I’m guessing that the mission for BC Parks needs an update. Here is what it currently is:

http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/aboutBCParks.html

“Our parks, protected areas and conservation lands are a public trust. As such, our mission is to protect representative and special natural places within the Province’s Protected Areas System for world class conservation, outdoor recreation, education and scientific study.”

Maybe it should be:

“Our parks, protected areas and conservation lands are sort of a public trust, but not really. As such, our mission is to try and protect representative and special natural places within the Province’s Protected Areas System for conservation, outdoor recreation, education and scientific study. Sometimes though, these lofty plans are just too hard to follow through with. In such cases, we will abandon the aforementioned mission and just do whatever private interests want us to do.”

The Liberals will do as they please, protesting will not stop their agenda.

its too bad we find out about rallies when they are over!

Just wait, the oil, gas , mining head in for exploration things will never be the same. Parks in the north is were industry want access because they are to vast. What you want you get, problem will be we will all pay the price for this decision more blockades, more boycotts more uncertainty

I guess the greedy bastards simply can’t leave 14% alone. That’s the problem with greed, it knows no bounds. A few that comment on here are no doubt jumping for joy over this bill.

So Clark brags about how beautiful BCC is and how many parks we have, then does this. Enjoy our parks while they last folks. Goodbye camping and fishing in bc

Good to see a group of young people getting involved. Wish them all the luck in dealing with a Government without ears, eyes, or a brain.

One has to wonder how much of a kickback these politicians are getting from big oil.

What do you expect when you thirst endlessly after jobs that can pay an income someone can actually live on in an economy where ALL business costs enter prices, but only a PART of those costs are current incomes?

There’s only two ways around that under the present way the bookkeeping is done.

One is to keep ringing up debt, which makes up for the part of costs that aren’t incomes *now*, (but at a greater charge against incomes in the *future*, (and is completely unsustainable long term, as recurring recessions and financial crisis clearly show).

Or two, you export more than you import, and have some other country provide the ongoing difference in ‘money’ between the continual rates of flow of overall consumables prices and overall consumer incomes here. So you can afford to buy the part of what’s produced here you do buy, plus any imports, or at least be able to ring up more personal debt to do so for awhile longer.

Now what are we going to export that some other country really wants save for our resources? And if every other resource rich country is trying to sell its same resources into the same global markets for the same reason we are, how then are we going to win that kind of competition unless we give our extraction industries, the ones that still employ people at a living wage, or above one, greater access to our lowest cost extractable resources, wherever they’re found? Or ease the costs to them in getting resources out to market, or electricity, etc. to their developments? In parks, or through parks, or anywhere else.

There is another way, of course. But to do that we’d have to change the way the bookkeeping is done, to make it more reflective of actual physical realities. But we’ll never do that, that would wreck the whole ‘left’-‘right’ nature of politics where we can argue endlessly about the inanity of how to re-distribute insufficiencies (of ‘money), or make real wealth scarce (by exporting all of it, and consuming the minimal amount possible ourselves), so the ‘facts’ are then in line with the $ sign fronted ‘figures’.

The petition posted here last wek on this subject had about 60,000 signature. As of today it has more than 170,000 signature. Nice to see “people’s” voices being heard on this important matter.

I guess Big Oil, Gas and mining are not so welcome in out BC Parks!

The headline from the link below reads
“Through pristine Jasper Park, Kinder Morgan goes full-speed on Trans Mountain pipeline expansion”

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/03/14/on-edge-of-pristine-jasper-park-kinder-morgan-goes-full-speed-on-trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion/?__lsa=acd6-d3d5

It goes on to say:
“….. a 36-inch jumbo pipeline — the same diameter as TransCanada Corp.’s controversial Keystone XL project — that passes unseen through Jasper, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and Mount Robson Provincial Park to Rearguard, B.C. Built over a two-year window beginning in 2006 …. “

“Most people don’t even know there’s a pipeline there,” said Mr. Scott, an operations liaison with Kinder Morgan, pointing out of his truck window to a grassy ditch beside the highway. “In fact, when we were originally looking to expand, lots of people didn’t even realize there was an existing pipeline running through the park to the coast.”
———————————-

I do not recall protesters when the first pipeline went through the national and provincial parks …. does anyone else recall that or care about those lines going in? What legislation allowed those in those days?

Maybe the feds and provinces were like the Russians just walking into the Crimea? ;-)

Just for the record, the original Trans Mountain pipeline system was constructed through the National and Provincial parks in 1952 and 1953. Of course, the railway had already been through there a half century before. The interprovincial highway as part of the northern TransCanada highway system came through later. The entire townsite of Jasper is a commercial activity in the park, as are a number of motels to the south and a commercial ski facility.

There is nothing “pristine” about Jasper National Park other than what we consider to be pristine as time passes.

I do not condone such activities, however, the door has been open a little bit for a long time. All we have to discuss now is how far the door should be opened or whether we should shut the door slowly and let everything go back to its 17th century state?

