I spent a week in late January travelling across the South Okanagan-West Kootenay, listening to mayors, regional officials, economic development officers and other concerned citizens.  It gave me an opportunity to find out what the top priorities are for communities as we start this New Year. This week one issue dominated the...

Internal documents released via Freedom of Information laws show that, while the B.C. government was publicly apologizing to the Fort Nelson First Nation for exempting natural gas plants from environmental assessments without consultation, the province quietly used a loophole to allow the exemptions to continue — a...

City council has asked to be given a comprehensive list of alternatives vis-a-vis local bylaw enforcement as part of the city's operational budget discussion at a meeting Wednesday evening. Currently, the city has one half-time bylaw enforcement officer contracted through Commissionaires BC at a cost of $36,800. While the...

A hot-button social issue arose in Wednesday night’s operational budget meeting when city Director of Civic Works Lucas Pitts brought forward what would otherwise be a simple housekeeping issue. The concern is creating a bylaw governing overnight camping in city parks – not by residents, but by homeless people who haven’t anywhere else to sleep. […]

Last night was the first of three meetings intended to change the paradigm of how mayor, council and city staff present, not just the budget, but the budget process to the Castlegar public. I'll admit, when I first picked up the 19-page budget packet provided so attendees could follow along – page after page of lists, charts,...

By Sarah Cox for The Narwhal BC Hydro has gone to court to avoid revealing the names of public employees who decide which companies are awarded lucrative Site C project contracts during construction of the $10.7 billion hydro dam. B.C.’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) ordered BC Hydro to release the...

Castlegar mayor and council will be rolling out a new budget presentation paradigm in a series of three public meetings slated for next week and the week after. In recent years prior, the city has held most discussion and staff presentations in camera, with a public open house presenting the draft budget in its entirety. At...

By  Sarah Cox, from The Narwhal In an unprecedented move, the Dzawada’enuzw nation is claiming in court that farming Atlantic salmon — which often carry disease — in their traditional waters constitutes a violation of Aboriginal rights Willie Moon’s family used to catch hundreds of salmon a day ...

Introduction: last year of our Second twenty-first-century Decade (!) Year-end and year-start reviews can be an occasion for melancholy or celebration, and yet I personally feel neither. Mostly I feel astounded to find myself 19 years into the twenty-first century, and the third millennium, when it seems not so long ago that the pregnant year […]

We’ve heard a lot in the news lately about the challenges facing the oil sector, but much less about the serious problems confronting another natural resource industry—forestry. Two years ago, the United States placed significant import tariffs on softwood lumber.  Those illegal tariffs are still in place, yet we hear almost...