Raif, Raif ... Thank you for this powerful endorsement for the care and protection of the Pacific Salmon fishery. It really needs saying at any time, but particularly after that Green Mulroney performance, especially with Elizabeth May's adoring eyes upon his every lyin' word.

But why did you devalue your noble call to the protection of our oceans and rivers, with a detailed whinge about your personal reputation? Surely that belongs in a different place, at a different time. In juxtaposition with the endangered fisheries, Damn, it's so offensive I almost forgot the salmon. It was awful.

Nevertheless, for the first segment, Thank you.

Muroney was one of the most self-serving Prime Ministers Canada ever had, how the hell can anyone consider him for an award! The man should be in jail. Really!

As as for the book, if it's incorrect about issues in Rafe's past then Rafe has every right to correct it, in a public forum.

Let's face it, the Salmon are gone, dead, all at the behest of the Canadian and BC Government. The only reason, as Rafe states, is to build more power dams on the Fraser, to sell the power to the USA. Simple. Why the First nations are not fighting tooth and nail for the preservation of the Salmon fisheries just shows they have been bought off.

Grumpy: you chose to misinterpret what I said. Of course, Rafe has every right to correct the book's issues about his personal past and to do so in a public forum ... but where his passionate appeal reached a gripping climax? No. The whinge became a damp squib.

Rafe could easily have used the information as a comment, following the main story.

Now you've got me started, Jeez, how I hate that "Let's face it ..." thing. You face it. I'll decide for myself what I "face".

See, you're not the only one who's grumpy. Or should I have said, Let's face it, you're not the only one who's grumpy.

BTW, there's a wonderful editorial cartoon in today's Globe & Mail. A cave-man closely resembling Brian Mulroney is standing ankle deep in a dark oily pool marked "Ego" ...

BCMary
The Globe, having been one of several members of the MSM burned comprehensively by Mulroney's dissembling in the past, is a bit of an ironic messenger in this case. It is a good cartoon nonetheless.

ankle deep? was he in headfirst?

lyin' brian was the worst pm ever.

that is what i thought until chretien challenged for the crown.

what i do not get is how a rat like him can get his name in the media, other than as a negative example.

to think he advises the current pm is cause to shudder.

i hope this does not mean in 8 years we will find ourselves led by jean chretien's protege.

this award must be a joke.

I wonder who paid for this travesty of a self-serving award to a crook who took a $300,000. bribe plus he sued the taxpayer 2 million bucks not bad for a crook, is this justice?
I bet that the taxpayers paid for this all expense crock bull.
Time for decent, law abiding, hard working folk to organize against these vermin = BC Libs, Harper's minority Gov.
The opposition parties seem to be very quiet?
Fed Libs are all the same colour "DIRTY"

Mulroney as "Eco-PM"?...really this is just another marketing ploy by Harper's crew... this time facilitated with the help of the Corporate Knights ( well, that name surely gives their game away). This is just heavily applied make-up in what is now becoming a relentless atttempt to re-paint their past image.... of which Mulroney is their most infamous and most disliked symbol.

It's all marketing, in this case eco-marketing...in hopes that by just looking the environmental part...it just may be enough to sway those who continue to not pay attention...at this country's great jeopardy I might add..

Just another sly trick by the neo-cons, that's all.... another insidious step towards the grand dictatorial dream of these holy reformatories.... a majority government. Harper's every litle duplicitous move, every little slick of his tongue against his coldly dispassionate lips is towards that same totally self-interested, Amerikan pie goal of his....ultimately doing to Canada what the Moran Dam will do to salmon runs on the Fraser.

Corporate Knights Magazine appears to be the child of a number of business and journalism majors from McGill. It's led by a fellow called Toby Heaps, editor; Karen Kun, publisher since last fall; Jessica Johnson, managing editor and former assistant to Loreena McKennitt; and Paul Fengler, editor emeritus among others.
It has a web presence where one can find a transcript of Mulroney's speech.
here: http://www.corporateknights.ca/

Their vision statement, in part, follows:

How this manages to comport with the action of naming our former and not lamented Prime Minster the model of responsible environmentalism is not explained.

