British Columbia

A freighter's grounding in the labyrinthine back bays of northern British Columbia shows what a dumb idea it would be to ship oil from Alberta's tar sands area through the area in the Great Bear Rainforest, a band of natives says.

The Gitga'at First Nation pointed to the grounding of the 41,000-ton Petersfield, loaded with soda ash and lumber products, as evidence that supertankers carrying oil have no place in the fragile backcountry waters. The vessel is nearly as long as two football fields.

The best story on the whole affair comes from Mark Hume of the Globe and Mail, who traced it to a problem with the vessel's gyroscope that affected a number of systems on the bridge, including steering.  The Gitga'at observed in a press release:

The ship currently docked at Kitimat looking like a prizefighter with a broken nose is an ugly reminder of the threat posed by proposed pipelines and tanker traffic to the territory of the Gitga'at First Nation.

Canadian and American environmentalists have long  complained that developing Alberta's tar sands -- aka "oil sands" -- would unleash far too many greenhouse gases. 

Enbridge Pipelines, meanwhile, is planning  construct a pipeline to ship oil from Alberta to British Columbia, where it could be loaded onto tankers for transport to refineries on the West coast. Or, as became apparent recently when a Chinese government-owned firm bought into tar-sands development, the stuff could be shipped all the way to China.

Today marks the beginning of the end for those nasty trans fats at restaurants, schools and other  establishments serving food to the public in British Columbia, writes Richard Watts of the Victoria Times Colonist.

At first restaurants that violate the rules will be warned, but fines are expected to be levied starting in a few weeks.

The changes will show up in margarines and oils, where trans fats can make up no more than 2 percent of all fats in the dish. Other foods must have no more than 5 percent trans fats.

The artery-clogging trans fats are created in heating oil to very high temperatures, and they are implicated in the deaths of some 3,000 Canadians annually.

Fast-food outlets are particularly reliant on foods with high contents of trans fats. The Calorie Counter blog tracked quantified the 88 worst dishes one could eat, trans fats-wise, at fast food joints, although the list appears to be U.S. outlets only. We're pretty sure you'd find plenty of trans fats at the likes of Tim Hortons and White Spot, though. Perhaps they will be finding alternatives now.

-- Robert McClure

The British Columbia provincial government is backpedaling in the face of outrage over legislation it drafted allowing the jailing of homeless people who refuse shelter in severe weather.

A partial draft of the legislation leaked, prompting officials to take pains to explain that what got out was an early draft discussion paper and not a proposal, reports Jonathan Fowlie of The Vancouver Sun. It was prompted by the death of a homeless woman on the streets in a fire she was using to keep warm last winter, said Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman:

It’s about trying to get them [homeless people] to a place where we can show them what’s available so they can make a decision hopefully to not freeze. There’s no movement to say we’re going to take them to jail. There’s no movement to say we’re going to put them in a secure facility.

Critics charge that the move is intended to help clear the streets of undesirable people in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The city's Downtown Eastside neighborhood houses hundreds of homeless people and has become an embarrassment to city and provincial officials.

For a taste of the criticism, dip into Harsha Walia's post on the Sun's Community of Interest page, which details how similar street-cleanings took place in Atlanta (which has *much* more dangerous neighborhoods than Vancouver) and other cities where past Olympics were held. Walia cites a report by the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions etitled "Fair Play for Housing Rights." An AP story by Erica Bulman summarizes the report.

Update 3:50 p.m. : Whoops. I totally forgot to include this interesting Globe and Mail story that InvestigateWest intern Emily Linroth pointed out to me.

It looks like the British Columbia sockeye salmon runs are crashing -- at what should be a high point in their cycle, David Karp reports for The Vancouver Sun. The spring runs showed up at a fraction of their forecast abundance. The big question now is whether the much-more-abundant summer runs will follow the same pattern. If so, it poses a serious dilemma: Should fishing be limited even for poverty-stricken first nations that depend on the sockeye as a major protein source?

Ownership of about 90 percent of the province of British Columbia is in dispute because of aboriginal land claims. After four years of trying to develop a "new relationship" with the provincial government under the Recognition and Reconciliation Act, First Nations leaders are growing impatient with Premier Gordon Campbell, according to a story today in the Globe and Mail by Justine Hunter. The native leaders are suspicious that Campbell may be stringing them along to buy peace until after the 2010 Olympics are over.

Credit-card bills, loans and a diving stock market sent Calgary residents' household debt into the stratosphere and reduced their net worth at rates even greater than high-flying Vancouver, an analysis shows. Jason Markusoff's story  in the Calgary Herald reminds us that Calgarans are a risk-taking lot. Some even took out loans to buy oil and gas stocks that continue to disappoint. Even with the bad news, Calgarans and other Albertans continue to have the highest levels of discretionary incomes and net worth, compared to other provinces.

The Victoria Times Colonist reports that nearly 600 British Columbia teachers will be absent from the classroom this fall because of budget cuts. The story unfortunately doesn't answer the obvious question, "Compared to what?" But it does say that some 10,000 classrooms in the province already exceed legal limits on the number of kids. The response by Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid is intriguing. She says money going to schools has increased even though enrollment dropped by some 53,000 kids over the last eight years. Again we have to wonder, compared to what? But also, the loss of thousands of kids from the school system makes us curious about B.C. birth rates.