overthere

Is the environmentally advanced City of Victoria still pumping all their raw, untreated sewage into Georgia Strait?

I don't know how long the BC leg is bordering AK, but doubt it is as long as AK/YT . I know of two land crossing between BC and AK. One is at Fraser BC, which is just a place, not a town of any sort and well north of Ketchikan. The crsossing is bewteen Haines Junction YT and Haines, AK- a gorgeous drive alongside Kluane National Park and through some marvellous country in the Chilkat Pass, then a descent to Fraser and saltwater at Haines. There is one land crossing south of Ketchikan, and it quaifies as a border oddity. It is between Stewart BC (north of Prince Rupert) and teeny Hyder AK(population 87). The oddity is that there is no US border control in Hyder. In the summer there is a single agent on the Canadian side, purpose unknown. The road ends a few km past Hyder on the stunning sides of Salmon Glacier, just past a park where you can watch bears eat salmon. No entry control going into US, summer only control on the CDN side, thought the road is open year round and the two communities basically touch each other. A tradition in Hyder for vistors is to get Hyderized at one of the bars, which involves slamming back a shot of ethanol. Aside from that, the area around Stewart and Hyder is gorgeous, many glaciers and mountains. You can continue north to Yukon on the Stewart Cassiar Highway(Hwy 37), itself an epic drive through some beautiful country that few people ever see. The road is excellent, paved all the way.

There are only two land crossings in the entire 2400 kms, and one of them is only open for a few months in summer. The year round portal is on the Alaska Highway between Whitehorse Yukon and Tok Alaska. The seasonal crossing is on the Top of The World Highway between Dawson City YT and Chicken, AK. For the culturally unaware, Chicken AK (population 7, booming to 17 in summer) is home to the world famous music festival called ChickenStock. For perspective on how long the border is between YT and AK, 2400 kms is roughly equivalent to the distance between Calagry and Toronto..

The decision has been made, obviously. And the decison is "no". Obama has no political gain by saying this publicly, but clearly it is dead. And it has nothing to do with the physical environment, since his own State Dept has correctly confirmed the oilsands output will go to market with or without Keystone . He cannot afford the potential political fallout from an approval, with mid term elections threatening Democratic control of the Senate.. The premise for this delay is laughable: that the federal govt has to wait for Nebraska to work through legal challenges to the pipeline route through that state. The Federal decision relates to the project, not the route. They have no influence on the deliberations of states, and can approve or deny the pipeline crossing the international border, with or without any decisions made in Nebraska or any state. Stick a fork in it, its done. I noticed a little article in todays paper in which Enbridge announces it is proceeding with a $7 billion 'overhaul' of its aging Line 3 between Alberta and Wisconsin, and an expansion of the Clipper pipeline which also runs AB to Wisconsin. Both projects should be complete in about 2017. End run on an existing right -of way? eta: the main oil terminus in AB is in a town called Hardisty, southeast of Edmonton. Many major pipelines begin or end there. There has been a lot of construction there, including current major crude-by-rail handling facilities.

3 million Albertans would go without their double-doubles and bad muffins if they ended the program.

Having actually lived in remote communities in AB, SK, NWT and YT, I believe few of those factors you mention actually apply. Fresh fruit and veggies are the most expensive things to buy if and when they are available at all, and few people get much food off the land. The outside air is cleaner, true. But with the climate, a lot more time is spend indoors and heating systems using wood or fuel oil don't help indoor air quality. We can date photos, artwork and books on our shelves by how yellowed they are with indoor pollutants. Land to maintain? There's no farming in the North to speak of. Maintaining my land mostly consisted of cutting trees for firewood. Not many gyms either.....and long winters, Everybody has satellite TV and/or high speed internet now... It is not a particualrly healthy lifestyle in most remote communities, or rather the isolation does not ensure that it is more likely. What would make this small sample more useful would be as you say: comapraison with other small communities. What would also be interesting- but probably unavailable for Fort Chip- would be stats prior to about 1965, before any significant oilsands development. Note that Fort Chip has been downstream from a huge bitumen source for a long time. Oil/tar seeps to the surface routinely and is in the water routinely and naturally0- did it affect the health of locals prior to the oilsands development?

