Spending an hour in the dark

Power outages, like the one we had yesterday, can be inconvenient, but they have a certain element of fun to them, too.

First, there’s the “down tools” aspect of it, in which everyone has a reason to lift nose from the grindstone and spend some time standing around talking about it. “Oh, great!” is an appropriate comment, as in, “Well, how am I supposed to get my work done now! I guess we’ll all just have to stand around talking about how we can’t get any work done!”

In our building, no lights means darkness unless you want to crowd around the windows that look out onto Seymour Street and Fourth Avenue. Being designed as a department store, it has a lot of space without much natural light.

My own office is up against the back wall about as far from those windows as possible. Someone with either a sense of pity, or as a practical joke, built my office with a window, from which I can look out into the newsroom and, if I crane my neck, see a sliver of light from way across the floor. But when Hydro goes out, it becomes good natural habitat for bats — impossible to work in.

The biggest cause for concern, though, was that for the hour it lasted in this part of town, the outage made it impossible to take care of nature’s calls, since the washrooms were in total blackness. Everyone made it through, to my knowledge, but there was a race to the biffies as soon as the lights came back on.

Must say it was pleasant to get a live voice on the B.C. Hydro power-outage line (via cellphone, of course, since our lines were down). Usually, you get the recording, but this time I actually got to have a conversation with a very helpful Hydro employee who explained the situation and estimated we’d be in the dark until 1 p.m. An hour before that, the lights came back on.

City loses an astute observer of local politics

Kamloops lost an astute observer of civic issues last week. Merlyn Bigham wasn’t quite a household name, but many knew of her c ommunity involvement and her views on politics via her letters to the editor.

She died last Thursday, March 25, at the age of 76. I don’t recall ever having met her, but I was certainly familiar with her opinions — her letters go back more than a decade.

While she commented on all manner of political and social issues, her favorite was City council. Indeed, I remember her giving the council of the day a ‘D’ within a few months of it taking office after the November 1999 election. I think (and hope) she saw some improvement after that.

Grading council was one of her favorite things. Sometimes, this newspaper would seek her out for her thoughts on those in office. She described Terry Lake as acting as if he were back at TRU lecturing to veterinary students. She thought Coun. Jim Harker had spent too much time around fire halls. John O’Fee was a bit of a know-it-all.

And she didn’t like Peter Milobar, feeling he hung back, coming in on issues too late.

Merlyn thought council should take a thorough look at water meters, explain them to the public, and hold another referendum if the City still thought they were a good thing. Bless you, Merlyn.

In a letter to the editor published Dec. 15, 2005, she wrote about her eventual demise: “Let that ‘good night’ take me and let me finally rest in peace. Let those who knew me remember me in the best possible way under whatever circumstances may have arisen.”

Merlyn Bigham’s insights into civic life will be missed.

What price freedom of speech?

Armchair Mayor column for Saturday, March 27, 2010

What do Yves Engler, Kim Robinson, Ann Coulter and Clifford Olson have in common?

The answer is, they’ve all been in the news lately for things they’ve been saying. But let’s discard Olson — he’s a despicable man who wants Old Age Security, and I for one am not interested in listening to him.

The other three, though, are worth knowing about. And let’s add the name of Guy Earle to get us back to a round number; all have been talking and making others unhappy.

Engler, for example, was brought in by the local chapter of the Council of Canadians last night to talk about his book Canada and Israel – Building Apartheid.

Former Kamloops wunderkind Emile Scheffel, who surely will grow up to be prime minister some day, is currently a student at Carleton University in Ottawa. Scheffel doesn’t think much of Engler, and said so in a letter to the editor, calling him “one of Canada’s most prominent and vicious attackers of Israel.”

That prompted a phone call to this desk from Gary Engler, Yves Engler’s father, in Vancouver.  “What kind of journalistic standards are you practicing?” he asked rhetorically.

Engler Sr. said his son’s book doesn’t attack Israel, only Canada’s foreign policy with respect to Israel.

Fair enough, though one summary of his book describes it as “a devastating account of Canadian complicity in 20^th and 21^st century colonialism, dispossession and war crimes,” so I’m thinking that’s not exactly complimentary of Israel. And, he’s accepted at least one speaking engagement for Israeli Apartheid Week, condemned by some as anti-semetic.

