A new year gives everyone an opportunity to make predictions about their personal lives, sports teams, the state of the economy, investments and any number of other matters.
If January was any indication, 2012 promises to be a year full of issues that will arouse our ire and get us talking, if nothing else.
Grand Forks’ new city council will be dealing with things that councils for the past decade have dealt with and at the top of its list will be the renewal of the infrastructure and economic development, where the focus will be on agriculture.
The Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) will be dealing with the Kettle River Watershed Review, now that the technical committee has completed its report.
The provincial Liberal government is entering the last 15 months of its term and Premier Christy Clark will be making the most of the time available between now and May 2013 to convince voters that she and her party deserve a new mandate.
Her announcement about liquefied natural gas export has caused a stir. Adrian Dix will be doing the same in preparation, of course, and the New Democratic Party (NDP) will be presenting us with its program in anticipation of the 2013 election.
An education system in need of change, health care in chaos, the dangers of fish feed lots in Johnstone Strait, BC Hydro and private power production, the Northern Gateway heavy oil pipeline, oil tankers plying the coast, shale gas production in northeastern B.C. using hydraulic fracturing and the construction of the Site C dam will be newsworthy issues.
The education system in B.C. suffers from under funding and a lack of vision and it’s time to do as Mike Farnworth (NDP MLA) said in March 2011. Hold a Royal Commission to take an in-depth look at the system from the Kindergarten to the post-secondary level.
In late-December, provincial health ministers met with their federal counterpart to discuss the system and how it might be improved. With luck, 2012 may be the year in which preventive health programs get attention.
The Northern Gateway (NG) pipeline hearings began in Kitimat on Jan. 10 for individuals, organizations and First Nations people who have signed up as formal interveners in the federal review process.
Evidence is piling up about how wrong headed the project is but both the provincial and federal governments have expressed their support.
It supports Christy Clark’s “jobs initiative” and Stephen Harper wants the estimated $500 billion it will generate over its lifetime. Wild salmon stocks on B.C.’s coast are under threat from a lethal and highly contagious marine virus that was detected in 2011 in wild salmon.
Researchers found it in juvenile sockeye salmon in Rivers Inlet on the central coast and they suspect that it has been transported in fish eggs from Iceland and Scandinavia to fish feed lots.
Independent power production in B.C. will continue to be a controversial issue.
Streams and rivers are still destined for destruction around the province. The Site C dam proposal will become more newsworthy as the environmental assessment proceeds and the campaign against it escalates.
Flooding the Peace River valley will decimate thousands of acres of prime farmland to produce power for northern oil, gas and mining industries, but not for B.C. households.
Fracking for shale gas has “exploded” in northeastern B.C. and claims from residents about fouled water, unhealthy air and earth tremors are being dismissed.
The Year of the Dragon will be an interesting for British Columbians because of the seriousness of the new realities of a rapidly changing world; a world in which governments have given their power to the big corporations.
– Roy Ronaghan is columnist for the Grand Forks Gazette
