Thank you Heather. This article is long overdue as we watch our corporate-controlled provincial Liberals continue their scorched earth policies to achieve their sale of and privatization of the province. Too many communities on life support? Hardly. Those communities are the home of thousands of Canadians who are part of the larger Canadian mosiac just as much as are various arriving ethnic groups into our larger cities who are helped by Ottawa, just as much as are the truckers who depend on heavly subsidized highways to haul the subsidized goods going for export and just as much as the millionaires in BC who are enjoying tax cuts only the wealthy can take advantage off. We are still paying for the St. Lawrence seaway development of half a century ago, but how much has Paul Martin's Canada Steamship Lines (which he gave to his sons to avoid still obvious conflict of interest issues), been subsidized by the rural types who are now being called a burden. The greatest hurdle facing this country is getting over this mentality that we are extractors and exporters of raw resources, that this industrial resource extraction is the only driver available on which to base an economy. How much have Canadians, including those who live in the north, paid over the years as subsidies to the corporations that get to exploit these resources? Why is it that royalties on our natural resources don't reflect the real costs to this country, including the cost in human terms of simply killing off human communities. My only concern on this article is that it doesn't touch on the fact that the conditions facing rural, northern communities are also being played out in problably even more rural southern communites that are being abandoned by a government that allows corporations to simply walk away from their responsibilities.? Ask the people in Barriere why Tolko Industries was allowed to abandon them when its mill burned down last year only weeks after this government quietly ended any linkage between cutting rights and local jobs.

Having lived much of my life in small town and isolated rural/agricultural settings, (50/50 big city and small town), where I still live with a preference for same, the tipping point from which that small town life has all begun to "qualitatively" go into the toilet, especially for folks raising families, was about 1979/80. And it occurred suddenly and dramatically, most notably, with Ronald Reagan's freeing of U.S. interest rates to find their own level on the "free market". (Though the period actually began earlier, with Margaret Thatcher's attack on Unionized coalminers in England, of which there was a parallel in the Kerkhoff Construction dispute to crush, successfully it evolved, construction worker's unions in this province as well.And I may have the precise order of things wrong here.)

Thereafter unions fell or retreated like a defeated army abandoning the field of battle, Richmond Steel, but one that comes to mind, and a great deal of the rest of the fragile secondary manufacturing base, in rapid order, broke their unions and fled into the Southern U.S. or Mexico, even Hong Kong and Thailand. NAFTA was merely the cherry on the cake that handed all but nominal control of the economy to offshore, largely U.S. corporate interests, where the major decisions continue to be made today.

It is the culmination of a Rightist dominant set of ideas and responses, a so-called "Free Market" process which continues to roll in waves through the economy, especially into the "Heartland" areas, and from which rural B.C.has never entirely recovered, and continues to be negatively impacted. I was working my own struggling agricultural and "wood industry" enterprises at the time, and remember yet just about the precise day and hour it all began to come unglued, when interest rates went from about 8 or 9%, I think it was, to about 24%, over the period of no more than a few months. (Other small rural enterprises, in a number of cases of which I was aware, went to the lengths of hiding their logging and other equipment in the deep bush, to keep it from the repo man.)

I haven't seen any population figures going into or what has occurred since, but I know in my own small town, the population stats show a drop in the magnitude of some 20%. Some areas will have done better of course, but I'm damned sure that figure is not atypical of the Heartland experience. Though Food Banks do represent a growth sector everywhere.

For the average citizen, and certainly for the great majority of interior communities, neoconservative economic policies have been an abyssmal failure. And the decline continues. To here though, contradictorily, it is these very communities which have been, and likely remain inclined to vote for these very same rightist, "Business Friendly" politics. I think the reasons for that are complex, coming out of an almost natural "initial" tendency in difficult times, for people to become "conservative" anyway, as in attempt to draw close and "conserve" what little they have, and to resist the threat of "ANY" changes to their way of life generally. Whether that breaks down over time, and becomes more open and willing to entertain different views on the role of the economy, and what constitutes perhaps better policy and strategies than the neoconservative ones they are used to, and more in "their" particular interest, we are going to find out here, sooner or later, I think.

Thus far however, just to be frank and honest with ourselves I think, because there is no point to being otherwise, it is the "level of political understanding" /mindset of "the mass" of working and small business/shopkeeper people, a kind of widespread, fearful timidity, that prevents them, or anyone else, from coming to grips with a direction of economic and social development that is more in their own "particular" interest, as opposed to that of the ruling Corporate Elites who control the fundamental processes. (State, economy, media and electoral.) Indeed, over the near to mid-term, in my view, which tends to be pessimistic, I grant, we are as likely, perhaps even more likely, to see a stronger "fascistic" trend within contemporary society, as we are a more leftward or "progressive" one.

Well, I consider "Kelowna" the north, and look how well we are doing? Our economy is prospering thanks to an abundance of strip malls, gated communities, crappy tourist attractions, and milking provincial taxpayers by crying the blues for the "summer of fire". Men like Stockwell Day and Walter Gray have ensured that Kelowna is the epicenter of the BC Heartland. All I have to say to towns like Prince Rupert and Prince George is: BE MORE LIKE KELOWNA.

We appreciate the efforts of commentors who are brave enough to use their own names, or use regular pseudonyms. This encourages a high level of responsible commentary! Thanks!

