I was asked to talk about the Chinese oil tankers burning from a collision at sea, as this always makes news, not something like the birth of a family’s baby - unfortunately the shock factor draws people’s attention - so sad what we’ve become.
How I wish the fishing would start soon so I can post good news. S02 scrubbers are a hot topic these days as the mayor wants to once again flex his muscles at our last corporate company in town.
Rio Tinto has released a report and the company is held accountable by the provincial government anyway - but sure, let’s smear RT, the last chance we have in Kitimat.
I took a drive to Terrace to talk with Donna in the kitchen at the Terrace Curling club.
“How’s business,” she asks. “Slowest I’ve ever seen it in Kitimat,” I tell her with a bowed head.
The phone rings and Donna is once again busy with her catering business - things are busy for her and other small businesses in Terrace.
New house builds are continuing, whereas Kitimat’s small businesses are sourcing work out of town, as were too busy making things worse for ourselves.
Terrace mayor Leclerc is busy making business in the community looking at tax collection for the upcoming legalization of cannabis.
Whether you support the legalization or not, she and her staff are making the best of a business that will be a tax benefit to her community.
Kitimat just doesn’t know what it wants. We want it all but we don’t - this is the message I get from the powers that be.
The RT report states that wet scrubbers will pollute the brackish waters of the Kitimat estuary, killing all the sea life. Do we want wet scrubbers? What about the solid product that’s recovered - bury it here locally?
Heck no, send it to Swan Hills, near Whitecourt in Alberta, a place where my brother’s family lives and the moose, deer and elk populations are massive.
Do the Albertans complain, protest, all located or near First Nations, about the waste disposal facility that’s been operated for many decades? Heck no, they’re too busy fracking and producing oil for their and our families.
When we sell our oil at $20 a barrel less to Washington State, which has at least four marine export and processing facilities some hundred miles from Vancouver.
Wake up people! You’re being duped by the best business and aggressive patriots on the planet. When we sell our gas and oil to our neighbours, we complain that they sell it back to us as jet fuel for YVR at a huge cost.
In the same breath, however, we complain that Kinder Morgan is bad for B.C.
I’ll gladly work, and probably will, till I can’t move as a seasonal fishing guide to keep the food on the table. Heck I’m a fourth generation Saskatchewan farmer - I barely missed the depression but heard the horror stories, burning cow chips to heat the dirt floor home.
We have a population of just over 6,000 in Kitimat, on a steady downward slide from 12,000 or so.
The stories of old when we had the best shopping in the North happened when people still worked at Eurocan, Methanex and Kitimat Iron.
It’s time we open our arms to the future port development here in Kitimat, which has always been the gem of the Pacific Coast, with a deep ice-free safe route to the open ocean.
There’s a reason why the ships coming to Kitimat have a perfect safety record transporting methanol, ammonia, MTBE and aluminum ore. It’s because we have a Pacific Pilotage Authority, with British Columbians at the helm and local agencies that ensure a flawless transfer of goods, while we sit at home on Facebook posting nonsense about our town’s demise.
A community like ours should have first-class expanded hospital services by now with our industrial base, but our mayor and council don’t concentrate their energy to produce positive results. Instead we try scare tactics to get elected and it gets people stirred up.
Our emergency services are the best in the province but do we actually have a plan for the people in case of big disasters like a forest fire?
I can’t remember us ever having a meeting with the city, plant facilities, marine, RCMP, SAR and Haisla to develop a strategic plan so we can direct our elders and people to safety.
The Community Emergency Plan is a generic document not at all directed to our town specifically.
Let’s move forward and make things better for us in Kitimat instead of fighting the corporate hand that just hired 200 new employees and provides for their lives, not to mention my friends who are retiring at 55 with a full pension!
Ask your neighbour - there are some 600 of us who for have gone through 10 years with little or no wages who are desperate to find good long-term paying jobs. If RT says Kitimat is just to negative for business, this town will be back to what it was before the 50s.
We have a strong union that gets results so let that continue.
What new corporation would want to do business with all this negativity?
They’d rather roll the dice and do business in a Third World country with guards at the gates - just ask some of my colleagues who have worked in countries where your life is in danger every day of your 30-day tour of duty.
It’s true we do have it all here. Heck, I can jump on my quad with a shotgun strapped on my back and blast a goose on Oviatt’s land, with no gates or angry landowners, or even take that same quad to our Minette Bay West area where most hunters find the flocks of geese and ducks.
This year will be the biggest challenge for us in Kitimat and it scares me more than when I was laid off in 2006.
I wish RTA would hire 5,000 more people - there would be more houses in town with quads, RVs and two new vehicles in the drive.
If a slide in house prices was bad in 2017, 2018 could be the year where our bank savings will be all we have as our houses will be worthless.
Ask Tumbler Ridge, a coal-based one commodity community that is now a ghost town.
One of the best decisions ever made in Kitimat was the updating of the pool (it would probably have been better to build a new one - it would probably have cost the same). People come from Terrace, Rupert and Nass come here to use our pool. These are the things that grow your community.
Regarding the numerous boil water advisories we had in 2017 - our current potable water system needs upgrades.
It’s part of the old infrastructure and large sums of tax dollars will be needed to ensure we have safe drinking water.
If the flooding continues in 2018 we could possibly be on a boil water advisories for months with storage tanks full of turbid, undrinkable water.