To the Editor, Why are Bill Vander Zalm and Chris Delaney afraid of local voices? The B.C. government has announced it will hold HST public dialogues featuring speakers from the No and the Yes sides in 10 different communities across the province. It is clear that the intent was to have local participation from both […]

 Dear Editor, We are writing to ask your readers to help us make poverty an issue in this election campaign.  We know the Harper government has the needed funds to reduce poverty, but instead it has chosen to spend billions of our tax dollars for things like the G-8/G-20 Summits, reduced taxes for large corporations, fighter […]

Ask anyone who has lived under a dictatorship and they will tell you of its ugly features: A Supreme Leader who rules with an iron fist; legislation pushed through by a rubber stamp legislative assembly with little or closured debate; government officials ordered into silence or fearful of speaking up; and a press denied the right to even […]

In the Facilities Report released by the school district this fall, three of the top-rated scenarios see Rossland Secondary School closing and MacLean Elementary becoming a K-7 school. This is based on the assumption that grades kindergarten to seven will fit in MacLean. When you take a closer look at the numbers, however, it becomes […]

Our thoughts and prayers are with the heroes and heroines and martyrs of Libya, and with our brave correspondent in Tripoli, now under fire. Communication is on and off, mainly off. Here is her most recent report. Since she sent it the phone lines have been cut entirely and the city’s electricity is also disconnected. […]

An open letter to the president and CEO of BC Hydro, president and CEO of FortisBC, president of Axor, chair and CEO of the BC Utilities Commission, the BC Minister of Energy, the BC Minister of Environment and Federal Minister of Environment, and all our respective MLAs and MPs in the hope that someone will […]

Dear Editor, Recently, a local chapter of the Council of Canadians invited me to speak at a forum about CETA.  The forum will play host to our current MP as a speaker as well as MP Peter Julian, the NDP’s International Trade Critic.   Shortly after that invitation, various editors throughout the BC Southern Interior ran […]

Dear Editor, As most people will recall, the NDP sent out a cartoonish flyer last fall, which discussed the Canada-European Union: Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, also known simply as CETA.  Since then, there has been much discussion about the issue and recently, our current MP has spent time criticizing both local constituents and the […]

 Dear Editor,  This letter is in response to (a series of articles and commentary in local media, inlcuding a letter written by Roland Vogel). Mr. Vogel, as far as I am aware, appears to be the voice of people in the Glenmerry area. He is fairly representative of the views of Trail concerning Trail’s place […]

In his essay “Propaganda and Demotic Speech” (1944) George Orwell lamented “the bloodless dialect of Government” and the “inflated bombastic style” with which newspapers report on governments. Orwell held out the hope that “someday we may have a genuinely democratic government, a government which will want to tell people what is happening, and what must […]