Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Public meetings for two controversial Quadra Island real estate developments have been deferred until this April, 2022, because of concerns about meeting in-person during a pandemic.

The public meeting for the proposed Gowland Harbour Views development was scheduled for January 18th, 2022, and the rezoning meeting for Quadra Links Golf Course was to have occurred the following day.

With less than a week to go, at the January 12th SRD Board meeting, Quadra Island Regional Director Jim Abram, said, “I have two items of business that are very timely. We need to deal with them today at this meeting because we have scheduled two public hearings in the next week.”

Having already observed the meeting for one of these projects being delayed for years, Cortes Island Regional Director Noba Anderson responded, “ I certainly hear the concerns around this meeting wanting to have a good in-person component to it, but we are government and we do need to move forward on these things. So I'm just asking from staff on the advisability of this and our ability to hold public hearings following all of their required protocol. I don't know why [the meeting is being set back to] April, why wouldn't it be the earliest opportunity that Omicron allows.”

SRD Senior Manager Thomas Yates expressed concerns about being able to notify the public about the cancellations in time.

Abram replied that there was no need for concern, half of Quadra Island’s population would be contacted through Facebook by the end of the day.

As both of the proposed meetings were on Quadra, they fell under the jurisdiction of the SRD’s Electoral Areas Services Committee (EASC).

The following motions passed with unanimous support of all four Regional Directors (Jim Abram, Noba Anderson, Brenda Leigh and Gerald Whalley):

“Abram/Whalley: SRD 32/22 - Due to the most resent Omicron variant outbreak of Covid 19, that the public hearing for the Schellinck development scheduled for January 18, 2022 be rescheduled to an available date in late April 2022, at 7pm at the Quadra Island Community Centre. All COVID protocols will apply. - carried”

“Abram/Anderson: SRD 33/22 - Due to the most resent Omicron variant outbreak of Covid 19, that the public hearing for the Quadra Links development scheduled for January 19, 2022 be rescheduled to an available date in late April 2022, at 7pm at the Quadra Island Community Centre. All COVID protocols will apply - carried”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - It has been a week since the Federal Court of Canada condemned RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki for her failure to respond to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC). The case revolved around an interim report from 2017, but in her Judgement and Reasons Associate Chief Justice Jocelyne Gagné pointed to numerous other cases where the RCMP had acted in the same high handed manner.

“It is in the public interest to have a police oversight institution that functions properly and is unobstructed.” she wrote.

One of the organizations applauding the Court’s Decision to hold the police accountable is the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.

“The recent decision calls into question and challenges the integrity of the highest ranking RCMP official in the land, Brenda Lucki, in regard to her complete lack of accountability,” explained Grand Chief Stewart Phillip.

On January 12th, Lucki issued a press release stating, “I respect the Federal Court's decision that the RCMP's response to the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) matter was not provided as soon as feasible, as per the RCMP Act. In the past there had been delays in responding to CRCC interim reports due in part to the number of interim reports issued, the scale and complexity of the cases and the volume of relevant material to be analyzed … A 2019 Memorandum of Understanding between the CRCC and RCMP commits us to improving our service standards by providing a written response to CRCC reports within six months. We have made significant progress; in November 2021, we cleared our backlog of responses to CRCC interim reports and since April 1st, 2021 all new interim reports have been responded to within the agreed upon six-month time frame.”

This response did not address the concerns of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.

“Indigenous people are alarmed that the escalating militarization of the RCMP. There was a time when the RCMP were given a very strong mandate to keep the peace, but we all know that that has transitioned into a very dark place where the RCMP are finding themselves as the enforcement arm of resource development, extractive industries, oil, and gas pipelines, mines, and they're coming down harshly and with pronounced measure of police brutality in regard to the citizens of this province of this country that simply seek to protect the integrity of the environment, the watersheds of riparian systems, wild salmon, and so on and so forth,” said Grand Chief Phillip.

“We saw that demonstrated at ferry Creek where the RCMP were brutally assaulting the people that were standing there in opposition to old-growth logging, which the Horgan government promised to stop when they ran for the last election. And with respect to the Wet'suwet'en it's far darker in terms of the full military assaults on the peaceful encampments of Wet'suwet'en people who are simply carrying out their rights in regard to the declaration on the rights from indigenous peoples, the Delgamuukw-Gisday'wa case. All of these high court decisions have given them every right to protect their homelands from the predation of the industrial corporations that are out there, wreaking havoc.”

He added that the RCMP care carrying their assaults out in a manner that is virtually indistinguishable from military operations.