Brian Baloney the greenest PM .Yea, and Stephen Harper is the smartest guy in the room .
Revisionism be thy name in a lame attempt to rescue lyin' Brians much maligned legacy of thievery .
How does a guy who never made more than 60k a year end up in a million dollar mansion on Mt.Royal. Of course he stole it .
Even Shreiber(SP) now admits he gave the liar over 300 grand .
Biggest jerk ever.

I will agree that "lyin Brian" set a less than exemplary example with some of his shenanigans, particularly his accepting money from Karl Schreiber. Still and all his legislative legacy, free trade and the gst set the table for the subsequent, strong economic performance over the past decade or so. By this fact alone, he should rank as one of the better PM's this country has had.
Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to whom they would consider a "greener" PM given Bullroney's success with Acid Rain, a success that has not been repeated (Kyoto does not count in my estimation as it will never be implemented).

http://www.corporateknights.ca/
Email these clowns and tell 'em what you,really,think about their stupid award .

Although this news may seem a bit shocking to many of you, what green pm has there been??? Canada has a terrible track record under either the Conservatives or the Liberals and both have highly subsidised our natural resources to get us where we are now--no where. We need to press for greater environmental policies WITH TEETH or face the consequences of our inaction. I'm hoping that Elizabeth May, newly retired from the Sierra Club of Canada runs for leadership of the federal Green Party to clean up (or at least put pressure where its needed in the House of Commons) this mess. She is definately electable--even in this archaic system of FPP.

How bizzare for anyone to sing praises for Mr. Mulroney. One must suppose that if Mr. Nixon could transform himself from disgraced crook to distinguished elder statesman in less than two decades, then Mr. Mulroney's progress is right on schedule.

tcahill.Excuse me for a moment while I vomit .

Good to see you back on the salmon again Rafe!

Let's open multiple fronts here, not only are the Fraser river salmon an issue and the Broughton, but the Skeena-huge, pristine and until now successfully defended by the people of the area, both native and non native.
Gov't seems to be by and for the corporation, and to hell with the voters and posterity.

I agree on Brian M., what a job of rewriting history!!!

Rafe's mention of the Moran project is the first I've seen in the media (any media) for quite a while now; the obsession seems to be with river-run power projects like the Elaho, or for Site C. It's like Moran had been quietly secreted away with nobody from Powerex to the province wanting to even mention that it was a possibility; the sacred salmon shibboleth of the Fraser supposedly being enough to discount it in perpetuity.

But I've long had the same feelings as Rafe - that the destruction (accidental or otherwise) of the Fraser fishery through projects like Kemano II, or the ongoing changes to the river's temperature and freshet levels because of logging and changes to climate caused by lesser snowpacks (also because of logging), will one day make the cause of the salmon a moot point, and the "viability" of Moran and its smaller sister projects at Cottonwood and Lillooet suddenly will become "vital to the survival" of the province's economy etc.

A behemoth by any standard, the Moran Dam if built would be built to create a lake 720' above the present river elevation at the damsite; the dam would be 2000' wide and the reservoir created would extend up the Fraser 165 miles, almost to the town of Quesnel. The Lillooet project would be just above the current rail bridge at Lillooet and would flood the Fountain-Glen Fraser area of the canyon to the base of the Moran Dam, a few miles above Pavilion. The reservoir would inundate the historically important Bridge River Fishing Grounds (no more fish, no more fishing grounds, right?) and a portion of the lower Bridge River (or what remains of that river since its diversion into Seton Lake with the Bridge River Power Project, c.1958).

The Cottonwood Dam would be upstream from Quesnel another 14 miles, and is considered the second-most important possibility on the Fraser after Moran; only 250' of head but a reservoir flooding the Fraser to Prince George would result. Another damsite near Soda Creek would be unnecessary if Moran was built to its full height, but if Moran were built 180 feet lower the potential at Soda Creek would be 160ft of head.

