letter – Greg Blee

An open letter back atcha, Minister

It’s nearly 1 a.m. but i could not resist a short diatribe in response to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver‘s open letter recently published in the Globe & Mail. Give it a read; it’s short, but it’s a remarkable document both in the lines and between them. Ridiculous, unsubstantiated accusations, a transparent wish for concerned citizenry to just get out of the way and let the oil-soaked Conservatives do what they want to do … it boggles the mind. And this is one of our leaders? Heaven help us.

Joe’s email, in case you want to write, is: joe.oliver@parl.gc.ca. For added spice, i cc’d the message below to my MP James Lunney (Lunney.J@parl.gc.ca) — a medical man, and thus one who clearly must care more about the future of humanity at large than he does about oil companies’ bottom lines. Right?

My rant:

Wow, Minister Oliver. Your recent “open letter” to the people of Canada was, hands down, the most insulting thing i’ve ever read from an elected MP. Your sweeping characterization of me as a helpless dupe being manipulated by shadowy “foreign funders” was truly breathtaking. And here i thought i was a concerned citizen, trying to keep up with many issues, and making my best judgement on each of them, with one eye on legitimate science and another on the sustainable future world i would like to live in and leave for the children around me.

If you want to see someone being manipulated by foreign funders, i daresay you need only look in the mirror each morning when you shave, before heading out to Parliament Hill for another day of mortaging — nay, selling out wholesale — our children’s future to a world laid waste by climate change and the bottomless greed of Big Oil and its blinkered, shameless patsies. Of which it is now abundantly clear that you, sir, are one, in company with your hallowed leader.

In over 20 years, i’ve never written an insulting letter to an MP. But now you, Minister Oliver, have taken the cake. With all due respect — and in my opinion, markedly less is due this week than last — you ought to be stepping down. Your attitude toward public process is clearly warped beyond the bounds of participatory democracy.

Dr. Lunney, you are my MP, and as a constituent i strongly urge you to call for Minister Oliver’s immediate resignation.

Your very truly,
greg blanchette

Dear, dear salmon

Sent in reaction to a Westerly News article (Nov. 29) headlined Salmon crisis on West Coast:

Dear editor,

That was a grim article (Salmon crisis on West Coast), on the slide of our West Coast salmon runs into extinction. For the people who are, on paper, supposed to be dealing with this — various DFO and governmental bureaucrats — it must be something of an embarrasment.

For those of us who live here in Clayoquot and Barkley Sounds, however, it’s a little more personal. Salmon is the phenomenon that has made human life possible on the West Coast for several thousand years, sustaining us along with (directly and indirectly) the whole temperate rainforest and all of its denizens.
That I should be living here at the time when this huge, ocean-spanning “resource” declines precipitously into extinction … well, that makes me feel deeply ashamed.

I have come to expect nothing more than lip service on these matters from my federal and provincial governments, whose aims these days, it seems, are strictly economic, coddling everything job- and profit-creating at the expense of the troublesome natural world.

But it is time, and well past time, for vigorous action on this front. What we’ll get instead, I expect, is arm-waving: “Oh, we don’t know exatly what’s causing the decline.” But if we wait for sciencific “proof” before we act, we might as well just go poison all those salmon streams ourselves right now.

There is a growing body of evidence that fish farming is implicated in the decline of wild salmon. It happened in Norway, where every fjord that harbours fish farms is now devoid of wild salmon. It has been well documented in the Broughton Archipelago by researcher Alexandra Morton, who is now in the courts forcing the federal government to live up to its legal responsibility. And it has been happening here in the West Coast for years — more industrial fish farms, fewer wild salmon — during which little has been done.

It is time to invoke the precautionary principle, which mandates erring on the side of caution when dealing with permanent extinction. At the very least, fallow the Clayoquot Sound fish farms during the period when smolts are running past them to the sea, which should ameliorate the sea-lice infection problem.

In the meantime, we must get onto the science to better understand what is happening. And we must fund hatcheries as a stopgap measure.

This is not like the forest, where if an old-growth area is logged, at least a semblance of what was once there eventually grows back. This is extinction — no salmon in those areas ever again.

I no longer expect my governments to act out of a sense of responsibility anymore, even when it means enforcing their own laws. But it is no longer acceptable to me to stand by while they dither as our wild salmon die. I dearly hope my fellow West Coast residents not only feel the same way, but will call and write their elected representatives to express their concerns.

Letter to Ukee council

Here’s my (uncharacteristically restrained) letter to Ucluelet council, put in the mail yesterday. Thanks to the apparently defunct Ukee Tattler for the borrowed pic, and for reminding me what year the logging happened.

Dear Mayor Russcher and Ucluelet council,

I recently had the opportunity to drive to Toquart Bay, past the Maggie Lake timber block that was logged back in the summer of 2006. I see that it has still not been replanted, and is growing wild with brush and alder.

As I recall, this cutblock was an initial step, after much negotiation, in creating a permanent “community forest” for Ucluelet. I believe the UEDC was the driving body behind both securing this piece of land and (in conjunction with Interfor) in logging it.

“Community forest,” in most people’s minds, speaks to a notion of stewardship, of a piece of forest being under the care of a neighbouring community, as opposed to being a mere entry in an account book in some faraway city. Continue reading “Letter to Ukee council”