“Governments need to be held to account as well as the RCMP itself. That's why the union of BC Indian shoots applauds the court decision that calls into question Brenda lucky and her very racialized execution of her campaign against indigenous peoples and the environmental movement or who simply seeking to protect the integrity of the environment.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - At their January 12th meeting, the SRD Board had some good reports about the way individuals and corporations helped out during the recent cold snap.

Chair Brad Unger brought the topic up during his update:

“The weather throughout our Regional District just last couple of weeks, snow, rain, freezing rain, more snow, power outages everywhere within the Regional District, but nowhere near as it was in Tahsis and Zeballos. No power there for several days; well closures etc. I want to say hats off to Mayor and Director, Martin Davis [of Tahsis], Mayor/Director, Julie Colburn [of Zeballos]. Great job with your communities.”

During the emergency, the SRD activated warming centres in Tahsis and Zeballos and worked closely with BC Ambulance Services ensuring continuity of ambulance services and provision of essential medications.

Thus Unger added, “the other one I want to reach out to is our protective services coordinator, Shaun Koopman, outstanding job, Shaun.”

Regional Director Jim Abrams, from Quadra Island praised, “all of the communities and all of the first nations communities that work together out there to try and keep everybody warm and fed and dry and whatever else.”

“But I also think that we should give a special shout out to BC hydro for the incredible work that they had to do in the most unbelievable weather that they probably experienced, maybe in their career, and they got it done. I think, we so often forget about the fact that the service providers are actually out there all night in the dark, busting their butts and the cold trying to keep us in survival mode. So I just like to thank BC Hydro, publicly, and hopefully that will get off to them. Maybe a letter from the chair on behalf of the board to thank BC Hydro for what they did on this rebuild. Because basically it wasn't a repair, It was a rebuild of the transmission lines into those communities and they really do deserve some accolades.”

Mayor Martin Davis of Tahsis said, “I'd also like to echo those comments to thank BC Hydro and Sean Koopman did an amazing job. My community pulled together and I know there was a lot of exhaustion at the end because we went pretty much full week without power. We saw help from many places. I know Greg Seafood brought in 1500 litres of diesel fuel. So we'd like to thank them for that. Western Forest Products actually brought in several truckloads of firewood yesterday because a lot of people were running low on firewood because it's been such a cold winter there. It was great to see the community pull together. I'd like to thank our paramedics and our staff and public works for keeping things running because they literally had to use generators to run the pumping stations for sewage, those sorts of things. Everybody's exhausted at the end and I hope that's the end of it.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Rachel Blaney, Member of Parliament for North Island - Powell River , gave Cortes Currents an overview of the important issues this past year and the effect being our MP has had on her personal life.

Some of the issues:

- Climate Change

- the 2021 election

- Government clawbacks on the most vulnerable population

- the housing crisis

- Fish Farms

- First Nations Issues

What being an MP has meant to her family

- How COVID meant staying home and seeing her family'd day to day lives

- Living on Ottawa time while the rest of the house is on BC time

- Two politicians in the same household

- her husband adapted, her kids adapted, but her dogs really struggle with her going away all the time.

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Trying to keep the grid up has been very challenging these past three weeks. BC Hydro crews were constantly on call throughout the region, for more than two weeks, repairing power outages caused by falling trees and snow encrusted power lines. Subzero temperatures meant skyrocketing heating bills. When John Sprungman recently asked why his lights were flickering, a BC Hydro repair technician informed him that Cortes Island is trying to draw more power than the infrastructure on Cortes can handle. BC set a new record for peak electricity demand between 5 and 6 PM on December 27th, 2021: 10,902 megawatts.

“Whenever we're responding to troubling snow, it tends to be a bit of a slower response. The roads are not easy to travel on. Things it takes longer to get to the location that we're traveling and it's often a prolonged event. Our crews really started on Christmas Eve on the 24th and it wasn't until Sunday that the Campbell river district crews had all that trouble cleared up, with the re-energized station of past systems in Zeballos,” said Karla Lowers, from BC Hydro Media Relations. “The good news is we can handle it.”

“Our system is not at capacity from a trust perspective. We actually have electric despair, and anticipate that will be a situation for the next number of years. So we can meet that demand and locally as well, the theatre that provides electrical service to Cortes Island isn't at capacity. So it does allow us to meet the demands that are put on the system in that, which are peak period.”

She explained that Cortes Island obtains its electricity from an undersea cable that crosses over to Sarah Point on the Malaspina Peninsula. From there the lines run about 35 kilometres to a substation in Powell River.

Most of the times that Cortes’ electricity comes back on during the night, the problem was in that Mainland segment of the line. A crew from Powell River made the repair.