I reckon that overall the quality of teachers is pretty good now. People have different motives for becoming teachers, often a combo of : good pay, great civil service benefits, warm and dry workspace and time off when your kids have time off are some of them. One benefit that women note is the opportunity (here at least) to jobshare or work parttime and take off plenty of time to have kids if you wish. The best way to improve the quality of teachers is to have any kind of reasonable assessment of actual performance on the job. You could start by having assessors(pricipals or others) not be part of the same bargaining unit as those being assessed- and have actual consequnces for poor performers, like they have in the real world.

I do not recall commercials ever being minimal in any format other than purchased premium TV. A big, big problem for networks is the use of DVRs. Every channel is commercial free when everything is recorded first. Advertisers are increasingly aware of how much money they are wasting on broadcast TV and are switching their money to digital ads. Of course, those can also be edited..... We are witnessing a change in TV similar to the transformation of the music business.in the last couple of decades. Not everybody is going to survive, some big networks are going to adapt or die.

One thing for sure: all auto manufacturers will be watching this case closely. Who wouldn't want to cut out the dealers, since they skim a fat layer of profit out of the supply chain? Or maybe not, since as I understand it dealers often don't make much on the actual sale of a standard, midrange new car. The money is allegedly in plump earnings from auto financing schemes and in after sale servicing. But vertical integration of the industry could go very well for carmakers, and by and large it can be done without those pesky dealers.

consumers of oil and oil products, which is everybody. The oil will now go to market on the much less safe and more expensive rail systems. That's progress.

Those teams are on all the time, all their games have been televised for years on at least three networks: TSN, Sportsnet or CBC. Of course, nobody from TO would be aware of the existence of regional broadcasts. But that doesn't change the nature of sports highlight shows on TV: all of them focus on interesting topics like the lines at Leafs practcies, or the state of Reimers bunions. Don't know if that is true, it is a massive contract that will mean all those governors get lots more money than before.

In Alberta, Its no harder to get into the four year degree program than into other faculties like arts or science. You have to have a BEd to get a job after. But getting an afterdegree, a BEd, is really hard because they accept so very few students. You need a near perfect GPA to get into the afterdegree program.

Unlike Chretien, who would have given her the Shawingan Handshake and proudly knocked a couple of her teeth out..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawinigan_Handshake

Source: BCTF research table. Good one! It's the usual civil service wankathon : we need to be paid more because other people may be overpaid. Firefighters and cops use this all the time, it works even better for them because there are many more police and firefighter organization to cherry pick examples. There is always somebody paid more than you, as if that somehow is a justification for a raise.

And it is not as difficult as some would have us believe. Oh, and the primary purpose of standardized testing of students is to obtain some measure of how they are doing academically. There are many reasons a student or group or students may be below average in a test administered to all students. What teachers unions want to pretend is that one of those many reasons may be substandard instruction by a substandard teacher. The assessment tools of teachers in Alberta(standard testing excluded) are a joke. The principal or more likely the vice principal spends a brief, prearranged time in the classroom observing the teacher. They fill out a form. Everybody belongs to the same union, The chances of any followup on a perceived defiiciency is nil.

"I suggest that perhaps the question is just what is "basic" medical care?" That has always been a big question, but the way demographics are heading in this country it will be a ten ton gorilla question very soon. A tsunami of aging, sick baby boomers that simply refuse to die will put massive pressure on health care systems. IMO, two tier health care with everybody buying extended health care insurance is inevitable. Lots of Canadians already do this for dental, vision, drugs etc. It will have to get much more widespread (and expensive) because I do not see an alternative to every province delisting many services that are included now as provided to the public.