Should people listen to Yves Engler?

Ann Coulter has had a busy week in Canada. She is “a darling of the U.S. right-wing who uses incendiary language to sell millions of books as well as her syndicated column,” according to the Toronto Star.

Monday, she told a 17-year-old Muslim student at the University of Western Ontario to “take a camel” instead of the flying carpet she previously suggested Muslims use instead of airlines.

Tuesday, her speech at the University of Ottawa was cancelled when 2,000 students rallied and had campus security worried for her safety.

A speech Thursday night at the University of Calgary went ahead despite a student protest. At that one, she proposed that B.C. and Alberta join the U.S.

Coulter quotes are becoming famous. Comments such as “I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am,” and “I know Jesus Christ died for my sins, and that’s all I really need to know,” have made her a reporter’s best friend.

Should she be banned from speaking to our youth?

Kim Robinson was not a happy camper last week after he read an editorial in The Daily News blasting some media for treating him as some sort of expert on the Allan Schoenborn case.

Robinson is the man who was characterized as accomplishing what RCMP couldn’t when Schoeborn headed for the hills after murdering his three children in Merritt.

The editorial took exception to the media painting Robinson as the captor of Schoenborn and a man whose opinions we should be interested in.

Robinson called to insist he did nothing to perpetuate the image of himself as a hero, though he says he actually was the guy who captured Schoenborn if you look at the facts.

“I did capture him,” he told me. “I did what was in my mind was needed to be done.”

The details around Schoenborn’s arrest aren’t something we have room for here, but Robinson makes the point that the two had quite a conversation before police showed up and he knows something about whether the killer knew right from wrong. “I had 20 minutes that no one else had,” he said, adding, “That’s a travesty of justice that nobody’s gonna pay.”

Schoenborn, of course, was found not criminally responsible, which is what bugs Robinson.

Should anyone care what Kim Robinson has to say?

Who, you ask, is Guy Earle? He’s a standup comic who’s in a legal battle with one Lorna Pardy, who alleges he made “discriminatory” remarks about her sexual preference almost three years ago during a comedy show. She wants $20,000 from him. A B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing starts Monday in Vancouver.

Should Guy Earle have to pay for what he said?

Where do a former student banned from his university’s campus, a rightwing “chippy trash talker” from across the line, a Merritt “local character,” and a comedian who puts down hecklers by insulting them fit in with today’s Canada, a place in which we profess to protect democratic rights of free speech?

If we shut them down, or even ignore them, is Canada a better place? Or do we simply end up debating freedom of speech, again and again, instead of discussing whether or not what they have to say is worth hearing?

Copyright 2010 The Kamloops Daily News

Harrison gets it right this time

The following just goes to show you that Jim Harrison isn’t wrong all the time:

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A VISITOR TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU REALLY HAVE….AND TO MAKE YOU APPRECIATE IT JUST A BIT MORE.

   [CLIP]  ”everybody who’s been here so far says why don’t we have one of these back home, wouldn’t this be a great facility to have.”

STAN PERKINS IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD MASTERS ASSOCIATION, AND HIS SENTIMENT ABOUT THE TOURNAMENT CAPITAL CENTRE IN KAMLOOPS WAS SHARED BY JUST ABOUT ALL OF THE PARTICIPANTS…SOMETHING PRETTY MUCH ECHOED BY EVERYONE WHO VISITS THE COMMUNITY TO USE IT.
 FEW, IF ANY OTHER COMMUNITIES THIS SIZE CAN BOAST A FACILITY LIKE IT….. AND KAMLOOPS WAS FORTUNATE TO HAVE PEOPLE WHO HAD THE VISION, AND THEN THE WILL TO CONVERT THE TCC FROM AN IDEA TO REALITY.
 AND ITS THOSE PEOPLE WHO AREN’T MENTIONED NEARLY ENOUGH WHEN THE TCC IS DISCUSSED  ……THOSE LIKE ALEXANDER WATT, DEREK EVELY, AND NEVILLE FLANAGAN …WHO NURTURED AN IDEA….FORMED A SOCIETY TO PROMOTE IT AND THEN CONVINCED BOTH CITY HALL AND THOMPSON RIVERS UNIVERSITY OF THE BENEFIT OF THAT KIND OF A FACILITY.
 FORMER MAYOR MEL ROTHENBERGER DESERVES SOME OF THE CREDIT AS WELL…NOT ONLY FOR LEADING A COUNCIL THAT WAS SUPPORTIVE, BUT FOR INSISTING THE TOURNAMENT CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECT INCLUDED MCARTHUR ISLAND….SOMETHING THAT HELPED ENSURE THE REFERENDUM FOR THE 40 MILLION DOLLAR PROJECT WOULD PASS.
 THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE VISITING THE TOURNAMENT CAPITAL CENTRE IS EXPECTED TO TOP ONE MILLION THIS YEAR….. A TESTAMENT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE TOURNAMENT CAPITAL IDEA THE CITY EMBRACED MANY YEARS AGO, AND TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAD THE VISION SINCE, TO GROW THAT IDEA….INTO THE JEWELL ITS BECOME.

