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TUESDAY, September 5, 2017
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VIEWPOINT
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LIGHTING UP IGNORANCE
S
ome people, it seems, never learn. News came last week of dozens of people being ticketed for having campfires during a months-long ban as wildfires rage in the Interior. One such ticket was handed to a man in the North Okanagan. This bright spark decided not only to have a campfire, but to go to sleep with it still burning. He claims not to have known about the ongoing fire ban, but that doesn’t really matter. Anyone should have more common sense than to start a fire in tinder-dry conditions without a water source close at hand and leave it untended. What this guy saw as a pleasant fire to light his evening could have turned into a disaster in the space of a few minutes, putting more forests, homes and people at risk. The ease with which this could have become another disaster points out how close to the edge we all live. Though Kamloops has been lucky so far, few areas escaped unscathed from the spring flooding and summer fires that followed so quickly people didn’t even have time to heave a sigh of relief. And when you look at the damage Hurricane Harvey did in Texas, it is truly frightening how fast conditions can turn from normal to disaster. There isn’t much that can be done for a Hurricane Harvey-level disaster, as we have seen time and again as storms batter the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the United States. But when it comes to forest fires, we can be proactive. There may not be much that can be done about lightning and other natural causes for fires, but we can smarten up — by not throwing cigarettes out of cars and by not lighting campfires when a provincewide ban has been in place for months due to parched conditions. It’s a message everyone should have received by now, but it seems that some people just won’t listen.
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The bureaucracy grows
T
his week is Premier John Horgan’s first appearance at the B.C. Cabinet and First Nations Leaders’ Gathering, an annual event established by former premier Christy Clark. The province pays expenses to bring together representatives from across the province for meetings in Vancouver. It’s commonly called the “all chiefs” meeting, including as many of B.C.’s 200-orso aboriginal communities as care to send delegates. There will be plenty to talk about this week, from wildfire losses to timber, ranching and other aboriginal business to the latest changes in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reorganized his cabinet, dividing the Indigenous Affairs department into two. There is now an Indigenous Services department to carry on the burden of providing for 600odd federal reserve communities and a new Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs ministry to focus on the broader relationship between Canada and its Inuit, Métis and First Nations people. Yes, each will have its own deputy minister and staff, confirmed Carolyn Bennett, who moves to the new Crown-Indigenous role. “It’s about de-colonizing,” Bennett said. Right, by fattening the stagnant Ottawa bureaucracy that presides over a paralyzed treaty negotiation process that burns through millions, most of it here in B.C. Trudeau likes to strike poses in his buckskin jacket and make
TOM FLETCHER
Our Man In
VICTORIA symbolic gestures, like renaming the Langevin Block on Parliament Hill to expunge the name of an architect of residential schools. That’s easier than fixing water systems and failing schools in remote locations that will never be functional communities, no matter how much public money is thrown at them. Bennett has been mostly in the news lately for the ongoing collapse of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry, an idea so naive and flawed that it’s a wonder even Trudeau’s urban Liberals imagined it could work. One of the main obstacles to progress is Ottawa’s refusal to reopen every old murder case across the country, or at least the ones in which the victims weren’t Indigenous men or boys. Mid Island-Pacific Rim MLA Scott Fraser has been handed B.C.’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. I asked him about Ottawa’s latest move. “It’s separating the service side of it, that’s kind of the old colonial
Indian Act stuff, from the meat and bones of where we’re going in the future,” Fraser said. He’ll be hitting all these politically correct talking points at the meeting this week. Last year, federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould gave a long speech there in an attempt to explain how the United Nations declaration of “free, prior and informed consent” can’t just be imposed on Canadian law. Fraser has orders from Horgan to reorganize the B.C. treaty process to reflect the UN declaration, as well. Skeena MLA Ellis Ross was elected for the B.C. Liberals in May after serving as chief councillor of the Haisla Nation and trying to get liquefied natural-gas development going. Ross is more concerned about the new NDP government’s opposition to resource projects than the abstract “rights and title” discussion. He tuned that out while leading a northern community near Kitimat that struggled with unemployment, alcoholism and related social issues. He said the NDP’s last-minute intervention in a court case against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is a “well-known strategy” to delay and starve energy investment. In an urban society where only protesters get media attention, the rural aboriginal communities that support investment and jobs are mostly ignored. The NDP is offering them a two per cent share of B.C.’s gambling revenues instead. Tom Fletcher is B.C. legislature reporter and columnist for Black Press. tfletcher@blackpress.ca