British Columbia

Glaciers will be largely a thing of the past in Western Canada by the end of the century, placing stress on fish such as salmon that thrive in cold water and affecting hydro generation, according to a study by two B.C. researchers.

The recent Vancouver panel discussion on Naomi Klein's new book, This Changes Everything, from which this article took form, was organized weeks before a local Blockadia event took place. By the time the five panelists came together, two had been arrested for defying a court injunction and two were named in a $5.6-million lawsuit for objecting to Kinder Morgan's (KM) planned pipeline through a municipally designated park on Burnaby Mountain.

The B.C. government’s abrupt decision to rescind its approval of a new B.C. treaty commissioner has opened a significant rift with the federal government and aboriginal groups it says it wants to do business with. But the politics and the personalities involved in the reversal have obscured the government’s intention: To back away from the treaty negotiation process it sees as a costly endeavour that has produced precious few results over the past two decades.

Kinder Morgan says its protocols dictate that it report "suspicious activities" like taking photos near its Burnaby Mountain facility, even though the surrounding area is Crown land on which they have no jurisdiction to prohibit photography.

SFU climate change scientist Tim Takaro says he felt "intimidated" when he got a call from Burnaby RCMP earlier this week asking him about photographs he took with Kinder Morgan infrastructure in the background. They also told him they knew he had been to protest rallies that had taken place there a few months earlier.

A B.C. climate change scientist says he got an "intimidating" call from RCMP because he had taken pictures on Burnaby Mountain near the site of a proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline.

Tim Takaro, a health sciences professor at SFU, says he was having lunch in Tofino with his family on Wednesday when his daughter's cellphone rang.

When she answered it, she was told it was the Burnaby RCMP calling and they were looking for her father.

A White Paper released by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions last month argues that fossil fuel divestment campaigns are based on a set of unfounded assumptions. The authors, Hadi Dowlatabadi and Justin Ritchie of UBC, make some valuable contributions to the debate over divestment. But their criticisms of the divestment advocates’ core arguments are off-base.

OTTAWA — An internal RCMP report’s portrayal of northern B.C. as one of two Canadian regions most vulnerable to violent, anti-pipeline extremists working with aboriginal radicals to sabotage “critical infrastructure” is “absolutely bizarre,” one of B.C.’s most outspoken First Nations leaders said Wednesday.

Stewart Phillip, head of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, has long espoused civil disobedience to defend First Nations rights and was recently arrested during an anti-pipeline protest on Burnaby Mountain.

No records, no agenda, no minutes, no briefing notes. That's what Vancouver-based economist and former ICBC CEO Robyn Allan learned from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request on senior-level meetings between the federal government and Texas-based oil giant Kinder Morgan. 

"It's not just bad administration," said Allan. "It's a betrayal of public trust." 

Three of the meetings involved then-Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver. 

The Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) is the latest to speak out against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's proposed Anti-Terrorism Act.

Harper's Bill C-51 is meant to increase the power of RCMP and other bodies to combat terrorism and includes giving more power to security personnel, letting authorities detain possible terrorists for longer periods, and allowing authorities to remove terrorist propaganda from any Canadian-based website. However, critics have said that the bill will restrict Canadians' freedom.

One take on the upcoming referendum in Metro Vancouver: