Cortes Currents

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - The Cortes Island Community Foundation is helping to review Grant-in Applications again. As in the past, the Strathcona Regional District Board will be dispersing a pool of approximately $25,000 to Cortes Island Social Profits. The average grant award is in the range of $1000 – $5000 and will be dispersed by end of 2024. This year’s Grant-in-Aid funding will prioritize projects supporting Arts, Culture or Environment. Any non-profits or charitable societies who wish to participate sust send their applications in by midnight on Friday, October 21.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie, Executive Director of the Community Foundation explained, “We are working to assist Regional Director Mark Vonesch and the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) with reviewing the grant and aid applications for this year. Most of the nonprofits on Cortes are quite familiar with the fact that we have a bit of our tax money that comes back to us for assisting community groups on the island.”

A volunteer jury of community members goes through the applications and makes a recomendation on who should receive funding, and how much.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “The parameters of both who is eligible and the kinds of things eligible are set by the Regional District. The SRD does not allow organizations that are getting funding from other other tax districts or other text funds from the island , for instance, the Fire hall, Manson's Hall, the Whaletown Community Club Hall (Gorge Hall). None of them are allowed to apply through these funds. The Regional District doesn't want to see organizations that are funded through higher levels of government applying through these particular grants either. They also don't like to see operating grants come through these.”

Cortes Currents: So no one can apply for core funding.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “We would highly encourage that people do not apply for core funding. I just wanted to say right now, when I go to work with other community foundations, this is where community foundations are going. We believe in core funding absolutely 100%. If there was only one thing that I could do as a community foundation, it would be core funding. It's the most important kind of funding. The restrictions and extra burdens that are put on organizations that are working so hard, the endless rat race of applying for grants and trying to come up with new projects when you can't even pay your existing staff, I think is really unfortunate.”

“These funds are largely project related funds this year. We have determined that we're going to be looking at projects that prioritize arts, culture and environment.”

“We chose that area of emphasis because we looked at all the funds that we've been able to help adjudicate through our community granting process over the last couple years. They include over $440,000 that we've helped adjudicate through federal grants, the most recent of those grants were for the Prosperity Fund and the prosperity fund prioritized projects. This is also the third round of Grants in Aid that we've helped with.”

‘We said, 'Whoa, there was not a lot of emphasis on our arts, culture and environment in any of those rounds.’ So that's the priority.”

Bryan McKinnon/CKTZ - The unedited audio of Michele Babchuk's meeting with Cortes residents on Oct 12, 2024

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - NDP incumbent Michele Babchuk came to Cortes Island Saturday, October 12, in the second in a series of meet the candidate events organized by FOCI’s Climate Action Committee.

There is not room to unpack close to two hours of fact filled conversation into this half hour, but the full podcast is at the bottom of this page and here are some highlights.

Babchuk began by giving an overview of her career: “I've lived in Campbell River for 20 years, with my wonderful husband of 37 years, my two kids, and my three grandkids. I started off in the school board in 2005, moved to Municipal Politics in 2014, became the chair of the Strathcona Regional District in 2016, and then made the jump to MLA in 2020, in the last provincial election. In between there, I had the opportunity to work on the Hill in Ottawa for the Member of Parliament for this area, in Jack Layton's caucus. My little claim to fame is I have either been elected or staff at every level of government. So, we joke that I am polylingual - because we know that they don't all speak the same language.”

“It's no secret to people on Cortes that BC still has some issues that we've got to sort out. We have housing issues and we've got some education inequity issues, affordability issues. We're turning the corner and starting to get some of those going, but we've got a long way to go.”

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - 338Canada’s latest projection, taken on Sunday October 13, shows the NDP may be heading towards a majority government. 

The NDP was leading in 49 ridings, but in 6 of these only by a narrow margin.

The Conservative Party of BC was leading in 42 ridings, but in 7 by a nose.

Our own North Island riding is one of the the latter. Conservative candidate Anna Kindy is currently projected as a nose ahead of incumbent Michele Babchuk, 45% to 43%. As the margin of error for these projections is 7%, it is actually too close to call.

