Conference Calls On All To Act: One Man's Opinion

By Ben Meisner

    
The College of New Caledonia, its interim President, its staff and in particular Peter Ewart, who organized  the weekend Stand Up for the North Conference,  should stand up and take a bow today.

They succeeded in getting a wide variety of the public to attend a series of meetings to try and set a plan for the future after the beetle in Central and Northern BC.

It was however a disappointment not to have in the audience members of The Omineca Beetle Action Coalition, they are the people who have been handed provincial money but so far haven’t  made any particular noise, the Provincial Ministry of Forests was missing, as were the three MLA’s who bowed out because of the Liberal meeting in Penticton. We do however have two federal MP’s who should be concerned with the beetle problem but they failed to attend.

If there is a burning desire to do something about the future after the beetle, there were a host of people who, for whatever reason, failed to make the show.

On the other hand, those who did attend came to the podium with a host of ways to make our standard of living not drop as a result of this little pest.

We need to get together to shed the "I’m the one to handle this problem the best" image, and get on with the job of delivering  the goods.

By spreading a bit of seed money here and there,  the Federal and Provincial governments have been able to divide and conquer.

We all need to step up to the plate and support the efforts of the group that met on the weekend. It is a case of "park your ego and political aspirations at the door" the citizens of the north are calling.

I’m Meisner and that is one man’s opinion

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