A tho’t provoking story in that it raises a lot of questions. In today’s world with its ever-expanding, ever-encroaching, techno-dependant,NAFTA,strip mall and whore-loving human population, has the term ‘rural’ become meaningless? Is the concept of ‘rural’ maintained by nostalgia coupled with a denial of the principles of evolution? Aren’t we really just clinging to the past? If we believe it is real, what definition of rural life are we willing to tolerate as a measure for subsidy? Is ‘rural’ a small community built on the proceeds of primary resource extraction – fishing, farming, forestry and mining? If so then, based on the economic variant of ‘survival of the fittest’, aren’t subsidies to keep those not involved, very questionable? If it is simply life style – “it’s a great place to raise kids” – then aren’t those subsidies even more questionable? If it is a gentrification of the rural landscape by those that want all of the trappings enjoyed by those in the city, should we socialize the costs just for their benefit? If it is expecting someone living on the landscape to put on the brakes as the corporate world runs amok, it hasn’t happened in the past so what makes today different and what will subsidies do to prevent further environmental degredation? If it is that old favorite, tourism, and you think rural life will be supported by cruise ships, container ports and rail lines, check out Skagway or Ketchikan. In order to survive, both communities, along with others on the Alaska cruise route, suffer the indignities of ‘taking in the laundry’ of tens of thousands of tourists that get disgorged from the annual armada of Princess boats. During peak tourist times, doesn’t rural suddenly look very much urban? BTW, the European-rural-tourist-economy example is quite interesting. Other than semantics, what is the difference between “generating wealth” and “just seeing dollar signs”?

"We appreciate the efforts of commentors who are brave enough to use their own names, or use regular pseudonyms." says the Site Manager.

And there are an awful lot of damned good reasons for using pseudonyms. It's not a question of bravery so much, as it is savvy. If you don't know that, either you haven't lived long enough, or you live in sheltered circumstances.

Frankly, my views are the same with or without using my real name, and you know that very well, because you really know who we all are anyway, at least our IP addresses.

In fact, pressuring people to use their real names in these circumstances, and don't kid yourselves, "security" interests read these sites, while preferable in the ideal world, is mostly an attempt to get them to be "less controversial", and tow a narrower line. (Yes, I know "security interests" will find out who we are, if they decide it's important enough to them, may even secure the cooperation of a compliant site manager, but I'm sure as hell not going to make it easier for them.) Which is okay, if your views tend to be more "acceptable", in terms of the establishment norm, anyway.

I don't much care who knows who I am, but it's not in "my interest" to draw a lot of "unnecessary" attention to myself. (My views tending to be beyond the "accepted" pale, so to speak. With which I have had some experience.)

A good day to you Site Manager. You have my sympathy. You really do. To lighten your load, a simple request anytime, and I'm out of here without a fuss.

I participate, here and into the U.S., in a number of "liberal to left" online sites, and pseudonyms are the norm everywhere. So someone or some political element is clearly pressuring this Site Manager, would be my bet.

1. Re real names - I use it because I am a stupid egomaniac! Got a problem with that? 2. Re rural communities - I have the same questions as KMD. Why should rural communities be supported? Surely the objective should not be to have people sitting around doing nothing productive. This would be tantamount to creating a human zoo, a la the Polynesian Cultural Centre, except that the inmates can't go home afterward. If public funds are to be used, it should be to create viable occupations. I have no idea what that would be -- there are smarter folks with more letters after their names, whose life work is to answer these verities. I would suspect that some rural places can be revived by introducing secondary processing to resource extractions, instead of just exporting the stuff to factories abroad. Others can be revived by the introduction of far-out new industries like energy production from wind, microwave, and ocean temperature gradients. And still other places will simply become ghost towns -- it's unfortunate, but it happens. An interesting spinoff discussion, too broad to be discussed here, is what to do with jobs in the urban areas. Automation and centralization are doing away with our livelihoods, too. Is this the start of a new renaissance, with a population liberated from the burden of work, or is it an onrushing descent into mass poverty?

Being north (since Kelowna is now north (?)) and abit east (west Central Alberta) it seems like the same problems are alive and well in oil rich Texas-north. The community of Grande Cache was dumped by Weyerhauser in February, leaving a few too many people out of work, and the community decided to try and set its own destiny by seriously looking into community based forestry. They wanted to have some control over their own lives, struggle with their own mill business instead of ever again taking the word of a multinational. Unfortunately, there's not too much wood left, and what is left is the remaining remnant forest of a COSEWIC listed threatened caribou herd (once again pitting environmental concerns against the livlihoods of decent people - and who really is responsible for that?!) Couple this with a corporate friendly government who nixed the idea of a community setting its own destiny - they couldn't support a community based venture at this time. And so it stands... no one appears to be listening in the seats of power, the folks of Grande Cache are still at the beck and call of corporate 'largesse', and sadly, participatory democracy, in it truest, most fragile attempt by rural people - squashed like a bug. I sure hope Albertans wake up soon.

"I am a stupid egomaniac! Got a problem with that? 2. Re rural communities - I have the same questions as KMD. Why should rural communities be supported?" asks Ron.

KWD has a problem. You haven't noticed? It's called, Big City arrogance.

The reality is, rural communities subsidize Big City with "too cheap" resources, which they waste extravegantly, take the greatest quantitative and gualitative benefit from, creating lifestyles of "the rich and famous" and the "wannave rich" that are of dubious social value and are the main element with their burgeoning populations contributing to global resource depletion, and everything that flows therefrom, including global warming.

Rural communities on the other hand, are the true "proletariat" and "peasantry" that these artificial urban landscapes suck from and bleed, to artificially maintain themselves.

Now that is a "bit" of an exaggeration of course, because Big City is also a place of cultural and intellectual learning, but almost as froth on the head of the "social beer", a byproduct, coincidental benefit to an otherwise concrete, pavement and carbon monoxide cesspool.

