Did B.C. not learn anything from Mount Polley disaster?
Not only has there been a shameful failure of legal accountability for the Mount Polley mine disaster, the B.C. government is setting up for a new tailings pond disaster near Kamloops by failing to abide by a key recommendation of the engineering panel it convened to examine the Mount Polley mess.
Plans for the proposed KGHM Ajax mine in the hills above Kamloops include a tailings pond projected to be up to five times larger than Mount Polley’s. This completely ignores the report that says you must eliminate water “both on and in the tailings — water on the surface, and water contained in the interparticle voids.”
The Ajax tailings pond would be a threat to the city in perpetuity, long after the Polish mining company and current provincial politicians are gone from the scene.
John McNamer, Kamloops
Addicts are not to blame
Re: Gord Lefort letter, Addicts to blame. Are you kidding me? Who gets to judge why people have made the mistake of trying drugs and found themselves addicted? Does anyone believe every person who has made this horrible mistake should pay for it with their lives?
The professionals in hospital emergency rooms are fighting to save a life. The person that some people look at with no pity is a son, daughter, friend to someone who loves them. Just for the record, I’ve never used drugs and I’m a “responsible hard-working British Columbian” who doesn’t mind waiting.
Darylene Godkin, Lake Country
O’Leary is scary
Am I the only one who is horrified to read that Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary hopes, if he becomes prime minister one day, to do everything in his power to “coerce” the provinces into adopting his preferred economic policies?
Webster’s dictionary defines “coerce” as to constrain or restrain by force, especially by authority. O’Leary is giving us fair warning. Is this the kind of government that we want in Canada?
Let’s be diligent and pay careful attention to whom we elect. Betty Poss, Surrey
Not free to fear?
I find the recent motion passed in parliament regarding Islamophobia to be confusing.
A “phobia” is an extreme or irrational fear or aversion to something, for example spiders, small spaces, going outside, or even religion.
Islamophobia would be defined as the fear of a specific religion. The motion implies that having a fear of something would be against the law. This is ridiculous. How can you make it illegal for someone to fear something? Roger Currie, Surrey
The right unites
It’s official. The United Kingdom has rebuked the European Union. Unlike many once independent national leaders, the steadfast British Prime Minister Theresa May has begun the process of reclaiming the U.K.’s sovereign sanctity while abandoning inclusion into imminent global socialism.
Just previous to this, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Energy Independence Executive Order sent another message to the United Nations Security Council and the world that their cleverly disguised Climate Change Compromise won’t work here. Tally-ho and Godspeed, jolly old England.
Brock Turner, Chatham, Ont.