The Campbell River office responds to the outages on Cortes Island. Crews generally arrive in the morning. They sometimes use the ferry, but when the weather makes this impossible have used planes, helicopters or a crew boat. BC Hydro has a facility on Cortes island that houses two vehicles, a small bucket truck, as well as an SUV and some equipment.

“Recently we did overnight in Cortez so that we could make the most of the crew's time that we are there,” said Lowers.

Crews are limited to work a 16 hour shift, after which they need to have eight hours of break time.

“We've stayed at lots of different places on Cortez island: motels, bed and breakfasts. One of the things that crews really liked to have is a warm bed to lay their head down on. Sometimes that's problem. When the power's out on the entire islands, we would like it for acquire a place that had an alternate energy supply, a generator or an alternate heat source. In regards to food, the cruise like to head off on their day with a warm breakfast. So sometimes we're really limited in regards to our ability to stay on the island because some of those resources aren't available,” said Louwers.

She asked that anyone who can help provide food or housing to crews email her at [email protected]

“I can put them in contact with the Campbell river line manager so that we make those connections to make it easier for our crews to stay over on Cortes when they need to.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Roadside, one of the last remaining Forest Defender camps at Fairy Creek, officially closed down yesterday. In the end, it was severe weather rather than police actions that brought this about.

An unknown number of Indigenous folks remain at a nearby watch camp.

The last RCMP press release, posted on Lake Cowichan detachment page more than a month ago (on December 2nd), states 1,188 people have been arrested as they attempted to protect what is sometimes called the last remaining intact old growth ecosystem outside of a park.

According to a Vancouver SUN expose, as of November 30th the RCMP spent $8.9 million opposing the protest.

The Teal-Jones Group claims that activists put hundreds of jobs at risk and hampered it accessing $10 million worth of timber.

On December 22nd, two days before the recent cold snap began, the occupants of Roadside posted a collection of video messages on their Facebook page in which:

A schoolteacher explained why she feels she would not be doing her job as a teacher or a mother if she did join the protest at Fairy Creek

A former loader describes the province’s current logging practises as “just grabbing resources at the expense of the other peoples.”

Another Forest Defender says, “I'm here because these blockades are the only thing keeping the NDP and John Horgan accountable to protecting old growth for us and committing the promises they made to the strategic old growth review report.”

A series of posts on the Fairy Creek Facebook page chronicle the camp’s closure:

The photos from January 3rd show camp life: tents in the snow, people chopping wood, a truck that spun off the icy road

Four days later a tree came crashing down beside the kitchen tent.

The camp spokesperson wrote, “Snow, ice, and hazardous conditions slam Fairy Creek. As the rivers rise, the threat of flooding is imminent.”

Yesterday, January 10th, pictures showing the last remaining inhabitants of Roadside packing their belongs into a U-Haul and close to a dozen other vehicles were added.

The spokesperson wrote:

“As we close up Roadside and start a new chapter, we reflect back on the year we’ve had. When we looked up at the towering cedars, spruce, and fir it gave us purpose in knowing that we protected what Elder Bill Jones refers to as our “Great Mother.” We sat in circles and ceremonies in reverence of their beauty as he reminded us that these places have always been meant for meditation and prayer. His grandfather once told him these forests should never be cut - in fact, it was his dying wish.”

He added, “While it may no longer be logistically possible to block logging in such awful winter conditions, we choose to see an opportunity here. This ending also means the beginning of a new chapter – one that includes more local actions, in a city near you.

The spring will bring new life; it always does. STAY TUNED FOR WHAT’S NEXT.”

As Cortes Currents was completing this story, word came that the Wilderness Committee named Elder Bill Jones as this year’s recipient of the Eugene Rogers award.

Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee explained, “Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones has been a friend of our organization for almost a decade and a champion for old growth forests for much longer.”

The 80-year-old former logger responded, “ I am so flattered to accept this. It's a blessing to us all to realize that we are indeed the servants and protectors of our great mother.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - According to the provincial government’s Daily Update, there are now at least 3,906 active COVID cases on Vancouver Island. This statistic is low. The number of people who are believed to have COVID and gone into self isolation, but have not yet been tested, is growing

“As many people have noted in the past few weeks, we reached our capacity both from testing, from the lab equipment, from the personnel and the reagents,” said BC Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry on Friday.

“Not everybody needs a test, they are a limited resource and we need to use them to ensure people who need them have access - whether it's health care workers and long-term care and access to medications.”

Henry also said that at this point, she believes everyone in BC “knows somebody, or has somebody in their close social circle, who has been affected by COVID-19.”