Jim Harrison
News Director
NL Broadcasting Ltd.

Not much new in State of the City but. . .

Very enjoyable dinner at last night’s Kamloops Chamber of Commerce annual general meeting, and I’m very pleased to serve another term on the board. I find it quite exciting to sit around a board table with a baker’s dozen of the top business minds in the city and talk about how to make Kamloops a better place.

Turnout from chamber membership for the AGM was excellent. This is the third year the mayor has been invited to present a “State of the City” speech to members. Unofficial media reviews of Mayor Peter Milobar’s presentation last night were tepid, along the lines of “not much to report on from that.”

True, it could have been jazzed up a bit, and overall there was nothing new whatsoever in what the mayor said, but it was a useful overview of where the city’s economy is at. And, if there’s nothing new, well, there’s nothing new.

It was totally consistent with Mayor Milobar’s “balanced approach, stay the course, one day at a time” approach to civic leadership. Not dynamic, but utilitarian. In his defense, I found the presentation quite interesting, and I like his casual, unrehearsed speaking style. One has to keep in mind that most of those in the room aren’t as anal about the details of City operations as news reporters — for them, it was likely very informative.

After all, politicians can’t spend all their time trying to please reporters by giving them a good story.

Let the appeal process begin

I’m not terribly disappointed that Ruth Madsen’s appeal of the Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp.’s emissions permit is going to be allowed. Though it’s a mystery to me why it should be recognized by the appeal board  when the appeal of the changes at Domtar was disallowed, a hearing will be a good way to clear away a lot of the questions around ACC.

It won’t matter much to Kamloops, since ACC isn’t going ahead with its project here, but the appeal should provide valuable clarity on environmental issues surrounding the technology of the proposal. The only thing that could get in the way of a full hearing now would probably be if Madsen — who’s been in California for quite awhile — decides to move out of her house here, as the appeal board based its decision on the fact she lives close enough to Mission Flats to qualify as a “person aggrieved.”

As for the Facebook thing, it seems strange to me that anyone would spread this stuff around without bothering to contact the people involved. Mind you, it’s not the first time an unsubstantiated “press release” has been issued in connection with this controversy.

ACC plan goes off the rails

I was surprised, but not all that surprised, when Kim Sigurdson called last night to announce his Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. is giving up on plans for its gasification plant that would process waste railway ties on Mission Flats.

Sigurdson has been under tremendous pressure, culminating in last week’s Rail Ties, Real Issues forum hosted by the chamber of commerce. “It had a profound effect on me,” he told me last night in describing the impact of that forum .”On a personal level, I was a little taken aback, but on a business level, I expected it.”

He pretty much signaled his intentions in a scrum following the forum, in which he indicated he would “reconsider” his plans. I had coffee with him the following morning, and he seemed tired and beat up. My view is that there’s been a whole lot of talk going on behind the scenes for the past few weeks. This has been a political nightmare for the Liberals, and it’s no secret they badly wanted him out of Kamloops.

The decision to leave raises a number of questions:

What will happen to his ICE funding now that he’s doing what Terry Lake and Kevin Krueger want?

Will the protests follow him wherever he goes, or will the NIMBYists who kept asking “Why Kamloops?” let the next community decide on its own?

And, how hard will it be to find another community, after all the controversy here?

This issue may be over for Kamloops, but it’s not over for ACC.

As Mike Holmes would say, minimum code is just that

Armchair Mayor column for Saturday, March 13, 2010

Now that we’ve all vented, it might be a good use of time to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned about the process in which the Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. project went sideways.