Apparently Forst Nations groups don't actually oppose oil pipelines.... it's the money that is an obstacle. Or rather who gets the profits. Interesting that at leat two of the proposed ports for export of the oil are not far from Kitimat . Follow the money. http://www.theprovince.com/sports/Aquilini+Group+pipeline+project+gains+support+First+Nations+group+abandons+North+Gateway+camp/9737523/story.html "David Negrin, president of Aquilini Group, said the project is slowly building steam as First Nations along the route recognize there is a viable alternative to the Enbridge proposal. At a press conference in Vancouver attended by at least 20 aboriginal chiefs from B.C., Calvin Helin, the president of Eagle Spirit Energy, said the group has the support of the majority of 30 First Nations in B.C. and is working on getting the rest to get what he called the social licence to operate within their territories. Also attending the meeting was Luigi Aquilini, the patriarch of Aquilini Group," "They also opposed the idea of transporting raw bitumen in pipelines. As a result, Eagle Spirit would build a refinery to process the oil into light crude for transport, Helin said. Two locations, one in Alberta and the other in Prince George, are being considered, Negrin told reporters at a press conference. Helin said Eagle Spirit Energy has a number of possible routes and terminus points, all of which depend upon getting support of affected bands, and any route where a band is in opposition would be removed. He said he could not discuss much of the details because of non-disclosure agreements. However, according to Negrin at least three terminus ports are being considered, including one near Prince Rupert, in the traditional territory of Lax Kw'alaams, Helin's First Nation. as well as Anyox, even further north. A third location hasn't been named publicly because negotiations are still underway."

"oh really! Who quickly brought out the (former) NDP preamble and reference to the "Communist manifesto"... to the supposed Communist founding principle of the NDP? " Beats me, not me either. WTF are you talking about? Link. "If you're genuine in your suggestion that you really were speaking to a "card carrying Commie" (while not implying the NDP), " WTF are you talking about? I never said that either. Stop the personal attacks and slanders now.

I'm not sure, but I suspect it is covered in Alberta. A gay male friend of ours has fathered two children(by invitation)with a gay female couple. I don't think anybody paid for anything, it was all done through Alberta Health Services. The circumstances were different I guess in that there were no fertility issues for either party. It's all worked out well so far, the couple moved to BC with the kids a couple years ago. My friend moved last year too, he is involved in the lives of the children after birth and wants to be closer. There are so many variations on family now!

The usual rush to judgement here, from the usual suspects, in the abscence of evidence to the contrary. The RCMP have cleared Wright in a criminal investigation. To some, that is just evidence of a conspiracy. Even the cops are crooked!

"Who is the "card carrying Commie" you're making a reference to? " It's a generic illustration of the very slack membership requirements of the PCs in AB. You can be a member of the Communist Party, NDP, Liberals, Flat Earthers or anybody you wish while still being a PC member. I clearly compared it to the much more restrictive requirements of the NDP party, which does not allow other political affiliations for its members. All of which is quite clear. You need to work on your backtracking skills. Now apologize for repeatedly misprepresenting what I said here.

Waldo is the only one who linked communism with the NDP. I wonder why too.

Utopia? Never. I'm not really valuing the decline of one set of tribal practices over another, just noting what is a pretty profound shift in both the provider of and the nature of our social contract. Widespread access to welfare, public education, public medicine and others as provided by government are all relatively recent innovations. They were all provided in some way-often very limited ways- by others in the past. Support for the poor and disadvantaged used to come from other than govt, if it came at all. What caught my attention and prompted my post was the "The indoor playgrounds, cheap daycare, breakfast programs, etc... seem like a great service to me. Why aren't these services funded by the city/province?" post above. In just a generation or two our expectations have dramiatcially increased and shifted. Charity once provided by the church is now expected to come from government. It's a major shift. Timeline: in the last 50 to 75 years mostly.

"I inquired about the appropriateness of the "Commie/corduroy" reference" Unrelated and not a 'reference' at all except in your anxiety to defend soemthing. See above, in particular see my posts above which do not relate the two. If I've offended your fashion sense, keep wearing the corduroy ensembles.

Now I'll sit back while you explain how you combine two posts about and come up with a singular and personal slur. Very dishonest, at best. The bit about Commies was to illustrate that the Alberta PCs don't care about other political affiliations in their membership. That's a fact My NDP reference does not mention Commies, it refers to the exclusionary nature of their membership. Also a fact. Perhaps the moderators would like to suspend Waldo for this bit of dishonesty.