Basically, the Fraser from Lillooet to Prince George would be one big lake, with two smaller ones flanking it up and downstream. At least in these cases there will be no inundated forests as with Ootsa Lake or Lake Williston, given that nearly all of this is semi-arid sagebrush rangeland (what is not irrigated for crops, that is).

Now, I gotta say I'm pretty sure the diversion of the Bridge River significantly changed local climate patterns in the Bridge River-Seton basins. One cause of this is the drastic lowering in temperature of Seton Lake, which now has the entire flow of the glacial Bridge River poured into it via a hole in the mountainside flanking the lake. The other is the creation of a more-or-less reservoir (often a mudflat) in the middle Bridge River, which was inherently a heatsink relative to the old semi-arid forests and meadows which lined its mid-valley serpentine between Gold Bridge and the river's big canyon (where the diversion to Seton Lake is). And that's only a small lake (40 miles max).....

So what can we expect of a massive lake which will sit smack-dab in the middle of what is currently province's northernmost heat/desert belt? Climatic changes to rival or surpass the effects of clearcut logging across the plateau, that's what. Sure, nice waterskiing on the new Moran Reservoir and no doubt some condo developments on its shoreline to keep the real estate industry crowing about economic benefits and such.

And then there's the fact that the Moran site sits right atop the huge Fraser Fault, and the Lillooet site sits at the (active) junction of the Fraser and Yalakom Faults. I don't think it requires much imagination as to what kind of downstream catastrophes would result from the collapse of a dam of the size we're talking about.

Thank you Mr. Mair for this important historical reminder. I too have been gagging on the recent rinse and spin cycle re-laundering of Mr. Mulroney's image, courtesy of the finest PR agents his money can buy. No doubt it's aimed at rewriting history (or at least Peter C. Newman's) before his demise. But really, the Eco prime minister? That simply is too much to bear. Pass the gravol please!

(cont.)

Another project that's been mysteriously ignored/secreted in recent times is the Hat Creek coal-thermal and accompanying open-pit mine, a few miles away from Moran. A recent CBC documentary on Pavilion Lake's unusual and unique coral-like microbialite structures, which NASA is studying re life on Mars and all that fun stuff, made a point of claiming that Pavilion Lake looked just like all other lakes in that area.....poppycock!

Pavilion Lake is overlooked by the shining cliffs of Marble Canyon, part of the same structure that includes the low-grade lignite beds of Hat Creek, less than five miles away. Point is that the provincial park at Marble Canyon does not protect the cliffs, part of which are staked for limestone mining and are viewed as necessary for the development of Hat Creek's power potential. Between destruction of the cliffs for lime, chemical erosion of what's not been mined by spew from the power plant, and effects on the unique ecology of Pavilion Lake, Hat Creek is going to be a MESS. Add on to it the fact that its power has often been mumbled about being applied to a copper mine and smelter at Red Mountain (northwest of Lillooet in the Cameslfoot Range) you can see that fifty years from now the relatively pristine Wild West scenery of the Lillooet Country will become a post-industrial wasteland.

All in the name of progress, and more bucks for the guys with the bucks, and more jobs to keep people working, and all those other justifications.

You'd think we'd have learned something better to do with this wonderful province than "cut it, burn it, pave it, and dam it" by now.

As long as we are considering absurd notions (such as Mulroney: the green PM), how's this for a slogan? "Pacific Salmon and other Natural organisms love Nuclear energy!"

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=animal+chernobyl&btnG=Search&meta=

It seems irradiated wildlife recover quickly (those that do not die right away) but are not safe to eat. If we built Nuclear reactors along the Fraser River, We'd have tonnes of available energy for export, and spiralling levels of radioactivity! That would really advance the green adjenda.

Right. Right.

So Rafe gets a public forum to pronounce on his critics and correct them.

Unquestioned, of course, since any questions related to Rafe's past (past integrity, past behaviour, past indiscretions) get pulled at his complaint.

It was a good day for BC when Rafe left cabinet. It was a better day when he left the legislature.

