Except for Quebec university students, Canadians are being remarkably quiescent about the recent federal budget. It just may be possible that the PM’s majority government adequately represents the wishes of the electorate. It’s a rare achievement given the usual rough and tumble of parliamentary democracy.

The (supposedly) big news is that the federal government is trying to bring the deficit, and thereby the federal debt, under control. Nothing could be further from the truth. The year to year shortfall is set to decline but the debt is inexorably growing like a malignancy. For a country that’s supposedly one of the world’s best in regard to disciplined spending, this is a disgrace. Successive governments, be they Liberal or Conservative, aren’t going to change. They’ll continue the expensive expanse of intrusive bureaucracy that will continue to be determined to micromanage people’s lives with more and more silly rules.

The four levels of government (federal, territorial, provincial and municipal) are hooked, as is a cancer cell, on growth for growth’s sake. When the mainstream media speaks of “cuts” it’s saying that the rate of expansion may slow, but the government’s take is always increasing. Loan sharks should have it this good.

Sure, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, International Development Agency, Border Services Agency, the Armed Forces and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) are seeing some reductions in their size, but so what? They’re all useless and/or incompetent. My food doesn’t need an inspector. Foreign aid simply takes my hard earned dollars to waste on some ingrates. The military didn’t exactly win the Afghan war—where was the victory parade? Border services leaks like a sieve and the CBC, for all its highbrow programming, depends upon a subsidy instead of listenership.

Provincially, the teachers want more money for their illiterate and innumerate students who, in Grade 12, read, write and figure at a rate common to Grade 6 students of my generation.

Translink bureaucrats feel they deserve a fat bonus for running a bus company; how hard can that be?
In Kamloops, we’re supposed to feel grateful that the taxes are only going up two per cent instead of six per cent. Why are they going up at all? You don’t suppose that it’s for the benefit of the people working there, since $100,000 salaries are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

I have no doubt that civil servants are decent people and all, but one could remove half of the jobs and no one would really notice. Fisheries and Oceans botched both seacoasts; Indian Affairs is a chronic disaster; the Privacy Commissioner’s a waste; the Military doesn’t need F-35’s; the Ministry of the Environment’s a drain on productivity; most universities teach useless non-technical courses; Interior Health’s famous for lousy results; the courts still have only convicted one (count’em) Stanley Cup rioter in a year; etc., etc. ad nauseam.

While lots of morons like to hate capitalism, the inescapable fact remains that if you don’t like your new Walmart toaster, you can return it for a refund. Too bad we can’t ever get the same accountability from our politicians and bureaucrats.

Publisher's Note

Yes, that’s right, it’s spring and all that litter that’s been discarded by those that just don’t care, or had no role models in their early lives, is about to come out of hibernation. For years I’ve written about the people behind the problem, but unfortunately that’s seemed to have fallen on deaf ears as each spring is the same. I’m totally disgusted by the amount of litter, empty cans and bottles, cigarette butts and the multitude of full dog poop bags that have been chucked into every corner of this resort community.

Am I missing something, or are young people being taught these days to just fling their trash in the bush or the snow bank and let someone else pick it up? After all, once it’s out of your hands, who really cares anyway, right?

Guess what? I care and so do lots of other Sun Peaks workers and residents. Unfortunately now it’s the job of those that live and work in Sun Peaks year round to go out on our own unpaid time to clean up the bloody huge mess left by others.

Well enough yelling at litter bugs, who’ve probably already left the mountain anyway, and time to move to what we can do as a community about this scourge. While we all understand the litter on our streets or in front of our businesses was not our doing (I hope), the fact is it’s now really our responsibility to it clean up. Those areas are the first impressions our guests or customers get of our homes, our businesses and Sun Peaks as a whole, and frankly these days it’s not much of an impression.

So, as the snow melts please do your part and pick up any litter you see around your home, or anywhere else, and put it where it belongs—in the garbage. If we all chip in just a little as the snow recedes then this community can return to the natural beauty it should enjoy all year. Let’s all be part of the solution and not part of the problem and please mark Wednesday, May 16 on your calendar, as this is when the whole community comes out for the 14th annual Sun Peaks Trash Bash; the day we take back our town.