If the process had been better, could we have avoided the don’t-confuse-us-with-the-facts mentality among so many (not all) of the project’s detractors?

Could we have resisted the temptation to demonize a well-intentioned man who has a potential solution to a serious environmental problem?

Would we have found it unnecessary to treat bright, dedicated Ministry of Environment staff as though they were aliens come to experiment on our children?

Could we have entertained a more balanced discussion about a plant that will emit as much pollution as the truck the mayor drives to work every day?

I like to think so. To begin, let us acknowledge that ACC should have consulted early and often. Even ACC president Kim Sigurdson admits that. He turned down several opportunities to meet with a variety of stakeholders, and it was a mistake.

What he did do was play by the rules as laid out in permitting and funding guidelines, but I’m reminded of one of my favourite TV reno guys, Mike Holmes, who often says minimum code is just that — bare minimum. If you want a better house, you have to invest in a higher standard of construction.

Ministry of Environment also followed the rules, which allowed it to provide a generous extension to the public in responding to ACC’s application. Nevertheless, its rules have come up short in this particular case.

If we look at the way things went down, we can see where those rules worked and where they didn’t. On June 15 of last year, a Ministry of Environment legal ad first appeared in The Daily News, and was repeated in the B.C. Gazette, notifying the public of ACC’s application.

Not a single inquiry was received by the MOE in the standard 30-day window for response. As much as I believe in the power of newspaper advertising, I’m not convinced readers go straight to the “Legal” ads every morning, or anxiously scour the B.C. Gazette to see what they should be concerned about, unless they have a specific reason.

Unlike City council, which has a natural podium by virtue of its weekly meetings for making the public aware of what it’s doing, and a routine public-hearing process, Environment has no such means.

However, when The Daily News published a front-page story about the project Aug. 22, public comments — as the ministry puts it — “commenced.”

In response, the ministry used its discretion to extend the 30-day public consultation period, and anybody who didn’t know about ACC at that point just wasn’t paying attention to the media. On Sept. 1, City council responded to a delegation of opponents by voting unanimously to oppose ACC. (Had ACC been present at that same meeting, or lobbied beforehand, one wonders if that pivotal result might have been different.)

The MOE estimates that 100 Kamloops residents provided concerns directly to the ministry, to ACC or via the media. “Many of their concerns were highlighted in a letter that MOE sent to ACC on Sept. 11, 2009 that requested extensive additional information from ACC to support their application. That information was provided by ACC to MOE on Oct. 13, 2009.”

For all intents and purposes, the consultation period ran until the permit was granted Jan. 7. After the initial flurry, though, things settled down, even after the Interior Health Authority revealed in early December that it had concluded the ACC gasifier posed no health problems.

I suspect the Christmas season proved a distraction, because it wasn’t until after the permit was approved that all hell broke loose. Opponents can’t reasonably claim there was no consultation and that they weren’t given an opportunity for input — they had six months to come forward before the permit was issued.

There’s a big ‘but’ to this, however. The consultation was indirect or, at best, impersonal. Write a letter to MOE or ACC, and an answer would come back. And MOE would, and did, consider it in issuing the permit.

What the process lacks is a live public vetting, which ACC could have held on its own, just as Domtar held an open house to explain its plans for changes to mill emissions. But ACC didn’t.

The ACC project is too small to trigger an environmental assessment, and too small to raise major concerns during consideration of the permit. But maybe MOE should be given the discretion to force a more public process — open houses, meetings and such — if it feels there is or will be significant public concern despite the scope of the project.

That’s a judgment call, and the argument against it is that it would be open to outside pressure and uneven application — the current system is designed to remove politics from the process. Though a lot of politics is being played on the ACC file, the final authority currently rests with independent analysis.

Given the lessons of ACC, though, it would have been preferable to what we’ve been experiencing since last summer. With minimum code, you get minimum public willingness or ability to sort fact from fiction. With minimum code, you get a less-than-minimum standard of politics. And with minimum code, you often don’t get the best result.

Mike Holmes would tell you that.

‘Don’t confuse me with the facts’

If Thursday wasn’t a good day for opponents of ACC, Thursday night certainly wasn’t a good one for ACC. It was definitely a “Don’t confuse me with the facts” kind of evening at the chamber of commerce-sponsored Rail Ties, Real Issues forum.