A new projection came out Sunday, and the principle change appears to be more people turning to the Green Party. Prior to the the televised all-candidates debate on October 8, it looked like they might be reduced to a single seat (Saanich North and the Islands). Saturday’s projection suggested Furstenau has taken taken a 6 point lead in Victoria-Beacon, as of Sunday that lead is 9%.

When I originally posted this article, the Greens were only 2% behind in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky. This is where Green candidate Jeremy Valeriote lost by a mere 60 votes in 2020. Sunday’s projection shows them tied with the Conservatives at 37% each.

The Greens also appear to be narrowing the gap in Furstenau’s old riding, Cowichan Valley, where John Kouri was 9% behind the NDP on Saturday. On Sunday, it was only 6%.

At the moment the Green Party appears to be leading or in a very close race for 4 seats. They currently do appear to be gaining momentum and hope to send MLA’s from 6 ridings to the next legislature.

North Island is not one of the six. The latest projection shows the Green candidate at a mere 13%.

Of course these statistics are the at best the most likely results if the election were yesterday. There are still five days until the election.

Unedited copy of meeting recording

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents Around 30 people turned out to meet Green candidate Nic Dedeluk when she came to Mansons Hall on Monday, October 7. Cortes Currents recorded 145 minutes of the two hour meeting, which is far too much to fit into a half hour broadcast. So today’s program consists of a few highlights. 

A copy of the unedited audio is embedded in the written version of this story. 

As a third of the audience came from the Cortes Island Academy, Dedeluk told them, “I'm so thankful that youth are here and participating in this. You're part of the reason I'm doing this. I'm a mother, I'm a grandmother, and I'm concerned for the children yet unborn.”

   

Dedeluk also gave an overview of her life before becoming a candidate, “I am a marine biologist. About 25 years ago, I came up to study whale/ vessel interactions. I fell in love with the area and I've lived in Alert Bay since 2003. Some of you who have spent time on the watermight've run into a small Zodiac program that does boater education and lets people know about the whale watching guidelines, Strait Watch. That was a program that I helped create in 2003, as well as the Cetus Research and Conservation Society. That program and society still carries on today even though I'm no longer with them.”

“In 2013, I started working for the Namgis First Nation.  I'm their Aquatic Resources Manager. If it has to do with the ocean or the rivers, those are projects that fall under my supervision and I really love my job.”

“While working with Namgis, and still under Namgis, I was subcontracted to work on another project called the Broughton Aquaculture Transition Initiative. That was a four year program where we did work with two fish farm companies, MOWI and Cermaq, as we transitioned to closure 17 fish farms in the Broughton area. That program just ended in March, and so I'm now back to my aquatic resources position  with just Namgis.  The Broughton project was a project of the Namgis, the Mamalilikulla, the Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis nations together. As a biologist, I have experience working with multiple levels of government and organizations to find selective successful paths forward meeting the conservation needs.  So that's quite a bit about me. I'd love to hear about you. I'd love to learn more about your concerns on Cortes and hopefully answer some of your questions.” 

The format we agreed upon at the beginning of the meeting was that speakers who were okay with having their comments included in the broadcast would speak their names and anyone who wished to remain anonymous would not. I believe everyone gave their name.

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - “A ccording to NASA, if we look back 800,000 years, we can see that carbon dioxide concentration fluctuated between roughly 180 and  280 parts per million and just in the geological blink of an eye, we have sent that  parts per million up to just about 400. So we're getting very close to a doubling of CO2 relative to where it has been for a long time.” 

That quote was Max Thaysen, from FOCI’s Climate Action Committee, explaining one of the slides (top of page) shown at ‘Our Fair Share,’ an interactive online climate solutions workshop held in Mansons Hall on Thursday, October 3, 2024. 

The event was hosted by the Climate Action Committee. 

Max Thaysen introduced emissions targets and the concept of a fair share. Christine Leclerc, from Simon Fraser University’s Climate Research Lab, guided participants through the En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator, developed by MIT Sloan and Climate Interactive. 