My friend KWD, who is so preoccupied with environmental degradation and destruction, with however much good reason, needs to look closer and deeper into the role of the bourgeois urban landscape. as precisely one of the driving elements of that.

But then, he tends to be one of those who thinks, it is only the other guys toilet who stinks. :)

When it comes to the question of who subsidizes who, my friend, there is need for a little more depth and clarity in your thinking. The reality is, there is a total problem out there, with the greater part of it being, the shit in the air, and the truckloads of garbage being exhuded and shat upon, into the great rural global environment. You are the "suck". We merely the scapegoat "patsies", who feed your great open maws.

Good piece, Connie.

As for Albertans, I'm just guessing, mind, but we are likely going to have to wait for the oil to run dry. Which it will eventually.

Right now, they are riding high, and feeling arrogant and conservative. It is not unlike how the ruling class feels towards the rest of us.

Thanks for your comments Site Manager. However, I disagree that my comments are irresponsible. The point I am trying to make is that Kelowna is held up as the "model" interior community, yet ask anyone who has been or lived in Kelowna, and they'll tell you frankly it's all bells, whistles, and lies (or more accurately, strip malls, gated communities and disaster-related whining. For example, the jobs that paid GOOD FAMILY WAGES, ie forestry/logging or Western Star, are mostly gone. In their place, we have: a) low-paying jobs in light industry and sub-standard "tech" companies; b) low-paying, seasonal jobs related to the tourist trade; c) jobs in housing/construction that are cyclical and sometimes short-term. I think everyone's tired of hearing about how tourism or recreation can turn around one's fortunes. Yes, it worked for Whistler and Tofino. But how many Whistlers or Tofinos can we support? We also need cities with good jobs, good schools and a reasonable cost of living and housing. Vancouver has some jobs and some decent schools, but the cost of living is just stupid. Same for Victoria. On the flipside, Nelson and the Sunshine Coast have all the quality of life, but few real jobs. No wonder grow-ops are all the rage! They're one of the best rural jobs out there. To get to my point: I don't mean to be defamatory, but the current economic model is not sustainable. We cannot continue to tolerate company after company after company buy up the best BC companies, like Western Star or MacBlo, and move their profits and jobs (many of which benefit the North or the Heartland) down to the States or elsewhere. I'm all for industry, but how have we gotten to the point where it's perfectly acceptable for an American public company like CN buy a cherished provincial resource like BC Rail for a song? When will BC wake up and say enough is enough? Whitewater rafting adventures and ski resorts are great, but they are the gravy, people. Problem is, where is the beef???

Good piece, Kelowna Ken.

The Site Manager is a bitch! We can use whatever names we want

Stop using pseudonyms, it's disrespectful.

I agree with Churchill

And while your at it stop trashing my government

Look now I'm coyote. I feel like that demon from that Denzel Washington movie who can posess someones body at will. The Tyee message boards will never be the same, beware.

Seems like nobody has ever read Jane Jacobs. Cities create the wealth and--contrary to utopian 20th century notions of "untapped riches of the north"--the hinterlands have become economic sinkholes unviable without subsidies. Is anyone "entitled" to a "way of life", if that means somebody has to subsidize it? Let's put it more crudely: subsidization is the appropriation of the labour of other workers. I get uncomfortable when I hear an argument involving "saving a way of life". It really begs larger issues.

Right on Union Guy... except for the creating wealth part. Cities do control the distribution of debt, they don't create wealth. Somewhat off topic, but wealth is like energy, it can't be created or destroyed, merely changed from one form to another. Today's economic system is not a wealth-based system. That system disappeared with the removal of the gold standard. Today our economy relies entirely on debt and repaying debt on currency that has been created solely for the purpose of generating interest payments. Try taking your money to the bank and exchanging it in for gold...

Look now I'm union guy. It's another one of the costumes I wear over my brown shirt.

So Union guy, you don't want to have the rewards of your labor appropriated to pay for those who populate the rural north. No problem, but please stop expecting me to hand over my tax dollars so that wealthy industrialists can profit by shipping their unnecessary and oft-environmentally bad products to you over highways that require a never ending appropriation of taxes from me and others, who don't all live so very close to the centre of the world. The levers of economic wealth may well reside in Hogtown, but the real generators (at least in Canada) have always been up north, out west or somewhere else the comfortable tend not to gravitate towards. That hasn't changed since the days when Quebec City and then Montreal were the meccas of Canadian finance and industry. In fact, there is a line of argument that large cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, etc., are really more like holding ponds for lazy camp followers, who have benefitted tremendously from better communications and transportation technology, thereby allowing those who feed off the country's real wealth to do so without ever leaving home. Oh, here's another example of great subsidies and it doesn't directly involve Toronto, but Vancouver instead. The Vancouver Canucks, who have more millionaire employees per capita than does Microsoft, will receive the profits of a special lottery thanks to some backroom stick handling with the ideologically bankrupt provincial Liberal government. No, the funds won't be used to develop child care space for workers' children, training for young, future hockey stars or even free passes for the typical Vancouverite who can't afford the unsubsidized ticket costs. Instead, apparently the money will ensure the ratio of wealthy Canuck hockey players doesn't slip below the dismal level set by Bill Gates. But of course, there may be other reasons why a Torontonian would want to dump on his northern or rural cousins. After a century of willingly accepting all the north's wealth, it appears the north has no interest in being repaid with Toronto garbage. So eat it, sleep in it, build monuments to urbania out of it, but please don't ask the rubes in the woods to subsidize whatever you do with it.