At least 500 people packed the TRU Grand Hall for two hours of questions and answers about the ACC project that would process treated railway ties in two gasifiers on Mission Flats.

I don’t want to over-generalize, for there were a lot of very good, thoughtful questions posed to Sigurdson, consulting engineer Robert Pietrzak, and Ralph Adams of the Ministry of Environment. But there were a lot of snide ones, too, like the guy who asked Sigurdson if he’d pay the City a million dollars if his gasifiers didn’t work.

Adams seemed frustrated at times when he would be asked a question, clearly answer it, only to be heckled or asked the same question later. However, he kept his patience. Sigurdson, for his part, also did well under fire, and Pietrzak provided balanced and thorough answers to questions about the technology.

But many in the crowd weren’t interested — they had already made up their minds. In an Armchair Mayor column recently, I pondered the question of whether Sigurdson would receive respectful treatment. The answer was clearly a no as far as a number of those at the back of the room were concerned.

Brian Alexander, one-time mayoral candidate, didn’t sit at the back. He sat close to the front, unfortunately, delivering a constant barrage of nasty peanut-gallery comments. Someone nearby finally told him, “Be quiet, Brian.”

When I say that some people didn’t want to listen, I mean that they refused to accept answers they didn’t like. Adams delivered the best zinger of the night when Dr. Alan Vukusic delivered a message from local doctors about their concern for our “compromised airshed.”

Adams took Vukusic and the audience through a convincing review of why the “compromised airshed” theory is a myth, citing statistics and comparisons to back it up. It didn’t matter. The sensitive airshed story has taken hold and facts aren’t going to change perception.

Despite all this, the forum was a success in that it provided a lot of information about the project, and answered a lot of questions for those in the crowd who were there to listen rather than to simply be loud.

Dr. Murray Young, a chamber director and TRU dean of business, did a good job handling the Q&A.

From the opponents’ point of view, it was definitely a success because Sigurdson says he’ll be thinking seriously about whether to forge ahead with his project. I don’t think it was a night some people should be proud of, though.

One note about the protest held outside the building prior to the forum: organizer John McNamer is be commended for his repeated insistence that speakers be treated with respect. As he put it in his email blasts, “Disrespect for any one of us will be considered disrespect for all of us.”

Too bad it didn’t extend to the crowd’s treatment of MLA Terry Lake, who had the guts to stand up in front of them and tell his side, and his government’s side, of the story. But then, it was nothing he isn’t used to in the Legislature.

As for Michael Crawford, the three-time federal NDP candidate, he should be ashamed of himself for using the event as a platform to play politics and try to score some points against Lake and MP Cathy McLeod.

Not a good day for opponents

No matter which side you’re on in this debate, it’s not a good day for local environmentalists on two fronts. An appeal filed by the Shuswap Thompson Organic Producers Association against Domtar has been disqualified.

MOE issued a permit to Domtar for a new emissions system and the Environmental Appeal Board has ruled the STOPA appeal defective.

It not only kills hopes of getting the Domtar permit withdrawn or revised, but brings into serious doubt chances for an appeal against the Aboriginal Cogeneration gasfication plant.

Several of the reasons cited by the Environmental Appeal Board for not allowing the Domtar appeal to proceed are similar to those cited in a letter to the board from the provincial government’s legal services branch.

Legal services asks the appeal board to disallow an appeal by Ruth Madsen against ACC on grounds that she does not qualify as an “aggrieved person,” just as STOPA has been ruled not to qualify as an “aggrieved person” in the Domtar situation.

It’s hard to imagine the Board allowing one to go ahead after rejecting another on those same grounds.

Meanwhile, MP Cathy McLeod has hit a dead end in efforts to force an environmental assessment of the ACC plan via the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund. Then, of course, there was that forceful defence by Environment Minister Barry Penner in the Legislature yesterday of granting the permit for ACC.

All of which is reported in today’s Kamloops Daily News.

Question now is whether MLAs Lake and Krueger will plod onward with trying to throw a spanner into ACC’s plans by withholding ICE funding. All in all, not good news for opponents, but we’ll see what happens at tonight’s chamber of commerce forum at TRU Grand Hall, 7 p.m.