Max Thaysen: “The other thing I hope they got, especially from playing with the simulator, is we have options. We're not stuck. There's actually no good reason, other than the political will and the will of the public, that we can't do this. The simulator helps to show that.”

“All we have to do is the things that we already know we have to do. We don't even need magical technology in the future, which a lot of people's plans rely on.  We just have to do it thoroughly and sufficiently. We have to actually do it and that's the hard part.” 

“The overall goal of the workshop was to expose people to this simulator that helps people see the impact of different kinds of changes, different kinds of climate solutions. We're trying to increase some ambition and attention and energy on the issue of climate change, trying to  help us all stop contributing to the pollution that changes the climate in increasingly extreme ways.”

“Half of the workshop was an information presentation with a bunch of slides, charts and graphs, letting people know here's what the admission levels  are right now, what the impacts of that are now, and a little bit about what the impacts of increased warming  are projected to be in the future.”
 

“The piece that I contributed was mainly helping people walk through the process that I went through, of understanding what it means to have a sufficient emissions reduction target?”

“When governments and individuals want to address the role that they play in climate change, they're thinking ‘how much emissions do I need? How much less pollution should I put up into the atmosphere?’ The only  scientific way to figure that out is to determine how much pollution causes how much warming and decide how much warming you're willing to tolerate, live with, or survive. Then  stay within that amount of pollution. That's called  a carbon budget or pollution budget, if you want to put it more simply.”  

“We looked at some different opinions about how to fairly share and this is where the title of the workshop comes in. Our fair share is about understanding if we have a global pollution budget, how do we translate that into how fast we need to reduce emissions and that translation requires fairness.” 

“When we signed on to the Paris agreement, we agreed to limit warming to 1.5°C, or try for 1.5°C and definitely keep well below 2°C.” 

“We also agreed to do that with a strong sense of fairness. In the Paris agreement, they call it common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities. That's referring to things like historical emissions. How much pollution have you contributed in the past? Well, that might have something to say about how much of the current pollution budget you should have access to. We can all  understand that. If we're sharing a birthday cake and there's a couple pieces left, we might want to know how many pieces somebody has already eaten.”

De Clarke/Cortes Currents - Company seeks permission to locate wind farm north of Campbell River.

Capstone Infrastructure Corporation, an independent and publicly traded power generating company headquartered in Toronto, has applied to SRD for permitting and approval for a new project on Vancouver Island. The "Brewster Wind Project" would install about 30 wind turbines on a site about 40 km northwest of Campbell River.  The proposed site is on some ridges between highways 28 and 19 -- more specifically, between the White River and the Memekay River, spanning a range from west of the Memekay Horse Camp to north and east of Memekay Peak.

Capstone is submitting their proposal in response to the 2024 BC Hydro Call For Power.  Hydro is soliciting bids with the goal of acquiring about 3000 GWhrs per year of new clean or renewable electricity to serve the region.  Capstone’s project, when completed, would produce about 200 MW; they anticipate a 30 year operational lifetime.  If everything were to go smoothly, they anticipate a successful environmental impact report by 2028 and completion by 2031;  so this project will not be popping up overnight.

Capstone requested that SRD post the relevant information in public, and also ask and also asked for advice on a list of stakeholders who should be consulted.    SRD responded by advising that Capstone should consult with the BC Speleological Federation, the Canadian Cave Conservancy, the BC Paleontological Alliance, and the Royal BC Museum Palaeontology Department.

De Clarke/Cortes Currents - There was some bad news this month for the Norwegian fish feedlot industry in Canada: their own trade magazine featured the following headline:

The Critics Are Right: It’s Time To Close Down Salmon Farms

As many of our readers know, the Norwegian salmon feedlot industry continues to defend its BC operations fiercely against critique from fishermen, environmentalists and marine biologists. Despite the political clout of this lucrative industry, and after years of activism, research and protest, several “salmon farms” were finally removed from the Discovery Islands channels — a constrained migratory path for wild salmon.

