Know it now
Know it now
Recent reports from the Dogwood Initiative and online media The Tyee say the Harper government is reversing a federal policy of restricting oil tanker traffic in BC’s inside passage. The policy came into being in 1972, when former Liberal environment minister David Anderson was among a group that successfully sued the US government to prevent Alaska-bound tankers from risking an oil spill in waterways like Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound. As a result, oil vessels have been asked to stay 70 nautical miles offshore. According to The Tyee and the Dogwood Initiative, recent breaches of the policy by Methanex/Encana tankers have been ignored by government.
The Vancouver company proposing a wind farm for the Hecate Strait has become the first to submit an offshore wind farm proposal to BC’s environmental assessment process. Public comment on Naikun Wind Energy Group’s project, the first phase of which will consist of up to 110 wind turbines to produce enough electricity to power 120,000 homes, was invited between March 30 and April 28. They will be used to finalize the project’s Terms of Reference.
North coast residents await a decision from BC Ferries on the Queen of the North, the ferry that sunk March 22, 2006 after running aground in Wright Sound. The crown corporation is considering a coast guard report, released in April, which suggests it is too risky to attempt to salvage fuel remaining in the sunken vessel’s 220,000-litre tanks. Immediately after the sinking a diesel fuel sheen in the range of 340 square kilometres was seen on area waters.
Several northern BC media outlets will change hands after a corporate transaction which creates the largest radio broadcaster in Canada (with 31 percent of the market). In a $1.08 billion deal announced in April, Astral Media Inc will acquire Standard Radio Inc (SRI). SRI’s Canada-wide holdings include stations in Fort Nelson, Fort St. John, Terrace, Kitimat, and Prince Rupert, as well as TV stations in Terrace and Dawson Creek.
Tragedy ended a heli-ski tour in the Delta Peak area, 230 kilometres north of Smithers, on April 3. An avalanche claimed the lives of Kimberly Manchip of Langley and Daisuke Matsui of Shibuya, Japan. Both were guests of Last Frontier Heliskiing.
Terrace will become the first northern BC community outside of Prince George to offer a Bachelor of Education (elementary) program. UNBC’s new program, which starts in September, will lead to a professional teaching certificate.
The joint federal and provincial panel tasked with considering public input on the proposed expansion of Kemess mines was set to consider presentations made by the Gitxsan houses of Nii Kyap and Tse Key Nay during May 14 to 17 hearings in Smithers. From the outset, these First Nations groups have argued that they are inadequately resourced to meaningfully participate in an environmental review of the project, which will destroy Duncan Lake by using it as a waste rock dump. The review panel will have 60 days after the hearings to issue recommendations to relevant government ministries.
Kitimat’s lengthy court battle with Alcan has been resolved. In March, the BC Supreme Court ruled that Alcan’s power sales plans are not bound by a 1950s agreement with the BC government. The District of Kitimat had argued that the agreement restricted the company to using the power it generated to run its smelter or create local jobs. The court decision means Alcan is free, subject to successful environmental assessment and union discussions, to modernize its Kitimat plant to sell power—a move that Kitimat expects will cost up to 500 local jobs.
In a new pilot project created the BC government and announced in April, six 130-hectare plots of forested, pine-beetle infested Crown land near Vanderhoof will be logged, and then leased out for agriculture. It is hoped that the project will increase BC’s capacity to feed its residents, an issue highlighted by a 2006 report prepared for the Ministry of Agriculture which showed that BC farmers produce only 48 percent of all food consumed in BC. The report predicted that BC would need to increase food production 30 percent by 2025 just to maintain its present percentage of self-reliance.
Over the next two years, the BC government’s new mobile training facility will bring exploratory trades training, apprenticeship technical training and journeyperson upgrading to more than 20 rural and aboriginal communities in northern BC. Called “Trade Routes,” the facility is a self-contained classroom in a 53-foot-long trailer and will host classes of up to 12 students per session in trades such as welding, pipefitting, plumbing and electrical.
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