As for the radio shows -- I shan't start. I really find CBC to be a much more useful source of information anyway.

ROTFLMA Cahill.Too phuquing funny .
Yea, I hear Homer Simpson is looking for a new job at a nuclear reactor .
He and Harpo could be best buds .

1. I have a column in this paper and have the mandate from the editor to write on anything I please.
2. I have no other outlet woith which to correct the record.
3. I have suggested to Mr Plecas that he use this column to make answer.
4. for the correspondent who is glad I'm off air adding that he prefers the CBC anyway, he will doubtless be looking elsewhere now that I do a regular bit on the CBC on Monday Mornings with Moe Sihota and will shortly be doing spell-off work for Anna Marie Tremonte on the Current out of Toronto.

Hey Rafe: You could almost make CBC's news entertaining again (it's a bit smart/smug lately, I think). The Rafe and Moe Show: should be fun.

Corporate Knights, a supposedly left-leaning magazine, represents I think the real problem with all this eco-sell, eco-ethical melding of the corporate world with what has become the business of social and environmental responsibility:

(Thanks G West for supplying the above quote.)

Note however, where the reward is and who get it: the greater the reward for companies that are onside.

It's really just the profit motive at work once again...this time under the guise of social and environmental responsiblity.

The danger of coupling sustainability with corporate or eco with corporate... is that it ensures the prolonged survival of the corporation at the risk of the other concerns. Co-option of environmental and social concerns by the corporate world is always the inherent danger in these couplings.

It is where I think the main flaw of the
Green Party lies as well....because corporate capitalism is based on the profit motive...and can't help hungering for more and more profit...like that old potato chip ad..."bet you can't eat just one". The hunger for more is built into the system.

And that's what we see here in this award to Greenback Mulroney...a co-option of our environmental integrity by the dark side...(it should be noted that both Maude Barlow (Council of Canadians) and Jim Fulton (Suzuki Foundation) both decided to vote for no one...that at least is hopeful.

This award demonstates little acknowledgement or insight into the very unenvironmental nature of a Prime Minister that was willing to sell his country and his country's resources off for a bad Amerikan duet - a few bars of "When Irish Eyes are Smiling"...not to mention what his endorsement of NAFTA and all that involves has done to Canada's sovereignty and to our ability to control our own destiny...which of course includes the destiny of our precious resources..including the control of our air, land and water....our very environment itself.

These disastrous environmental consequences all too cavalierly overlooked by a blindered profit-making ... so-called corporate watch dog.

Now, I'm outta here for awhile.

Thanks lynn.
I'd planned to post something more or less along those lines. However, not, I'm sure, as elegantly and succinctly put as you have done above. I've been busy most of the day and, in the last hour have gotten myself embroiled in a religious argument with nightbloom in da vinci territory.
I noticed that the director of design and web services is the same William Stratas who is doing Garth Tuurner's website. I wonder they don't have a lot of connections, not just to business, but to the Ontario Provincial Progressive Conservative Party.

I hope others will take a critical look at their masthead too.

Bravo Rafe. CBC has finally done somthing right again, after a series of outrageous gaffes including; the airing the Mulroney fiasco,
a fictional revisionist piece on Cuba's revolution and the twisted "Medicare Schmedicare" after dumping TC Douglas in the same program slot.
I will enjoy hearing you rather more than the tedius Mr Plecas. Roll on old salt!

Lynn and G West, it is highly probable that Steven our current American Marrionette will make Mulroney look like a girl scout selling cookies.
The big give away line stated with Lion Brion, and was succeded briliantly by (slip itinto Afghanistan)Chretien, Paulie "the fixer" (knock of foxy -little pepper spray Jean - and further embroil us in a war of attrition and Stevy Wunderkind ("What should I do next Bri-ann"
Dead on George, dead on George we're with ya. Tomorrow I'll tell the rabble we think for ourselveS, but pay no mind - Welove you - got to have a little show politic you know, heh, heh. Do you mind if I borrow some of your lines. I love we won't cut and run -it's so manly. Now how can you do me -us?")