Dear Whoever you are, If you appropriate another's identity, whether real or nom de plume, in order to deceive, or cause harm to that person's reputation, or to unfairly gain from the result of that deception, you enter into an area of criminal law which includes fraud, forgery, slander, libel, identity theft and the like. If you cause real damages to your victim, that is generally not thought funny by the civil courts.

Please speak only for yourself. I understand nobody would ever really mistake you for Winston Churchill, but others are finding this offensive.

First, if I thought "Union Guy" actually reflected any amount of significant trade unionist opinion and policy, I'd turn in my union card and walk quickly away from whatever minor roles I might play therein, and shuck it all. Fortunately, I KNOW this brownshirt, Union Guy, only reflects himself. And a pathetic image it is too.

Other than that, Allan says about all that needs to be said to the "gentry chauvanists" from the Big Shitpile, known as "the Big City". So isolated are they from the real world and real nature, that they feel they can shit on those who feed them the essential raw material for their computer paper and laptops, their Starbucks coffee, kyaks and lattes, and the steel for their Big Wheels, and all the other essential ingrediants that make their otherwise bloated, paper shuffling and overly sedentary lives possible. They are full of fanciful theories and concern for the environment, of course, but generally as divorced from the real world as they are real nature, and the struggles that go on there.

And I know that is not ALL, or anywhere even near MOST Big City folks, who goodly numbers of, are instrumental and directly process the materiales and produce the goods and services that are the REAL wealth of society-, and not "the paper" that passes for it. And which they frequently MISTAKE for it, be it in the form of "debt" or "folding green", and an inordinate share of which is frequently alienated/ robbed from them in the sleight of hand that occurs in the economic processes of capitalism. (One should never make the mistake of thinking, in the case of paper money, that which merely "represents" something in a transaction, for actually being "THE THING" itself. "Money", in and of itself, if it was not known to "represent" other, truly useful or desirable THINGS, would have no REAL VALUE whatsoever, other than perhaps as asswipe or wallpaper.) All of which leaves many a City Folk as powerless and impoverished as their counterpart country cousins-, while it bloats that class which controls the paper trails of the system of "wage slavery", still alive and well amongst us.

Yet to be realized by thee and your country cousins, of course, is that we are a mutually supportive "community", and we only SEEM without power, because we have to here allowed it to be that way. It's only in UNION, as in real union, that we are made STRONG and POWERFUL Without which we feel, and effectively are, like eunuchs; social eunuchs, eating such crumbs as fall others tables, or they feel they absolutely have to give us, to keep us around for their uses at all.

Concern for the REAL natural envirnoment, which is entirely justified and indeed under threat, nonetheless, to be REAL, has to be concerned with the lives of REAL people as well, and their NATURAL "social" environments. Otherwise, it is merely a disconnected "intellectual" concern, divorced from reality, that fails to take into account a critical element in the piece, save as mere fodder for your extinction theories. An attitude that is more than a tad bit fascistically anti-human,( so long as they escape the Great Extinction, and as someone else said, are near a Home Depot after the crash, of course), in no less a way than were those who fed the furnaces of Auschwitz.

Hey Bailey I only switched identities to prove a point to "Site Manager" and everyone else discussing pseudonyms. I will cease.

Don't worry though I'm still here

Me too dude.

I'll be in Hawaii if anyone needs me.

"... in no less a way than were those who fed the furnaces of Auschwitz." said self.

Well, a little extreme, perhaps. Better, "...in no less a way than those who intellectually sought to justify Auschwitz." There are theorizers and there are doers. One may or may not be both.

Two whiskies and two tokes later. :)

I totally agree with Coyote about using pseudonyms. I'm a gov't employee, and after 3 years of the worst gov't in BC history, I firmly believe that there is no low to which Gordon Campbell's thugs will not stoop, no lie too big to tell, no limit to their greed, no paranoia too deep for them. It's not only possible that they troll sites like this, it's almost a certainty, if only to get a sense of how much of a danger activists like us pose to their plans. And still they don't get it. Even though they have the media in their pocket, (or is it the other way around?), like all criminals, they fear being caught, and will go to any length to avoid being caught. To the city dwellers among us, this is rather unbelievable. To those of us who have been stabbed in the heartland, it's self evident. The Liberals and their well off supporters have NO idea of the level of rage outside the urban centres. It's a wonder to me that we haven't seen more violence. And I suggest that if these criminals are re-elected, then there WILL be violence, sabotage, civil disobedience the like of which has never been seen in BC. And of course, it will all come as a big surprise to anyone who hasn't suffered under this regime. You know how nobody ever admits to having voted for an unpopular government? Well, I've worked with the public for 20 years, and never before, not under the Zalm, not under Bennett, NEVER before have I had people tell me that they not only voted for this party, but they bitterly regret it, and are ashamed of themselves for doing so. I've been hearing comments like that ever since the Liberals real agenda began to show it's callous and indifferent face. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me, that's significant.