Transportation of goods through a park is a lot different than exploration or extraction within park boundaries.
The people of this province need to wake up. Sign the petition, let Victoria know this is not acceptable.

We all have jobs, we need foreign workers to help plunder tomorrows resources…today. But hey, let’s also plunder something that was meant to forever stay in its close to natural state.
Why don’t we just dissolve the parks and divide the land up amongst BC born and first nations?. Once the parks are in private hands, they will be much better taken care of. At least that’s what the Fraser Institute tells me.

Lots of rhetoric, not much in facts.

What do you call plunder?

I find it odd that Shirely Bond goes along with this kind of legislation considering a large part of her constituency includes Mount Robson Provincial Park among others.

I think the BC liberal government allowing private industry to go into our parks is nothing short of a disgrace unbecoming of a responsible government.

With the passing of the Park Amendment Act, which now allows industrial incursions into our Provincial Parks, one has to wonder; how concerned is this Liberal government about the environmental impacts of the proposed Enbridge Gateway pipeline?

If this government is willing to opening up our Parks to industrial incursions, what’s a little oil on our land and waterways?

http://action.sumofus.org/a/bc-parks-open-oil-gas-mining/?sub=homepage

Again….what is the alternative? Ship oil by rail? Everyone drive electric cars? Turn off our furnaces and heat our homes with solar power?

While I would love it if everyone could be employed with a livable wage AND industry had zero impact on the environment, that really isn’t a viable option right now.

If you want to shut down the oil and gas industry…..what do all the people who work there now do for jobs?

If you want to shut down the forest industry….same question….what would WE (I work in the industry) do for a job?

Thousands upon thousands of people would be out of work with no viable options on the horizon.

The question we all need to answer…is how do we get from where we are RIGHT NOW to a place where everyone is working, the environment is protected, climate change is reversed, and we can look forward to a bright future….

9 protesters? Does that mean the rest of the population (who didn’t show up) understands that parks don’t pay taxes? Hmmm? Costs money to run a country. Doncha know?

Mercenary:- ” The question we all need to answer…is how do we get from where we are RIGHT NOW to a place where everyone is working, the environment is protected, climate change is reversed, and we can look forward to a bright future….”
——————————————-
Change the bookkeeping. To make the $ sign ‘figures’ REFLECT the ‘facts’. Not try to pre-determine them. Like we’ve been doing. Time and time again, expecting the same things that’ve failed before are somehow going to produce different results.

If you want “everyone working” then you have several options. You can eschew any and all labor saving modern technology in favor of making everything as labor intensive as humanly possible. Turn the clock back to the era where “all craft was handicraft”. ‘Everyone’ was working then, or they starved to death.

Another way is to have a war. That puts everyone to work, though our best producers are usually in the armed forces producing nothing except a bigger body count on the enemy side than the enemy is producing on ours.

Or we can have endless other ‘make work’ projects, just about as useless. Like having everyone dig a hole and then fill it in again. Over and over and over again. Til they fall into it from exhaustion at the end of their digging days. Then someone gets some overtime filling that hole in.

We already have enormous numbers of people employed doing essentially just that ~ things that are completely non-productive in any economic sense whatsoever, save for providing an excuse for paying them an income. Is one really needed?

I see 9 people standing up protesting, I also see 2 people employed of the 9 and they are probably minimally employed at best.

Wanna get me onside? lets have a protest of working people, oh wait, it won’t happen because they are too busy working.

Mercenary you say; “If you want to shut down the oil and gas industry…..what do all the people who work there now do for jobs?”

Your statement is a little over the top. How you got to “shutting down the oil and gas industry” from my comment is perplexing. There is an oil sands industry employing lots of people (in excess of 100,000) right now, without the Enbridge pipeline or the Keystone XL pipeline, or the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion. If every one of those three proposed pipeline projects were not to proceed, the oil sands operations would have to remain the same size, and not expand by 30%. So tell us; how does keeping the oil sands operation the same size, with over 100,000 people currently employed, the same as shutting the industry down?

Mercenary; did you know growth in Green Energy jobs is outpacing all other industries? Perhaps it’s time to vote in a government that will create green jobs, protect our environment, and stimulate our economy in a sustainable manner. If this were to happen, would we need to be concerned about Oil & Gas activities in our Provincial Parks? Would we need to be concerned about pipeline spills in BC or off / on our coast? The answers to those questions would be NO.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/green-job-growth-2010-2011_n_2915737.html

Being: “Perhaps it’s time to vote in a government that will create green jobs, protect our environment, and stimulate our economy in a sustainable manner.”

Haven’t we been hearing this rhetoric for the last 30+ years? What has it gotten us? While the ‘green’ movement debates over what the quote above actually means, people have real jobs to do in the real world.

And isn’t it time to stop blaming the weather for poor protest turnouts? Maybe people just aren’t as concerned about this as some would lead us to believe.