When a political junkie like me is feeling overwhelmed by the news, I can’t help but think that those who are generally unaware or unconcerned about the interesting world beyond their daily reach might be on to something. After all, most of the words, TV clips and videos repeat one hard luck story after another interposed by ads urging us to improve life by using a particular shampoo or non-street (officially) drug.

What you may be thinking is, “Why doesn’t he get off the net, change the radio to music and unplug the tube?”

To quote Mark Twain about tobacco, “Quitting is easy, I’ve done it hundreds of times.” Somehow, for whatever oddball reason, we’ve all become so wired that without recurrent information input, most people get antsy. It’s becoming hard to remember the last time I rode the chairlift without someone tweeting, texting or talking into a gadget. We’d be screwed if there were no such thing as electricity any more. Just wait for the upcoming BC Hydro rate increases that are going to be announced. The political firestorm will bring down the Christy Clark Liberals if they aren’t very careful, which of course they won’t be. Things will soon get interesting provincially, given high priced teachers and nurses wailing for more of whatever never satisfies them.

Was I on politics again? Oops. In that case, let’s Google Earth over to Syria where, who knows how many, women, children and Korans have been shredded today. Russia and China have successfully pleaded their case for arms sales and have effectively stuck their finger into the West’s nose by betting that the civil war will go on. Good news—they can have Syria. Obama, for a change, is smart enough to stay out of this mess.

Moving eastward into Iran via Streetview, one can easily discern that the folks there aren’t really too interested in the peaceful uses of the atom; otherwise there’d be transmission towers being erected for the electrification of the countryside and labs being readied to accept medical isotope manufacturing. Iran, if it wants to be a nuclear nation, needs to tone down the rhetoric and grow up diplomatically.

While we’re on the topic of fossil fuels or not, one may or may not like the methods of extraction or
transportation, but really who amongst us doesn’t take the car whenever we feel like it? Our fruits and vegetables travel by diesel but none of the expert nutritionists recommend cabbage and carrots only this winter for proper anti-oxidant qualities to ensure (or is it insure?—wait, I’ll look it up) a gentler global footprint.

But where have I been, the tickertape thing just rattled the latest—robo-call mini scandal. “What, me worry?” Alfred E. Neuman (the gap-toothed David Letterman looking guy from MAD magazine) would say. Let’s see, some machine calls and interrupts you, blathers stupidly about no brainer dumb stuff and, if you don’t have the lowest percentile brain function possible to hang up, Parliament will spring into action.

How have we come to this?

Publisher's Note

After decades of hearing locals’ ranting about how Sun Peaks Resort Corporation (SPRC), Tourism Sun Peaks (TSP), Sun Peaks Utilities Company Limited (SPUCL) and now Sun Peaks Mountain Resort Municipality (SPMRM) should do this and that to improve this, that and/or the other in our community, I feel compelled to let those that rant about these bodies know how it works around here.

Firstly, SPRC isn’t an omniscient big brother to all that is Sun Peaks Resort, but merely a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Cable of Japan, a privately held company with resort holdings in various parts of the world. SPRC’s role in Sun Peaks is to operate the ski hill, golf course and other resort features within the Controlled Recreation Area (CRA) as well as to develop real estate land in the base area of the CRA as visitor numbers grow. This is all structured and governed under a 50 year Master Development Agreement (MDA) with the Province of B.C.

TSP isn’t a little brother of SPRC as many people think, but a non-profit membership-based Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) that’s governed by a member-based Board of Directors. Membership is based on real estate or business holdings in Sun Peaks and, like any DMO, TSP is bound by the Society Act of B.C as a non-profit organization and by the Resort Associations Act of B.C. with regard to the fees and dues it charges it members, of which SPRC is the largest contributor.

TSP’s mandate, somewhat vaguely described, is to use their members’ fees and dues to market Sun Peaks Resort to the rest of the world to increase visitor numbers.

SPUCL, on the other hand, is a wholly owned subsidiary of SPRC and is a private water, sewer and gas utility company that’s governed by the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC) and the Water Utility Act (WUA).