...just a quick thanks on the Stratas web-site connection, G West...

and dgb..good to read ya again...cheers.

http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/democracy/campaign_finance_reform
This isn't, necessarily, the right place to post the above - but if political fiddling is what this business with mulroney is all about then something about the fiddling bc liberals won't be too out of place.

I may be changing my mind about CBC. I have seen hope that they may actually reflect the diversity of Canadian values.
The ' Medicare Schmedicar' episode as well as the Mulroney enviro tribute, along with Paul Newman's Politics program, give me hope that they might be smarter than I thought.
Is it possible that this monolithic organisation has a sole ?

IAMC....I don't think you have a mind to change, but don't let that stop you. That would be Politics with DON Newman. He's been on for years. You should have started watching earlier. You could have been more informed by now. It's also possible you would have better spelling skills. Sole? What does a fish or the bottom of your foot/ shoe have to do with the CBC? I understand soul is exactly what neocons are lacking so your spelling error is understandable.

Too funny aalborg.Got coffee running out my nose I laughed so hard .

It is called rehabilitating Mulroney's image and place in history. The Conservatives are back in power. They need to look good.

Fiax Lux where are you! You always have something interesting to say.

The organisation Corporate Knights shows us the

LIEING BRIAN to BRIAN THE GREEN,ECO WARRIOR !

In our family,MULRONEY,is fondly called,THE MAN ,WHO SPAWNED ...BEN

just keep all of his TRAN$GRE$$ION$ IN MIND,when you hear that voice and of course the worst,that duet with RONNIE RAYGUN...

The man who spawned Ben! I like that. I've only seen the spawn for about 10 seconds on that trashy ET styled show and it was way too much. I think that Mulroney award show was geared more towards getting Ben coverage in a different circle so he can eventually emerge on the political stage and take over where his father left off. God help us. I fully expect Harper's spawn, also named Ben, to emerge politically at some point in the future. Hopefully, I will be dead by then.

HO HUM...Hey Rafe...it's done so get over it and take a rest !

Mulroney the Eco-PM? And other assaults on natural common sense.

Mulroney joked that among his endorsements from the 12 panellists was one who called him "the best of a bad bunch.

A list of his environmental accomplishments is listed here including
some quotes from Elizabeth May, recently retired from the Sierra
Club of Canada:

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/04/19/1541108-cp.html

Hello everyone in "no lack of irony land!"

I think Mulroney sums up very well the state of Canadian politics and our Prime Ministers.

No kidding!

Mulroney, Chretien, Martin and Harper.
Wow, what a bunch of inspiring people!

Kim Campbell and John Turner look good compared to this bunch only because they were the equivalent of a "one-night stand".

It's time to get the politicians out of politics and the politics out of politicians!
Better yet...anarchy can't be any worse!
At least my choice is clear...no one!

To end on a postive note: I recommend that everyone read "Bastards and Boneheads" by Will Ferguson. It is funny and educational! The ratings of Canada's PMs is priceless!

Kevan Hudson
Suncheon, South Korea

PS:
To Stephen Harper
STOP COPYING BUSH!
(ie - no viewing of the returning war dead)
PLEASE TRY TO SURPRISE ME FOR ONCE!

If one goes to this Vancouver College site:

http://www.vancol.com/history-of-nafta.cfm

One will read that Mulroney signed the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. As that document was a precursor/stepping stone to NAFTA, I believe that Rafe is correct in asserting that Mulroney's being bestowed this honour goes against all common sense. Once again, we have Orwellian doublespeak and newspeak laid down in the newspapers and history books to tell us how conservatives and capitalists have been good for the environment. Hog wash. Why do we spend our tax dollars to honour the best of the worst ? How have we become so complacent?

I cut my political teeth fighting the Moran Dam on the Fraser River. Rafe is absolutely right about the planned demise of the Fraser River fishery and Johm Cummins voice of sanity in a world gone mad.

Harold Steves