Rafe Mair for Premier!

Little Hawk

Active Member
This ole'-bugger gets my vote!
In the year and a half I've been corresponding with and following him, I've only had the pleasure of meeting him once.

He is a sagacious old wizard with a genuine love for BC's wild-things and wild-places.

I think of him as the 'Churchhill' of BC's environmental movement.
Thought I'd share one of his column's from 'The Flow' with you all...


RAFE MAIR HERE, BELOW IS "THE FLOW", MY REGULAR COLUMN FOR www.saveourrivers.ca.

PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS TO YOUR ADDRESS BOOK.


The Campbell government is a collection of dissemblers such that you can't take anything they say seriously. The so-called "harmonized sales tax" is the latest example. And isn't "harmonized" such a lovely warm and fuzzy word? In fact it is nothing more than a raising of the sales tax but to tell people that requires honesty, a commodity sadly lacking in this morality challenged government."Harmonized" is rather like the phrase "green and renewable" used by those destroying our rivers.



This lack of acquaintance with the truth goes back to the beginning when Campbell took the moratorium off fish farms in 2001, Since that time he has consistently denied the evidence that open cage fish farms are a menace to our wild fishery. As each independent study came out, from the best scientists in the business, Campbell would peddle deceit saying that scientists supported his policy which is a terminological inexactitude, as Churchill called such things when Parliamentary practice forbade him to use the word "lie".



The entire energy policy has been the very opposite of what he's said and the video statement by Colin Hansen I spoke of last week lays the falsehoods out for all to see. (I must apologize for spelling Hansen's name the English way; I was trying to avoid embarrassing Scandinavians).



There is a sense of helplessness in the air. What can we do with the government having another four years to wreck the environment and fill the pockets of their friends and paymasters?



We can quit, of course. We can blame those 50% who didn't vote. We can blame the NDP for running an appalling campaign - which they did. We can spend the next four years cursing and crying.



That's certainly not what I'm going to do. It's not the course I suggest for you. For while Campbell has the legislature seats we know they're based on 23% of eligible voter and that he has no moral basis for what he's doing. This means, in my mind, that we have a moral duty to oppose with every means at our disposal and to keep opposing until we have another election.



It means that we must process and, where appropriate, use civil disobedience. The injunction process used to send decent people to jail works like this. The company, cheered on by the government, has protesters charged for interfering with a legal contract of similar offence with an application before the courts to order protesters to stop. When they don't, they're charged with contempt and sent to jail. We have to be ready to take this route, odious as it is. When this happens the public see that as a reward for destroying our environment and bankrupting BC Hydro huge offshore companies can throw decent, caring people in jail.



The difficulty will be keeping on the pressure. But we have a lesson before us in the Kemano II project that the public stopped in the 90s.



In a way we're like an occupied country with malicious masters. And as Churchill advised people in occupied countries during the war - we must make their policies as hard to implement as we can.



For all of us there are hugely important issues at stake. Are we going to stand idly by as fish farms decimate our precious wild salmon? Are we going to stand on the sidelines as large corporations murder our rivers and streams? Are we going to just sigh and accept the destruction of BC Hydro?



These are not the ordinary issues of ordinary politics but go to the very root of the relationship of the governors and the governed. We the people have never been consulted on the energy policy the Campbell government is implementing.

Now, when there are public hearings the people are not permitted to deal with the merits.



Our options, then, are to watch in sullen silence or do everything we can, short of violence, to stop them.
 
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