Now throw the relatively new local government of the Sun Peaks Municipality (property taxes, roads, bylaws, etc.) into the mix and who does what in Sun Peaks may get confusing, unless you either pay close attention to these types of things or just ask the right questions of the right people.

Do the SPRC, TSP, SPUCL and SPMRM business lines cross from time to time? Absolutely. Does any one entity have control of any other’s business model or mandate? Absolutely not, unless you’re talking SPRC and SPUCL. So, to all those that still think the SPMRM is controlled by SPRC and that TSP is in control of the MDA as a DMO within the CRA, then you might want to study what SPMRM has to do with the BCUC or the WUA before spouting off that SPRC should plow the roads and that TSP should get the SPMRM to lower the gas prices at SPUCL so they can better market the resort.

You’ll only be as informed as you care to be and should you really care about your community, you’ll inform yourself about what really happens in it.

“Where do we go now?” —Guns and Roses

In a rare moment of maudlin sentimentality I could almost feel sorry for politicians. Given their bovine ignorance and universal incompetence, that moment of empathy has thankfully evaporated under the glare of objective reality.

No matter where one turns presidents, prime ministers, premiers and governors exhibit few, if any, signs that they have any grasp upon what Will Rogers once remarked isn’t so common, i.e., sense.

Let’s start with Europe. Any man on the street without a highfalutin education can see that there really is no crisis caused by Greece. It’s a mere pimple lucky enough to have surfaced on real economies by “intelligentsia” who couldn’t see from their ivory towers that combining the good credit ratings and borrowing powers of Northern Europe with the non-productive economies in the south would water down the whole zone. If you mix dog feces half and half with ice cream, it would be no surprise to most of us proletariat that you end up with something that tastes more like one than the other. The solution is also earthily similar; lance the pustule by allowing the Greeks to riot themselves into complete irrelevance. The Euro will take a small wobble and then rise because it’ll be better off less one welfare case. The other troubled countries will see that their days of living high off of others’ productivity are numbered.

The next basket case has to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. By threatening to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, he’ll strangle his Gulf neighbour states’ income as well as his own country’s. That won’t help anyone and will really turn his people against him. Look what happened when he reduced gasoline subsidies, they were un-reduced after about a day. Besides, there’s more than just the U.S. Navy in the area; the Chinese and Indians depend upon Middle East oil too and with their resurgent sea power they’ll not allow some local bozo to sabotage their ambitions.

Closer to home, it appears that Obama’s understanding of capitalism matches that of Fidel Castro. Gas prices in the States are up 82 per cent since he took over, unemployment is up 40 per cent, housing prices are down 40 per cent, national debt is up 50 per cent and so forth, ad nauseum. Even wind power, solar farms and high speed rail haven’t seemed to help, given their dependence upon subsidies. Preventing pipelines and aircraft factories from opening seems to be the only thing this former boy-wonder is able to accomplish. His hair is getting greyer every month because he’s in over his head, and after three years in power, blaming Bush for everything is getting stale. It’s a good thing for him the Republicans can’t get their act together, otherwise, B.H.O. would be destined to be a one-termer for sure.

Oh, did I mention Christy Clark’s wheels falling off, Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty presiding over a former “have” province, Jerry Brown’s California losing people, David Cameron getting told by India to keep his foreign aid (good idea, actually), Premier Hu Jintao of China watching rich people leave his environmental disaster of a country . . . ? You get the idea.

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? Jump 20 years forward and a lot, pun intended, has changed.

The Sun Peaks Mountain Resort Municipality has now hired the Whistler Centre for Sustainability to visit this, now contentious, zoning bylaw issue of nightly chalet rentals in residential neighbourhoods, as it has in communities like Sechelt, Tofino, Harrison, Osoyoos and Fernie, just to name a few.
So, now that the community has embarked on this path of tourist accommodation sustainability, what are the answers? Personally I think as a world-class resort community we need to offer all levels of accommodation to the visitors of Sun Peaks, be it a hotel room, a rental condo or a sprawling chalet on a residential street that sleeps 25, and all these purveyors of pillows should have to play on the same field.

To legislate our guests out of accommodation options through zoning bylaws is marketing suicide in my mind and will only lead to fewer guest visits to this great resort town. While there are as many questions as answers, I think the answers will be really quite clear once all the issues are on the table. All accommodation providers should pay the same “pillow tax” as each other to level the “resort marketing fee” playing field and things like non-refundable peace bonds, guest rental contracts and clear, concise and enforceable zoning and noise bylaws would allow many of our rental chalet accommodation pioneers to continue in residential areas. These changes would hopefully appease those individuals that feel slighted by the homeowners they consider operating outside the current bylaws, ambiguous as they may be.

We need to offer every possible accommodation option to all our guests, while allowing others peace of mind where they live, all the while still maintaining an equitable balance of fees and taxes across the board within the accommodation sector.

Political Point of View

The hysterically negative reaction by environmental groups opposed to both the Keystone and the Northern Gateway pipelines is typical of their short-sighted ignorance of economic reality. Whether they like it or not, Canada remains a resource based economy.

In an idyllically green world we wouldn’t need awful things like fossil fuels, but that era’s a long way off. We’re a wealthy country due to commodities that need to be wrenched from the ground. This wealth allows some the right to bitch about those companies and, in the case of Alberta, those provinces that really have no choice but to use the natural bounty upon which they sit.

Hollywood has-beens like Robert Redford and Susan Sarandon complain about pipelines spilling oil, but they’d be well advised to check on their own country first. America is criss-crossed by hundreds of thousands of miles of generally older pipelines that are corroding, posing much more danger of spills than the state-of-the-art installations we may be using. Perhaps Bob and Sue can explain how some Panamanian tanker bringing dirty or unethical oil from despotic Saudi Arabia or corrupt Nigeria is somehow better than from a friendly, stable, North American neighbour? Celebrity complaints are a bit dubious; these pious people use more fuel in their Learjets in a week than most of us use driving in a year.

Stephen Harper is actually right; we will sell oil, it’s a no brainer. If President Obama hasn’t got the brains to see that the Keystone XL line will deliver thousands of union jobs using American made heavy equipment from a friendly country, depending instead on the enviro vote rather than his other traditional base, he deserves to lose the election. It’s not as if Sierra Club members are going to vote Republican anyway. It’s not just lefty Canadians and ignorant Americans who seem determined to reduce their countries into campground economies where people sing “Kumbaya” all day long. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, with widespread public support, has promised to wean Germany off nuclear energy by 2020. This will please France greatly since it’ll be supplying Germany’s energy needs.

We in North America are cleaner and greener than anywhere else. It perturbs me to go to other countries and see the locals use their homelands as a garbage dump. We have a fair and just society where people, should they be really aggravated about income disparities, are quite free to leave for better places; where people can complain and be heard, (as they were during the public pipeline debate).

At the end of the day, people who are against energy and mineral extraction really need to clear their woolly heads and get used to the cold hard fact that their pampered lifestyles and clean green spaces are due to oil, gas, uranium, dams, power lines, industrial farming, mega corporations and animal killers who get their hands dirty for filthy lucre. That’s what I call a social program.

Publisher's Note

While the world is certainly a changing place these days, look at the dictators and African thugs falling like dominos for example, is it really going to hell as many are predicting? I think if you truly look around your own world, the answer is “no.” Are times tough in many business sectors, like the tourist sector, that most of us depend on for our livelihood? Yes. Things certainly may not be as rosy as they were, say, six or even 10 years ago, but if you put it in true perspective, it could always be worse.
Being a cup-half-full person most of the time, I truly feel the key to success in life is staying positive when things are in a state of flux or when they’re not going exactly as we want. We can all do this.

This type of positive attitude not only makes us work harder when things are down, it also triggers the laws of attraction. Bad people attract bad people, good people attract good people, etc. The simple fact is that Sun Peaks as a ski resort, a community, or as a global tourist destination is only as successful as the attitude of the people that live and work here. If we all ran around like “Chicken Little,” declaring the end of the economic world as we know it, then that type of negative attitude would eventually prevail.

