?
How does one become so elitist or isolated that they assume someone protesting has no sense of meaning or significance. How does one not see we have in fact lost some of our freedoms?
I just travelled to the States to see my son graduate, and for that three-day trip we were forced to do six COVID tests. Two for me, two for my son coming back (as one was a false positive), and then we were handed two more home tests by the immigration officer. The cost excluding the take-home kits was about $1,000, taking into account exchange rates.
I personally didn’t feel a great deal of freedom with this debacle. I don’t feel a sense of freedom when our prime minister freezes bank accounts and fears speaking to people, but instead invokes an emergency act.
Frankly, I pity the person who cannot understand what it is people are fighting for. Maybe it’s time to get shorn so you can feel the temperature and, instead of bleating, start braying. One day you may thank these very people for not letting us become a totalitarian state. It also sounds like you might want to invest in some earplugs, because as the old song says, “We got ourselves a convoy.”
Tim Murphy
Esquimalt
Block convoy with ferry vaccine mandate
I would think B.C. Ferries workers might have health issues with large groups of unvaccinated convoy members on board. I certainly would. Placing a temporary vaccine mandate on B.C. Ferries may not keep out every member, but it should stop a significant number. It is a health issue, in my opinion.
Ken Milbrath
Victoria
Thanks but no thanks, protesters
A posse is coming to help us see our errant ways.
The condescending message of the truck convoy organizers is reminiscent of colonial times. They are coming to educate us and liberate us from evil oppression by our elected government.
A heartfelt “thank you, but no thank you” is deserved here.
Every citizen has the right to freedom of expression and protest, but not the right to occupy, disrupt and obstruct. Please take your trucks and your soap boxes and get out of Dodge.
Jan Jaap. Bijlsma
Victoria
Gas-price ceilings needed immediately
I am begging all levels of government to demand and set immediate gas-price ceilings, and install price controls as a hedge against rampant inflation stinging all Canadians.
But set that pump ceiling fairly high — perhaps $2 a litre — so folks can budget for, and question, every ride they take: a more expensive driver-pay system.
That high ceiling should also act as a climate-change deterrent plus an insanely long-overdue incentive to develop and market affordable, alternative forms of green energy now, producing jobs, tax revenues and incomes.
Without gas-price controls — just like much-needed rent controls — pump prices will simply continue climbing endlessly. Sadly, we will somehow pay those bloated prices from gouging oil companies, making life harder and more toxic for us all.
The writing is on our economic wall. The war in Ukraine starkly shows us we are addicted to poisonous oil and gas — some of it tragically supplied by genocidal rulers such as Putin.
Peter W. Rusland
North Cowichan
Horgan should keep time-change promise
A change is always disruptive, but usually the disruption is beneficial in the long run. Not so with changing our clocks. Disruption in the spring and disruption in the fall … no benefit anywhere. Maybe we should stop this nonsense.
Premier Horgan has promised to end clock changes but, as usual, it was an empty political promise. He says he reneged on his promise to keep in step with Washington and Oregon. Balderdash. We do business with plenty of other time zones without a problem.
Pick one. Standard or daylight savings. Let’s eliminate further disruptions. This year!
Don Boult
Saanich
Tired of changing the darn clock
Well, about time. Now my bedside clock will be telling me the correct time. At least until they change things back again.
Just about all the things in the house that have a clock do the change thing on their own, but not my bedside clock. It’ s a nice clock, with big well-lit numbers that are easily read. But with teeny little buttons at the back with even smaller labels beside them that need changing twice a year. The main problem of course is that I’m getting old, and things just don’t work as well as they once did.
Now, from all that I read, it appears that this part of our world has an above average number of us old people, so I know I’m probably speaking for a few others when I say, if for no other reason than to please us old folk, leave the damn clock alone.
Lyall Eriksen
Colwood
B.C. has more than a doctor shortage
On June 29, 2020, the province launched the Nexus Primary Care Clinic, to provide the first nurse practitioner-led team-based primary care services to residents of Nanaimo. They declared that “nurse practitioners are health practitioners who can work on their own, or with physicians and other health professionals, to provide care across a person’s life span. This includes diagnosing and treating illnesses, ordering and interpreting tests, prescribing medications and performing medical procedures.”
As Adrian Dix, Minister of Health, declared at that time: “Nurse practitioners are a viable, patient-centred solution to improving access … this is the first nurse practitioner primary care clinic that we have established under the province’s Primary Care Strategy, and there is more to come.” One of my friends claims she has never had such a thorough physical as the one by her NP.
In spite of these good intentions, little has been done in B.C. Of note is that in 2020 in New Brunswick, the provincial government opened nurse practitioner clinics in Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John to shorten the waiting list for doctors. Each nurse would have a patient load of 800 to 1,000 patients. Health Minister Ted Flemming said the province hoped to reduce the waiting list by half.
The B.C. Ministry of Health and health authorities could address some of the “doctor shortage” issue by redefining it as a “primary care shortage” issue and creating more opportunities for nurse practitioners.
Elaine M. Gallagher, BSN, MN, PhD
Saanichton
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