This removal was in response to evidence that researchers and activists have been presenting for years that the effluent from Atlantic salmon feedlots damages the health of wild salmon as they pass through it. Not only do the feedlots use antibiotics and pesticides to keep the non-native fish alive in their high-density close confinement, critics say; but the crowded and unhealthy fish are a perfect breeding ground for sea lice, a natural parasite that affects salmonids on the BC coast. Critics of the industry say the locally inflated superdense population of sea lice from the infested salmon feedlots, has been spilling over onto the migrating salmon, weakening the fish and reducing their numbers.

This theory was strengthened a year after the fish feedlot removals; returns of pink salmon in the Discovery Islands corridor were reported to be significantly larger than they had been for several years. Many took this as a vindication of long-standing criticisms of salmon feedlot operations.

There are many pressures on salmon, including destruction of riparian habitat by logging, overfishing of small fish species lower on the food chain, and the warming of our coastal waters due to climate change. The fish feedlot industry has vigorously insisted that any decline in wild salmon populations is due to these other factors, and has nothing to do with their activities — and that sea lice in particular are not a problem.

Meanwhile the BC industry spent about 40 million dollars in 2020 on a specialised vessel from Norway, equipped. among other things, to vacuum the sea lice off the feedlot fish. [This large investment in a “delousing ship” at the time led one mischievous fisherman on Facebook to suggest that maybe they were focusing on the wrong species — and should be harvesting the sea lice as their protein-rich product.]

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Transcript of a radio broadcast by Sabina Leader Mense

Just last weekend several of us were at the Cortes Island Museum for the launch of Sheila Harrington's new book 'Voices For The Islands: 30 Years Of Nature Conservation In The Salish Sea.' What Sheila does in this book is she celebrates this amazing community of conservationists that are living and working in the Salish Sea.  

In the foreword, Briony Penn wrote, "If you've picked up this book, chances are that you've fallen in love with the islands in the Salish Sea. You might have wondered how the heck they've retained their natural beauty against the hostile tsunami of contemporary clear-cuts, cookie cutter suburbs, and mindless malls that are encroaching elsewhere.”

Briony talks about the collective efforts of thousands of people over generations that have actually been working to maintain the beauty of the islands. 

Sheila's book documents the last 30 years of people (voices in the islands) who have been working at conservation. She includes a chapter on Cortes, so we're in there with the best of them! I encourage everybody to pick her book up and have a read  to see what the island community of conservationists have been doing. 

The most exciting conservation story on Cortes today is definitely the Children's Forest! This is the 624 acres of forest lands that stretch all the way from the Carrington Bay Road trailhead, east across Carrington Lagoon to Goat Mountain, just on the northern shore of Blue Jay Lake.  These are lands owned by Island Timberlands. It's part of their privately managed forest land base on Cortes Island.

When Island Timberlands announced imminent logging plans for their  forest lands in 2009, several of us invited Briony Penn and Mort Ranson to come to Cortes. They were defending forest lands on Salt Spring Island in 1999. Mort is a videographer and produced a fabulous little video called 'The Money, The Money, The Money.' We asked Briony and Mort to come to Cortes to show the video,  and  to brainstorm with us and with the community for solutions to how we might conserve some of these lands. One of the sparks that came out of that conversation in 2009 was this idea of a forest in trust to the children.

So that concept was established in 2010. By 2012, we had managed to register ourselves as a B. C. Society, the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society. By  2014 we had charitable status and we've been hard at it ever since! 

We have engaged Island Timberlands with the goal of purchasing these 624 acres of land. We're tenacious! We're in there hanging on, and we have a very dedicated negotiations committee that's actively engaged with Mosaic Forest Management, who now manage the Island Timberland  forest land base.  

The Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society has a vision and that vision is twofold. Firstly, we're setting out to protect in perpetuity natural forest lands on behalf of children and future generations. Secondly, we're there to nurture relationships between children and nature and to inspire advocacy for the natural world.