While skier visits and vacation spending per head may be down over past years, are the foreclosure wolves actually howling at the doors of every home and business in the community? I think not. All one has to do to judge the true success of Sun Peaks, and those that call it home, is hit the slopes and talk to the guests from far and wide. People love Sun Peaks and come back with their families year after year after year, and most say it’s the positive attitude and the friendliness of the locals that make the difference in where they’re choosing to spend their holiday dollars.

Now is the time, more than ever, to keep that positive focus and ride the wave it creates. Just stop for a second and actually think about it. We all have an amazing lifestyle that would turn most people on the planet green with envy and what, if anything, are you truly lacking in your life if you live and work in Sun Peaks? The winds of change are inevitable but if we all stay focused and positive on the products we deliver to our friends around the globe, we can all weather any storm.

I’d love to predict a year in which the United Nations actually are. Unfortunately, mankind, for whatever reason, is clearly devolving along cultural and civilizational lines.

“Democracy” in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will be the tipping point. Popular opinion there supports more religion and less business. Their economies, already bleeding cash, are going to crash. The unemployed will react angrily as they now realize the futility and go afield. Closest place: Europe.

The old Gal Europa ain’t what she used to be. The short work weeks, long paid vacations, perk filled, anything goes lifestyle that once was glamorized can’t pay for itself anymore, never mind feed and house tsunamis of migrants from even more failed states just across the water. Fewer workers will have to work harder to pay for other people’s benefits. The already unsustainable welfare state model simply has no hope of paying entitlements for even its own citizens.

We can see this happening here too. The recent sale of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jays and Raptors by the Teacher’s Pension Fund shows how having 1.5 workers paying retirement benefits to each retiree cannot work. Our Canada Pension Plan needs topping off because it’s headed in the same direction. We now have, in many places around the world, people getting more from the state than they’re producing for it. The majority will democratically vote for more of the same but it’ll be a matter of the mind writing cheques that the body can’t cash.

Revolutions don’t happen because of high ideals like fairness and justice, but because of economic privation. Because economies are collapsing, humans will fight and it will be ugly. 2012 will be an interesting and bloody year. Have a good one while you can.

Publisher's Note

Since its inception in December 2002, Sun Peaks Independent News Inc. has published nearly 1.5 million copies of SPIN, the Sun Peaks summer and winter magazines and the Sun Peaks Visitors Guide. To put this in perspective, that’s close to 30 million pages of information about Sun Peaks and close to 15 billion printed words. I tried to calculate the number of letters typed but got lost in the zeros.

To date SPIN has inserted over 1 million copies of Sun Peaks literature directly into homes and businesses in various regions of B.C. and to stay in the positive I try not to think about how many cat litter boxes SPIN has lined, how many rainbow trout it’s wrapped up or how many woodstoves or campfires copies of SPIN have lit. Old copies only please folks.

When I look at the numbers, I say “holy cow,” but as with any small publication like SPIN, we’re only as good as the people behind it and it’s those people that truly have made the difference. To date SPIN Newsmagazine has had six editors behind the wheel and each one has not only brought a unique style of writing and English composition to the publication, they’ve also grown with the community through the eyes of SPIN. I also need to take my hat off to the dozens of writers who’ve graced the many pages of SPIN over the years with their tales, stories, articles, letters and sometimes heated opinions on any number of subjects. Without these seasoned writers, journalistic hopefuls and, in some cases, opinionated so and so’s, we could never have become an informative, engaging, news and information source to our readership and the people of this great community.

Many people may not think about it when they’re reading a copy of SPIN with their morning latte or their après beer but no one has ever paid to pick up a copy of SPIN Newsmagazine. SPIN is free and it’s the loyal and continued support of our many advertisers each issue that keep this publishing ship above water. Whether it’s a full page colour advertisement or a black and white business card, we hold all our advertisers in the highest regard as, without their trust in us to market their businesses, SPIN would simply cease to be. In closing, I think that SPIN Newsmagazine has become many things to many people in this community over the past decade and be it good, bad or indifferent in your Sun Peaks world, Sun Peaks Independent News, or SPIN, is here to stay.