As Island Health has not updated its public COVID dashboard since Christmas Eve, statistics are no longer broken down into North, Central and South Vancouver Island.

The BC Centre for Disease Control releases more area specific data, several days after the event.

Thus we know that as of the end of December, there have been 682 cases in the Greater Campbell River Local Health Area since the pandemic arrived, and this number must now exceed 700.

That works out to about 1.5% of the population.

If the virus spread out evenly across the health area, which seems highly unlikely, that would mean more than 527 people in the city of Campbell River, close to 40 on Quadra, 15 people on Cortes, and 1 on Read Island are either currently, or have been, infected.

As of the week ending on January 1st, there were at least 76 active cases.

There are more people living to the south of us, in the Comox Valley Local Health Area, where the cumulative count as of December 31st is 1,732 cases, or 2.4% of the population. There were at least 169 active cases.

The cumulative count across from us on the Mainland, in the Powell River Local Health Area is 211, or roughly 1% of the population. As of the week ending on January 1st, at least 58 were active.

Once again, the numbers just reported are low especially for the past few weeks.

“People with mild symptoms of what they believe is COVID are being encouraged to not take tests as the system is currently overtaxed,” said Henry.

“If you are fully vaccinated and have mild symptoms, you don't need a test. Omicron is spreading widely in our communities. If you have those mild symptoms, whether it's a runny nose, a cough, and you've been in connection with other people, it's very likely that you have COVID.”

She advised people with symptoms to stay home and follow the procedures laid out on the BC Centre for Disease Control website.

Meanwhile, the public school system will reopen as planned on Monday morning.

“I know that many parents are anxious about children coming back to school, particularly if you have vulnerable family members at home,” said Henry. “I just want to reassure you that the things that we have in place, we'll do our best to mitigate any of the challenges that we have. And it's important to remember as well we have very high rates of immunization in school staff, and I encourage all the children who are eligible in schools now to get vaccinated as well.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently released a survey that showed the total number of marine species at risk within the Salish Sea doubled between 2002 and 2015. While the Discovery Islands are within the study area, the EPA study did not list specific locations. So Cortes Currents asked Max Thaysen, President of the Friends of Cortes Island, about the species of risk in our area.

The Friends of Cortes Island identified 33 Species of Risk that live on Cortes Island either part-time, or year round.

They have devoted specific pages on their website to 17 of these:

Barn Swallow,

Big-eared Bat,

Blue Dasher Dragon Fly,

Coastal Cutthroat Trout,

Common Nighthawk,

Great Blue Heron,

Harbor Porpoises,

Northern Goshawk,

Northern Pygmy Owl,

North Red-Legged Frog,

Pacific Sideband Snail,

Silver Spotted Skipper,

Sooty Grouse,

Steller Sea Lion,

Threaded Vertigo,

Western Screech Owl

Western Toad.

There are species whose situation is improving. FOCI is collecting reports of Humpback Whale sightings.

Last April, FOCI and the HAKAI Institute partnered to organize a new citizen science sea star monitoring program on Cortes Island.

During the summer, FOCI asked Cortes Island residents to submit photos of any Great Blue Heron they saw. On Heron Day, September 5th, volunteers counted 15 Great Blue Heron.

In the course of our interview, Thaysen mentioned another species FOCI is observing. Forage Fish are not considered ‘commercially significant,’ but they are critical to many other lifeforms around Cortes Island.

Thaysen explained that, as a society, FOCI doesn’t have the resources for an in depth study of the species at risk in our area.

“I'm interested because the species extinction rate serves as a really good indicator of what's happening on the planet,” he said. “Scientists fairly consistently come up with a rough estimate of our current species extinction rate on planet earth as being a hundred times greater than the normal extinction rate.”

Thaysen described the EPA study as “a pretty serious indictment,” on the scale of the “asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs.”

The report states, “34% of all birds and 43% of all mammals that use this ecosystem are threatened, endangered or are candidates for status assessments.”

This is worrisome because they are at the top of the food chain.

For example, the health of Southern Resident Killer Whales is important because they are apex predators.

“A healthy population of Southern Resident Killer Whales indicates the health of the whole food web beneath that. If they're doing well: then salmon are doing well; herring are doing well; prawns and shrimp are doing well; the river systems are doing well and the ocean systems are doing well. Pollution is sort of under control. So what I think this report is saying, when it says that the number of Marine birds and mammals becoming at risk is particularly worrisome, is that they indicate the health of the ecosystem.”

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Fifteen youth, aged 8 to 14, signed up for the Reel Youth Partners in Education Film Program, which starts on Monday January 10th.