And this while consolidated BC forest companies are more profitable than ever?? Why is Crown land not profitable for the citizens that work it, and instead is pillaged by shareholder greed in a grow or die gloablised business environment?? The powers that be in this province have kept us in the dark, fighting with each other. We've got a drunk driving criminal at the head of our province, the aspers telling us whatever suits them, and industry fighting to keep people in the dark about who really owns the resources of this province. We raise hundreds of thousands of mouths here in Vancouver and in Victoria who will never break a sweat working in the bush, but expect as their right an eventual 6 figure income pushing paper in Vancouver or Victoria (beacuse they got a freaking degree). It is a travesty and horrible shame that small communities suffer like they do, while shareholders from all over the world expect compounding interests to be gleaned from this great and plentiful land that is being devoured again and again. And all while the rightful owners and stewards (the people of BC/Canada) shake fists at each other, grinding down our culture into a future that will not provide for many. Sickening, and the spin that is used to justify and sell it for many decades has worked very well. Vancouver is full of people who are happy to think that it is their right to be so wealthy and irresponsible, when what they really need to do is understand this province for what it really is, and what they really owe to it, and the "heartland" communities that support it. Being wealthy may be their right, but their responsiblity is certainly not diminished as their spending power increases. The question about whether or not the rural lifestyle is worth it is a stupid one. We cannot survive without people living rural lifestyles, as they in turn provide us with the food, toilet paper, pulp for garbage daily newspapers(here in Vancouver), wood for houses, metal for cars, and other consumer items that we here in the City can't survive without.

Good point Scott, BC and Canadian forestry companies are more profitable and cut more trees than ever. Yet the profits go to the shareholders and the corporation not the people. I have witnessed it myself many times over, people who work in forestry (especially contractors and small logging companies) are conintually squeezed by evil corps like Weyehauser.

Leave Gordy alone. It's hard being a lap-dog.

"We cannot survive without people living rural lifestyles..." wrote Scott.

For all but the most intellectually lame,like Union Guy, it is an easy connect to make. Most people don't have any trouble with it at all, in fact.

When we start talking about "sustainability", and making sure that we maintain a natural world that preserves the preconditions of our lives, tied as it is to the other critters and flora of the planet, who are our "canary" early warning system, from a purely selfish and practical perspective, the question becomes, in large part, especially when OUR population levels get out of control, the "scale" of the social enviornments we create, and the "scale" of their draw on the natural inventory of the globe. The scale of this, our footprint on the planet, is essentially the "triggering" mechanism in the piece. At which point, for us, if we are paying attention, I think, one can hear the early warning of the cocking of the hammer.

Now, the negativists may be right, and it is too late. The next great extinction is at hand.

On the other hand, I don't think that is entirely a forgone conclusion-, yet. In any case, if it paralyzes us from acting appropriately, all IS indeed lost, and the prophecy becomes self-fufilling with almost absolute certainty. Our evolutionary family line as a species is already littered along the way, with dead-end/ extinct branches and bones of the family tree. So, it's not like it has never happened before even. (The story of Easter Island comes to mind, for example.)

And as we try to create the socio-political vision and force that will "hopefully" allow us to "begin" to turn our great bejeezus ship away from the impending collision, no doubt, from the perspective of policy, as applied to immigration, family planning stimulus/discouragement, population levels, scale and kinds of economic activity, over the coming decades, we are going to have to look hard and critically, though also realistically, and what is and is not realistic, at the spewed out over the landscape, mindless, feeding frenzy, of especially large urban centres, but also the number and scale of smaller rural communities. (Banff, as an example from Alberta, growing like a tourist trap cancer in a national park as it is, should probably be,at least largely abandoned and turned back to what it was, as much as possible, over time.)

Mostly, all of us, especially ordinary everday folks, need to look at the social/class inequities and competition which help feed the envy and the frenzy, and the discord amongst ourselves. We need to start reining in and curbing the power of those "priviledged elements" that are out of control there. And we need to start insisting on greater inputs and practical, participatory "power", for ourselves, over the critical, everyday economic and political processes upon which we and our communties depend, and to draw in others with particular scientific expertise and interests, such as consumers and environmental, to participate in the creation of this new "management and direction" model. Mayhaps, with the different economic and social priorties that may evolve out of this new, more democratic/ participatory economic and day to day politcal system, we can begin to repair some of the extreme fuckups the old "fear and greed" driven heirarchical capitalist system has left in its wake across the planet.

Now that may be wild dreaming for our urban and rural communities and interests, but "what is", is ever more steadily evolving into a kind of "bad feeling" nightmare, in the hands of the current "exclusive" power holders.

First, however, we have to overcome the apathetic/defeatist mindset, the brownshirt chauvanisms, and the level and kind of ideological understanding which exists out there, in the mass of society. Nothing changes of its own volition here, except to deteriorate. It presupposes human intervention.

...reporting from kelowna. kelowna ken, whomever he might be, is bang-on. interestingly, a local columnist here in kelowna wrote a story about how the city of kamloops has a serious case of 'kelowna envy' due to all of the economic activity (yes, that would be yr golf courses, strip malls, and cheesy tourist attractions) happening here. the one thing that isn't happening here is decent paying manufacturing jobs, which kamloops has many more of. it also boasts significantly lower housing costs and excellent recreational services (i'm talking arenas, gyms and pools, not paintball and waterslides). yet few people (even people living in kamloops) would recognize that. however, the point about the rural way of life dying off is an old, old story. my uncle weaned himself away from raising chickens back in the 60s in ontario by selling insurance. there are some people who feel connected to the land and will make things work out in changing markets by NOT sticking their heads in the soil - look at the winemakers here in the Okanagan. surely we all agree that it's a fast-changing world out there, and that very little is truly 'secure' anymore. is that some kind of right wing agenda, to keep us all off balance? well, perhaps. but there have always been places where wealth is migrating to, (and from), and i have little doubt things are pretty desperate along the yellowhead and highway 3. but in many ways, they always have been. i grew up in a union town and the disparity in wealth there was every bit as bad as in the big city - my dad taught school and within two years of a nuclear power facility coming to town saw kids who'd dropped out making more money (with abundant overtime), than he did. of course, the fact that they had boring, meaningless jobs featherbedded by a government monopoly and militant unions was beside the point. funny part is, those jobs are gone now, and the poor buggers who never planned their retirement and left selling their big-ass boats and trucks. bully for 'em! there has been one reliable generator of economic wealth in bc in the past thirty years, and that's the city of vancouver and the lower mainland. and it's not going to change anytime soon.

