Posts by Laura Benson - Page 2
The long arm of a Chinese trade deal
Taking democracy for granted has consequences for all of us. China has been on my mind lately. The headlines about the Prime Minister’s first official visit to China ahead ...
Surprise! B.C.’s deadbeat mining companies are huge political donors
Taxpayers liable for $1.2 billion in cleanup costs as corporations cry poor I really should not have read the newspaper before breakfast this morning. Nothing curdles the milk in ...
Renewed hope for Dogwood’s Beyond Coal team
Two post-election updates from members of our Beyond Coal team. Another bottle of champagne, please The weekend after the federal election the Ross family in Tsawwassen uncorked a bottle ...
You’ve been downgraded to letter-writer!
Revitalizing democracy is hard. Sometimes it means making hard decisions where the correct path isn’t clear. I felt that when it came time to decide whether to submit comments ...
They heard from us anyway – thousands of us
On a late summer Friday in Ladner, even the local fishmonger was clamouring to give the port authority a piece of his mind. Seven Dogwood Initiative organizers had gathered ...
The fox guarding the henhouse
Even recent history has a tendency to repeat itself. One year ago, in the depths of August, top bureaucrats at Port Metro Vancouver approved a permit for a new ...
Not the kind of port reform we were hoping for
Just when you thought public input into major resource export proposals couldn’t be undermined any more than it already has, you get something like Bill C-43. This omnibus bill, ...
Forty thousand strong and we’re just getting started
We had no idea Port Metro Vancouver would approve the Fraser Surrey Docks coal terminal just last Thursday on Aug. 21. While the timing was a definite shock, the ...
If Oregon can do it, why can’t B.C.?
Our allies in my native state of Oregon are celebrating a huge victory today as the Department of State Lands rejected an application from Ambre Energy to build an ...