This online program is run by the Powell River School Board but, as might be expected, considering Reel Youth’s strong connection to Cortes Island, 7 of the 15 students are Cortesians.

“We have an office on Cortes, which is the office that you're most likely to find us in. Then we've got one in Vancouver and Toronto and Yellowknife. We have addresses in all those places,” said Erica Køhn, Artistic Director of Reel Youth.

Mark Vonesch, Director of Reel Youth, added, “We’ve made 2,500 films since we started and we have a tutoring film festival that tours across Canada and have made it sort of my livelihood just feel lucky to be able to have an office here on Cortez and, and run it from here. But most of our work happens off Cortez who do a lot of work in Northwest territories and Nunavut, Ontario, Saskatchewan. We've worked in every province and we've also done projects in Nepal, Morocco, India, and Vietnam.”

Students taking the PIE course will be trained to write, plan, shoot, and edit a short film.

There is an online classroom component two hours a day, for six days, ending on January 21st.

“Each film is so unique and has such a different flavour. There's something immersive and deep and personal about the resulting films that. Draws us to doing them again and again, because they are so illuminating and the young people are so proud of what they do,” said Køhn,

She and Marianne Barry will be the facilitators for this course.

It will conclude with a virtual gala of all their films. After which the films will be submitted to the real youth film festival and distributed on YouTube and the real youth website.

“I'd say probably 10, 15% of youth that do our programs end up pursuing film as a career, or are going in that direction. We always tell youth, use this program as a reference and, use my name and I'm happy to help you get into school and, or get you a job,” said Vonesch.

“We want all the youth who come to our programs to walk away with skills that are gonna serve them. No matter what career they end up choosing. If you're somebody who has storytelling skills, that's useful.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - A new University of Victoria study found that British Columbians drank more alcohol during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic than they have in the past 20 years.

The adult population drank the equivalent to 547 cans of beer or 104 bottles of wine in one year

The heaviest drinkers were in the Interior, but the second highest levels of consumption were on Vancouver Island.

“The story is partly COVID, but it's not just COVID. There's been a spike. On top of what I like to say is a steady hill of increases in consumption, dating back to about the year 2000 and particularly since about 2010. Since then, we've seen a 10% increase in average, per capita consumption,” said Dr. Tim Naimi, director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR).

“If we look at British Columbia generally compared to the rest of Canada, We have a higher alcohol consumption than the rest of Canada, somewhere, about 20% higher. A lot of people have said, well, that's just because a lot of tourists come to BC and then they drink alcohol and that's recorded as sales in the province, even though not all of it is being consumed by people who actually live in the province.

“Why this trend is important is that there was less tourism during this year ending in March of 2021. So maybe this is actually a more accurate reflection of what the province actually consumes.”

Naimi said that, as a result of COVID restrictions, 80% of alcohol purchases are made at take-out outlets like liquor stores.

Cortes Currents checked with two outlets on the island, to see if they are selling more liquor.

Curt Cunningham, owner/manager of the Squirrel cove General store said his liquor sales were up 35% in 2021.

There is both a restaurant and a general store at the Gorge Harbour Marina Resort. If they follow the pattern seen in Dr Naimi’s study, liquor sales at the Floathouse Restaurant were probably down, but those at the store were up.

The manager, Bill Dougan,“We saw a jump in liquor sales 20%  for the last year but it has tapered off . Our liquor sales are still up from last year but barely. I would attribute the slight increase to more customers and guests. 

COVID gave us a permanent bump in sales,  in the off season and during peak times. There are more people on island again this winter and the property here has over 20 people living on property.”

Cortes Currents asked Dr Naimi if the increase in liquor consumption could be because people are more isolated, they can’t do a lot of things that used to be part of their normal lives? Are some people drinking more because they are bored?

“ I think that's a factor, but I also think there are other factors at play,” said Naimi.

He pointed to the modernization of BC’s Liquor policy which started in 2013/14:

“We've had big changes in policies around home deliveries, pick up from restaurants, and take away from restaurants. Never in the history of British Columbia have British Colombians been able to access alcohol from so many places in so many different ways at so many hours of the day and night.”

Few of these changes are observable on Cortes, but there are more people on the island since the pandemic began and a lot more residents are shopping locally instead of heading off to the big stores Campbell River, elsewhere on Vancouver Island or even the Lower Mainland.

Naimi agreed that if there is no up to date census data, Cortes could see seeing an artificial bump in its perceived consumption records.

“That's why I always tell people, take the local data with a grain of salt because there's influxes and fluxes of people and travelers, and even home production that may differ from in these different areas. This report, which we do on an annual basis is measuring it's called per capita alcohol consumption and all that means,” he said.