I live in Tahsis, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. There used to be a cedar mill, a hemlock mill and a planer mill here, and plenty of logging to keep the mills going...they're gone and I understand young Mr. Doman has been fired (in a genteel fashion of course) from the family business he led into bankruptcy, and the town is reduced to about 300 more-or-less determined people. Recently a company arrived here with a ten year contract to "clean up" the mess left by the big logging corporations. Not a huge business, only maybe a dozen guys pulling shake blocks and salvaged logs left behind when the corp. moved on to skim cream somewhere else. Those guys say there's as much wood out there wasted and left to rot as was ever taken out and put through the mills. I'd bet it's the same all over the province. The big corporations come in, stride across the land like Jack's giant , then leave and those who live there can clean up the mess. We have a small sawmill opened here, now, again they are using what was wasted and left behind...the government is allowing the removal of 850 metric tonnes of krill from the strait of georgia and at the same time asking "why" the fish stocks are declining steadily...krill is the basic food for the small fish which are, in turn, food for hte bigger fish and removing 850 metric tonnes of food is sure to cause starvation... this kind of asinine stupidity by those supposed to be in charge of "protecting" the resources is rampant. Cities are on their way out. Cities don't grow food. Cities don't even generate their own power. Cities are where Monopoly gets played. But rural and ex-urban towns will never flourish as long as bureaucrats and politicians are under the thumbs of the big-money corporations. I'd sign this Florence Nightingale but I wouldn't want to upset the nice yanks and their Homeland Security efforts to protect us from ourselves and each other. Hi Coyote! You sly dog you!!

Kelowna, Prince George, Nanaimo, Comox Valley and Kamloops all form a set of newly emerging urban centres in BC. They will all do well and they all get decent government support. The places between 10 000 and 50 000 - Prince Rupert, Terrace, Smithers, Quesnel, Williams Lake, Cranbrook etc.... are all on lifesupport. The chance for these communities to recover and become prosperous is difficult, but with enough will the the right local government, it can be done. The places I love and want to see prosper are the rural resource towns of BC. Places like Princeton, Revelstoke, Lillooet, Fort St James,Mackenzie, Tahsis (just for you Anne) and some 60 other communities. They have been abadonded first by business (and by extention their labour partners such as the IWA) then by the federal government and since Glen Clark by the provincial government.. These resource towns are where First Nations are still a large part of the population, where weather and geography still determine your work day, where a majority of the export wealth of BC is created. Rural communities need the urban centres to provide many services, but urban areas of BC need people cutting down trees, digging up ore and pumping out oil to allow their standard to living to exist. It is only because of softwood lumber exports, oil and gas exports, agricultural exports and mineral exports that stops the Canadian dollar from falling to less than 50 cents US. As government abandons rural BC, the ability to make effective and efficient decisions recedes. More and more decisions get made by people that know the inside of a Starbucks but do not know the history and reality of the place they are making decisions are made. Is there things that can be done? Yes. 1) Move all staff of all land based ministries to small towns. MoF staff need to be in Lillooet and Fort St James and not Prince George, Victoria or Kamloops 2) Pass a regulation banning financial institutions from disciminating based on geograghy. Borrowing money for business in a small town can not be done in BC any longer. 3) All resource revenue rents must be spent in the areas where the resources come from. Oil and gas in the peace, electricity revenues in the Kootenanies, stumpage where ever they are collected. 4) The federal government must immediately give real self government to First Nations. The feds must also stop their passive aggressive opposition to settling treaties 5) Forest tenure holders need to not own processing facilities. As long as big companies own the woods, they will not harvest them in a manner that benefits the communities or the province. 6) Management of federal and provincial parks must be turned over to rural communities along with enough money to manage them effectively. 7) Feds must work to get out of all natural resource fields and hand this over to the province.

what heartland?,gordo has you all convinced that that the interior of the province is the heartland of the province,(just like the U.S.has it's heartland).the U.S. heartland supplies grain, oil and gas in hugh abundance.our heartland is more a joke to get the voters in the lower mainland convinced that all is well in this province. if you ask anyone outside the lower mainland they will tell you that the work picture is bleak compared to the lower mainland. don't be fooled by gordo as you all know he is a lier!listen to him or his cabinet,occasionally they will mention "the heartland" in there speech but most of the time they call it "the interior of the province".

Perhaps rural communities are being "starved" purposely? Once those towns are gone and dead, the doors would open to mining, oil and gas drilling and logging...and no one there to look after the environment, no one there to annoy big business.

Coyote, Kerkoff construction was 51 percent in then premier bill bennetts wifes name it was all about greed like always, old billy boy busted the unions so he could make money. If you remember he laid off what 460 workers at the B.C. Rail plant in Squamish so he could have access to a few skilled workers then he systematically started to bust the unions. They brought in construction workers from Alberta in the beginning to make sure they had enough skilled workers then eventually they starved out enough union guys that they started working non-union for half the union rate. I used to shop locally but now I often ask who they support before I buy in their store, it is amazing how many small business owners are pro gordo and conservative. It makes no sense to me that they would support these crooks, I have talked to a small store owner who say we should build our ferries off shore I told the guy I couldn't afford his prices since I am a union worker.

