TO STOP GROWTH, YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE THAT IT CAN BE DONE

Comox Valley Record http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_north/comoxvalleyrecord/opinion/letters/50412432.html

NOTE: I am shocked and ecstatic. The wall of censorship has been penetrated. The growthsts in Campbell River and the growth "managers" on the green-left finally have to suffer a challenge to their news management. The Comox Valley Record published this unedited, completed with hits on mass immigration, developer financing and the corporate infiltration of the Sierra Club. If only the complete truth could get out about these corrupt money-grubbing corporate lackeys and their condescending and willfully ignorant green yuppie dupes, who won't even do basic reseach to check the filtered drivel they get from this despicable organization, the Sierra Club---the NDP in hiking boots.

Published: July 09, 2009 6:00 PM
Updated: July 09, 2009 6:17 PM
Dear editor,

“We can’t stop growth and development. That is the reality in our world.” (Wendy Masterson, Comox Valley Sierra Club, Global BCTV News, July 5, 2009)

That is the Sierra Club in a nutshell. “Ya can’t fight city hall.”

In the past two federal elections, they have given top marks to the NDP and the Greens, both of whom favour an immigration quota 24 per cent higher than the Harper government’s outrageous level, a level that has given us the highest population growth rate in the G8. And then they wash their hands and say that we can’t stop growth and development.

So let’s sweep the demographic dirt under the carpet. Let’s keeping packing people into denser urban feedlots out of harm’s way. It has already been tried, and it has failed time and time again. Portland, Oregon, will testify to the stupidity and futility of “smart” growth nostrums, for which it was famous.

Canada’s environmental movement is like a cheerful janitor for corporate Canada — mopping up the flooding floor without demanding that the spigot be turned off. They were mum about the shocking census report of two years ago and had nothing to say when an Abbotsford couple had their 18th child. Why? Because in Sierra Disneyworld, population growth can always be “managed” with strict land-use planning.
Trouble is, as York University professor Robert MacDermid concluded in his 52-page report, Funding CityPolitics, developers fund three-quarters of local political campaigns. He used the GTA as a case study, but his findings are universally applicable across Canada. Just ask Norm Smith of Chilliwack, who tried to mount a campaign against growth in his bid for mayor last year and was outspent 10 to one by the winning candidate, a developer. And guess who controls land-use planning? Local government!

There is no durable sanctuary for greenbelts, farmland or nature reserves in the face of runaway population growth. And how can you fight climate change without controlling and reducing the number of climate changers? Especially in North America, where, on average, each immigrant quadruples his greenhouse gas emissions upon arrival here.

Rod Smith of the British Academy of Sciences stated that if we are to avoid hitting the fatal tipping point of a two-degree temperature increase, we must halt growth now. Not steer it, deflect it or manage it. Stop it. That is the reality that the Sierra Club should know about. And the greatest impediment to stopping growth is the belief that it can’t be stopped.

Is the Sierra Club paid by its corporate donors not to understand this?

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC