Where is the Voice of the Environment?

Where is the voice of the environment in the National Debates? Locked out, that’s where. The major broadcast media, including our very own CBC, has elected not to include Elizabeth May in the debates. I am shocked by the decision of CBC. This is our own public media. We pay for CBC with our taxes. Stephen Harper has been trying to shut down the CBC ever since he’s been in office. He doesn’t like all those nature programs that point to the very global warming he doesn’t believe in. The End Times he believes in (the book of Revelation) will come primarily through wars and not through global warming. So it follows that Harper will happily send us into wars but not into environmental protection. And it appears that CBC has caved under Harper’s influence. The CBC, Canada’s very own public radio and television has decided that Stephen Harper is right after all and Elizabeth May should not be heard across Canada.

I’m embarrassed by and for the CBC. They ain’t what they used to be. When I first came to Canada, forty odd years ago, I clung to CBC for the straight and fair goods. I don’t have tv on general principals but I still listen to CBC radio. However, I am increasingly finding that if I really want to know what is going on in the world I go to my computer and click on Al Jazeera English, BBC, and Seattle Public radio. I have come to social media hesitantly but am beginning to think that in the final analysis, as our country becomes more Fascist under Stephen Harper (the definition of Fascism is a situation where state government, along with corporations and banks, and the police and military merge to the point where they become a single entity) social media may be all we can depend on in the future. This is happening nationally and provincially.

Before Gordon Campbell left office he made sure of one thing. That he would leave a new ministry structure that would expedite the sell-off of our public forests, streams and lands to multinationals, some through Public, Private Partnerships, others through outright sale. This new ministry is called The Ministry of Natural Resource Operations and besides the management of lands, water and forests, it includes the management of First Nations. A strange mix, right? Can’t the BC Liberals tell the difference between trees and rocks and human beings? To them it doesn’t matter, First Nations are to be managed just as the trees and rocks and streams are so they must be included in and managed by “The One Land Manager” program described in the service plan (Ministry of Natural Resource Operations).

And who is to be the “One Land Manager” in charge of all of our natural resources that bizarrely includes First Nations people? One man. Steve Thomson. He is listed as the head of this Monster Ministry that will make any and all decisions concerning our public properties with the click of one button. But is Steve Thomson a head or a tail of this Monster Ministry? I suspect he is a tail, as is Christy Clark, both of whom will do the bidding in important matters of the same old crew, the ones who hold true influence in BC, the ones who really head the Monster Ministry. The ones who brought us the Olympics, expanding gambling and compromised health care and the unbelievable acceleration of clear cutting of our forests. And meanwhile, Elizabeth May isn’t even allowed to debate on National TV. And who else among the party leaders will forcibly proclaim that there will be no jobs on a dead planet and we must stop the destruction? Don’t hold your breath.

- Betty K