BERNARD, The very safeguards required in rural forest areas were in place until May 2003 when the provincial government eliminated any linkage between timber cutting rights and local jobs. The impact of those changes came much quicker than anyone had anticipated when wildfire torched Tolko's Louis Creek sawmill just south of Barierre. About 200 permanent, good-paying jobs were lost and the blame for every dollar that left that region can be put squarely on the shoulders of the provincial Liberals. The new rules allow the major forestry players to choose what and when to cut and when and where to process the wood. Had that legislation not been changed Tolko would have had to rebuild that sawmill. Instead, it has traded its cutting rights in the area to Weyerhaeuser, it pocketed 60 per cent of the value of the mill and property through insurance, (paid for long ago) and then handed the sawmill land, which is an environmental mess, back to an unembarrassed government that is now responsible for its clean up. Net results: 200+ lost jobs, another community on its knees, better corporate profits.

It's all interesting to me as I try to make sense of things. I am struck by what seems to be our drift towards parity with "Third World" nations. Our wealth seems to be departing for somewhere "offshore." Has no one noticed the trend toward the depopulation of the countryside which so much resembles what happened earlier in the countries of Latin America? People went to cities looking for job and ended up living in slums and selling each other lottery tickets. I don't know, don't pretend to know. How many of the tax cut dollars were reinvested in the province to benefit any of us, and how many were spirited off to safe havens in some other country? I suspect we'd all be better off if more of us were growing our own food and buying less junk. But to go back to that place will be a move that is forced on us, not, I fear, chosen. Anyhow, thanks, all, you keep my grey cells all churned up!

Vera Gottleib! You are here! Hey, I got e-mail from you and thought you were spam and had you blocked! Sorry about that! I'll try to fix it. Anyways, I see there are some here who still believe in the myth of "wealth creation". Excuse me, but the wealth was already here long before humans stalked the earth to pollute it beyond recognition and over-populate it beyond sustainability for life. At any rate, living in Resource Industry Towns most of my life (I'm getting old) REAL rural Canada still pays the city super-comsumers' wages indirectly via our raw resources translating into city bucks. (sorry, Ken, but Kelowna is URBAN). Yes, profits are taken, not created, from something or someone else. The real wealth came with the planet, which we are destroying at alarming speed. Someone here mentioned community cooperatives, people using the resources in their areas. Well, that was more or less happening under the NDP tenures, but Billie Bennett wiped away the tie of trees to our mill up here, and then Campbell destroyed the tie of local jobs to the trees, which has pretty much finished us off for working for some absentee corporation. So cooperatives sound good. But we have a problem -- we can't get our land and resources out from under the tentacles of mega forest companies and mines. Whorehauseser and fly-by-night logging and mining outifts have the land all bought up or tenured up. This government doesn't want us here in the sticks. They want to do what King Louis 14th did in France -- bring all the people into the city, so we can be watched, manipulated and controlled easier. City folk have no idea of the size of this province, or much appreciation for the wilderness and the land and its critters. I was talking to a shop owner in Duncan re some elctronic gadget I bought there that wasn't working and he said to just bring into the shop. Yeah, bud -- you're 6 hours' hard drive away without stopping. He didn't believe me. What is it with people in cities, that they lose the ability to tell distance?

Micheal M'gonigle and Ben Parfitt's book "Forestopia" illustrates what is happening--now at an accelerated pace--in the forest industry. Their suggestions point to a possible and sane approach. In a nutshell, the holders of TFL's and other crown land licences do generate low value for the trees coming out. In fact, there seems little attempt by governments to extract more value from the timber taken out, and create steady sustainable employment. The mantra that the forest inductry must become more competitive internationally is true only if the value of timber is low or no value is added. The BC Forest industry is already very efficient. It produces more lumber per person than the US, with a better exchange rate. The key problem is the need to keep this very efficient infrastructure fed with timber--at a rate which already is not sustainable. By removing the technology, which is expensive to buy and maintain, we would reduce costs, reduce the outflow of timber to sustainable levels. This would also allow many more, who loved this way of life, to make a living that is sustainable. Moreover, we would look to add value to timber extracted and low value timber would go where it is needed.

Ok, I'm going to change my name and see who figures it out first... in the next couple of days, k? ok.

vera gottlieb you are spot on!! This emptying of the exurbs has happened before in Canada. You use economics and false hope to get people crammed into the rotting cities, and you keep them there at marginal existance until you need a population desperate enough to go anywhere and do anything, and then.....places in northern quebec were "settled" that way, and you can still find evidence up and down the coast, mainland or this Island, of previous attempts to "settle"...even towns clinging on today which were started because of political promises which were then broken and the towns and people in them were betrayed...Tahsis struggles on, our reserve is completely empty, the people were given promises never fulfilled and now live in Gold River or Campbell River...half of Queen's Cove is no longer reserve land (and how did that happen) but owned by wealthy doctors who are building mansions and planning commercial ventures there, Friendly Cove has two fulltime residents who stay just so the government can't say the place is totally abandoned and snatch it back and folk who have got to have buckets of money are already helicopter'ing cabins there and setting them up on what ought to still be native land...and the beauty of this place is staggering, some foreign zillionaire will put a casino somewhere close by, will build condo's up the slopes, will...and none of the "wealth" thus "created" will go to those who stubbornly live here. This rocks are full of minerals, don't think the proximity to Strathcona Park is going to in any way interfere with strip mining when it suits someone's purpose. Corporations have all the legal rights of persons..but they live much longer lives...they can sit and wait, waxing ever fatter on their accrued interest while the human factor ages and becomes ever less relevant and there will always be desperate people who will gladly leave the festering mess that is the city for poor people, and come here for the hollow promise of jobs. If we slice away the b.s. and taradiddle, our grandparents did not come here because they were visionaries or because they heard the siren call of adventure. They came because they were desperate. Life in "the old country" offerred nothing at all except more misery. They came, a raggedy-ass tatterdemalian lot of people determined to improve the lives of their kids... and they did... and so will we. In spite of the wheelers and dealers, in spite of the witherdicks and numbnuts, and we'll probably do it without any subsidy or "seed money".

