March 22, 2010 update: According to a story in today’s Edmonton Journal,

“Sustainable Resource Development Minister Mel Knight says the Alberta Endangered Species Committee has again recommended that grizzly bears be listed as a threatened species.” The story quotes Mr. Hunt as saying, “Most certainly, the government of Alberta has every intention of being sure grizzly bears remain part of the landscape in Alberta.” The Alberta government has continued to suspend the spring hunt.

Here in British Columbia, no such commitment has been made. In nine days, hunters will start killing the province’s bears in the annual spring hunt.

The Province of British Columbia lets people kill grizzly bears for fun. This is an obscenity that must be stopped.

The grizzly bear is a magnificent animal, a symbol of this province’s natural beauty, yet the government lets hunters kill it for sport. Minister of Environment Barry Penner should be ashamed of himself.

Grizzlies are under pressure from habitat destruction and salmon depletion and nobody knows how many remain. They have been extirpated from much of the Pacific Northwest, yet we are fortunate to have some left here in BC. In a few short weeks, rich American hunters will start blasting grizzly bears to oblivion as they emerge hungry and bleary-eyed from their dens. Why? So these brave folks can peel off their hides and put them on their rec room walls.

Stop this abomination. Contact the David Suzuki Foundation, write your MLA, the Premier and Minister Penner. Do something, before it is too late.

This from CKNW today:

“People on income assistance or with disabilities will no longer get pre-made foot orthotics, electrotherapy devices or contraception; items supplied in the past to reduce health risks. BC has safe tap water so the 20 dollar monthly bottled water supplement is also gone.

Each year, the Province spends 3.7 millions dollars on funerals for low-income residents so if you are an immigrant on income assistance and you die the person who sponsored you will have to pay up if they have the money.

More than 177-thousand people in BC are on income assistance and the number is growing.

The changes aim to save ten million dollars.”

……

Ten million dollars saved by denying contraception, bottled water and funerals to welfare recipients! That’s two-thirds of the amount we BC taxpayers spent each day on Olympic Games security. Our government certainly has its priorities straight.

Wu family statement:

In the early morning hours of January 21, 2010, about a month and a half ago, Vancouver resident Yao Wei Wu was awakened, dragged out of his house and brutally beaten up by two men who turned out to be police officers in plain clothes. Mr. Wu and his family are completely innocent law-abiding people who had done nothing wrong. Although the perpetrators of the assault on Mr. Wu were immediately identified, no charges have been laid against them and there is no indication that they will ever be brought to justice. Therefore, in order to attempt to achieve some measure of justice, Mr. Wu and his wife have commenced a civil action this morning in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Action No. S101576, Vancouver Registry.

The details of the claim are set out in the Court documents, and they speak for themselves. It is important to note that none of the allegations in the Statement of Claim have been proved in Court, and the Defendants have not yet responded to them. The Defendants are the two alleged assailants, Vancouver Police Department constables Nicholas Florkow and Bryan London, their employer the City of Vancouver as well as the Corporation of Delta. The Corporation of Delta has been named because it is responsible for the Delta Police Department investigation of the incident, which the Wu family alleges has been negligently conducted.

The Wu family is very dissatisfied with the investigation of this matter. They feel that charges should have been laid weeks ago and that the men who beat Mr. Wu up are receiving preferential treatment because they are police officers. They don’t believe the Canadian justice system should work this way.

They were asked to file a complaint with the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, but they have no confidence with that process, because it involves police investigating police. The OPCC is staffed almost entirely with former police officers who must naturally be uncomfortable finding fault with their former colleagues.

The Wu family have full confidence that the civil court system will deal with this matter appropriately, and will have no further comment on this matter before the case comes to trial.

Own the Podium. The Best Place on Earth.

Am I the only one who finds these slogans offensive and cringes every time I hear them? Who thinks these things up?

Jingoism is rampant at the Olympic Games, so it should come as no surprise that some bureaucrat would decide that Canada would “own the podium” once taxpayers stepped up and doled out big dollars to improve Olympic performance. According to ownthepodium2010.com, the Government of Canada contributes $47 million per year to the program while the Government of British Columbia “has generously contributed $10 million”.

There’s only one taxpayer, so this year we have handed over $57 million to Roger Jackson and his gang. Generous indeed. It’s one thing for fleece us, it’s quite another for the recipients of our largesse to make boneheaded and unsportsmanlike decisions along the way. “Own the Podium” apparently means keeping other nations’ elite athletes off our soil (or ice or snow), thereby depriving our aspiring Olympians from training with and learning from the best. Nice call. And how’s that “ownership” thing working out? At this writing Canada is behind Korea in total medals and have fewer golds than tiny Switzerland…

Then there’s The Best Place on Earth. British Columbia is a nice place and it’s where I’ve chosen to live. But best place on earth? How insufferably arrogant. My vision of the best place on earth is a place where there is adequate health care for all, where homeless people don’t sleep on the streets, where aboriginal peoples are treated with dignity and respect, where the police are accountable to the citizens they serve, where people aren’t allowed to shoot grizzly bears for fun, where fish farms don’t foul the oceans and harm wild salmon, where ancient forests aren’t levelled to make toilet paper and where it doesn’t rain most of the time…

When I saw the sickening video of the fatal crash of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on Friday, my immediate reaction was, why weren’t those vertical support beams covered? By the next morning they had been,and the track speed had been reduced, although the IOC was blaming the young athlete’s inexperience for the tragedy.

An editorial in The Globe and Mail (February 14) has called for a coroner’s inquest into the matter to address the many disturbing questions that still linger. The Vancouver Sun’s Cam Cole, in a marked departure from CanWest’s Games cheerleading, listed these on Saturday:

“Why was the luge track with the record vertical drop running 20 km/h faster than it was designed to be? How could there be exposed steel posts a few feet off an outside curve where athletes are travelling 145 km/h? Was the athlete, ranked 44th in the world, expert enough to handle the dangerous course?

And, most disturbingly: might Canada, in its zeal to protect its athletes’ home- course advantage, have inadvertently contributed to the likelihood of crashes involving lower-ranked athletes who hadn’t had sufficient opportunity t train on such a wild, fast run?”

Disturbing indeed. If Canada’s “zeal” to “own the podium” played any role in this athlete’s death, that would be downright criminal.

The Globe is right: a coroner’s inquest should be called, and held, without delay.