Vera Gottlieb is right on the money. They want the communities to disappear. Then they will chase the natives , that don't agree with their mining, clear cutting and resort plans. Then it is time for us all to look back and feel the disaster in the air, soil and water... It is staring with "green micro-hydro" projects, lead by Ledcor (the company owned by the guy that told his son to go up in the hoist that had not been inspected ever, and the kid got killed)... Now Ledcor wants to kill the interior too. But Ledcor owner is good friends with GORDO.

Those living close to the land will have the last laugh. Throughout history it was always those who lived closest to where the wealth was actually generated that ultimatley survived. I don't believe the great ship of capitalism can be steered away from the impending collision with reality. How can people really expect continued growth and prosperity ad infinitum? It is simple math-there is only so much planet to go around. As Ghandi said: there is enough for everyone's need, there is not enough for everyone's greed.

Ah Well. The present government is busy buying ad space with public money to convince everyone of the good job they are doing. The people have spoken already and what they said was, "We are fools. Go ahead and scam us. We will believe anything you say as long as you say will get something for nothing."

"Can BC's North Be Saved?" One can also ask that of all the regions of BC-including the urban region/"the coast". As I see it there is a long history of unequal colonial relations between the 'rural regions' of this province and the "coast". Presently, the urban areas account for a little more than 50% of BC's Gross Provincial Product, but historically over the past 100 or so years it has been the forest sector, the electricity/oil & gas sectors, the mining sectors, fishing sectors, and tourism sectors that have been the mainstay of the provincial economy and which have provided the vast majority of rents to the Provincial Crown whose political power base is "the coast". This centralized political power based whose power is not checked by any internal BC constitution and which allows the Exectuive Branch of Government, Premier and Minister's of the Crown to do what ever they want , regardless of which political party is in power, is largely unchecked and way out of control. Consitutionally. soverign power resides with the Crown...and not with the people of BC...and this has huge implications for the dispersion of political power and the economic development of the province. If there was an 'internal BC" constitution, that constitutionally established directly elected "regional governments" within the province, and where said constitution provided certain authorities/constitutional competencies to each of the regions, and most importantly where title over Crown land & resources currently held by the centralized Crown ...was transferred to each of those regional governments ---who would then "own" the lands & resources in their regions, ....then First Nations & people residing in each of those reasons could establish their own economic & social development path, and because they now own the resources in their region, the rents from those resources would directly flow first to the regional governments, and secondly, upward, to the "capital region" which have reduced authority. The regions, could then confederate could then re-establish the Legislature as the House of the Regions. The inequality between urban and 'rural' centres did not come about by accident, it came about due to centralization of Crown power in Victoria, expropriation of all resource rents from the regions to Victoria, and over the decades insufficient investment back to those regions from whence the wealth derived. The solution is a constitutional re-ordering of the political architecture of the province to create more equal political relations between regions, which in turn will re-balance decision-making, investment, and population flows between rural and urban centres. The root of the problem is found - by asking -where does authority lie? It lies in the Centralized Crown, which allows the Premier and Ministers of the Crown to basiclly do as they wish ..with the Legislature rubber-stamping the decisions. That is not democratic and not fair..and the results are gross inequalities of power and economics within the province...regardless of the party in power. Can it change, sure it can..What is required is a genuine constituent assembly, not legally confined by the 'constituted powers of the state' as was the case with Campbell's Constituent Assembly, which empowers itself to write a new constitution for BC. Members to said constituent assembly to be directly elected using a pro-representation methodology. Otherwise...we will stumble on with an elitist constitution, elitist First Minister's Meetings, excessive powers of the CRown centralized politically, too much power in the Executive branch of government, provincially & nationally, too much power within the centralized bureacracies of civil servants, ...an elitist governance structure...operating as a 'low level democracy'. By getting too focused on the never-ending 'bad news", the symptom of the "BC Ferry deal", the "gutting of rural BC", "the sell-off of BC Hydro", "the impending sale of ICBC once "the soup" gets re-elected...we fail to focus on the "root cause" of all these problems....and that is: misplaced & centralized authority of the Crown..and the disempowerment of the people & regions of BC.

Prince George: No Doctors. No Dentists. No Work. Lots of poor. Lots of teenage hookers. Lots of panhandlers. Deserted downtown core. Empty schools. Constant sirens. Open use of heroin or worse. Stinks...so forget tourism. Pine beetles. A casino now greets you as you enter the city. Wasn't always this way...except for the stink part. ;) Cheers, Rolf

The north uffers because most lumber from BC and Canada exports go to one country, the United States. One of the few countries that makes many of its houses out of wood. Europeans have biases against wood houses because they are no good in the rain and cold, I have heard this personally. Millions can live in wood houses in Canada and the US, and the world hardly notices. China will buy Canada's ore and energy, but not fibre. Depency on one market and lack of knowledge about selling makes rural BC go downhill.

Get a life