Choices in Aging and Dying: A Workshop for the Whole Community

October 17, 2024

“Death is horrible. Who wants it?” Indeed, who wants to talk about death or its common partner in crime, aging?

This October, Hornby Denman Health hosts the first event in a quarterly series designed to help open up the conversation around aging and mortality in a compassionate, practical and lighthearted way.

Our kickoff event includes a screening of the BBC production Myriam Margolyes’ Deathly Adventure. With humour and a surprisingly life affirming approach, Deathly Adventure looks at the complex decisions that face us as we age. How do we continue to live our best lives? How do we move through our unique experiences of grief and pain? What practical things matter, and what choices do we have at the very end of life?

We’ll follow with a panel discussion covering the supports available within our unique island communities and reviewing some of the challenges faced by rural residents. Participants are also encouraged to check out hands-on displays, take home literature to keep the conversation going, and voice thoughts on future sessions.

Whether you are looking around the corner for yourself, or seeking to help build a community of compassionate support for your friends and loved ones, we hope to see you out! Join us October 23rd from 1 to 3pm at the Denman Island Activity Centre or October 25th from 1:30 to 3:30pm at Hornby New Horizons.

This event is open to all members of the community.

Tea, coffee and treats provided. Rides available on advance request.

To learn more, visit our website at www.hornbydenmanhealth.com or contact jane@hornbydenmanhealth.com.

CANADIAN NETWORK OF COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTS TO VISIT DENMAN

October 17, 2024

CANADIAN NETWORK OF COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTS TO VISIT DENMAN

What is the difference between a Conservancy Land Trust such as our Denman Conservancy Association and a Community Land Trust such as Denman Community Housing Society? On Tuesday, Oct. 22, three staff members of the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts will be on Denman Island to give a presentation about community land trusts.

The presentation is sponsored by the Denman Community Housing Society. The Society is the affordable housing group formed by the recent merger of Denman Housing Association and the Denman Community Land Trust Association. DCH remains a land trust and is committed to promoting better understanding of this model of land stewardship for the purpose of affordable housing.

Come learn more on Tuesday, Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Denman Activity Centre Lounge. Free event.

On Strategic Voting; The B.C. Election

October 17, 2024

If you choose to vote in the Provincial election, and you desire authentic changes to government policies, it would be irrational to cast your vote for either of the major political parties. On issues of environmental, social, and economic justice, one party has a chance to form a government that claims to represent your interests. But if your intention is to inspire real substantive changes on issues that are sincerely important to you, withholding your support for the major political parties is crucial. These parties, while rhetorically pandering to their respective ideological voter bases, are the two headed monster of neo-liberalism, and the threat of lost voter support is the only possible electoral resistance to them.

The Conservative Party’s predecessors, the governing B.C. Liberals initiated the unnecessary and destructive Site C Dam, with the John Horgan led NDP claiming to oppose the project. The B.C. NDP formed the new government in 2017, while Site C moved forward regardless, costing many billions of dollars more than budgeted. Years of NDP government have not significantly dealt with the chronic shortage of affordable housing, or seriously mitigated the opioid crisis. The B.C. NDP claimed to oppose old growth logging, then criminalized resistance to its continued practice. In 2019, the B.C. NDP brought us the B.C. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples legislation, yet we still saw the Coastal Gas Link pipeline forcibly pushed through First Nations’ territory despite clear opposition by indigenous people and their leadership, with the RCMP violently dragging the non-violent occupants and land defenders off to jail. John Horgan is now an executive employed at a B.C. coal mining company.

According to advance polling, the NDP and Conservatives each hold about 45% of likely voter support, leaving about 10% of the electorate as the so-called undecided “swing voters’, or “third party” supporters. These voters will ultimately decide the election, and we can expect to see all of the candidates aim their campaign messages at this heavily researched segment of the electorate. Both major parties take their base of support for granted, and the only hope to push a major party toward authentic change is to withhold your support from them until they actually deliver on it, unlikely as that may be. Those who support so-called strategic voting will argue that you should vote for the party that has the best chance of defeating their partisan opponent and forming a government. There’s a need to break this cycle of support for the “lesser of evils” and begin to firmly hold the more principled ground without compromise.

It’s often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. The grip of the neo-liberal duopoly ensures that the voices and will of common people are silenced and minimized, and that corporate interests remain firmly in control, with all of the evidence showing us that the hollow promise of incremental change is not tenable. The partisan advertising is revealing, with the primary messages of the major parties being, “The other party is terrible, and we’re not them.” As long as the major political parties receive support from their respective ideological bases, more pipelines will be the reality, and real change is a pipe-dream.

Shucking Oysters: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

October 17, 2024

Here we are finally, the BC election vote on Saturday. While I’m glad all the campaigning is over, I do worry about how it will all unravel. Our choices are: Blue: a 61-year-old Leo, Orange: a 48-year-old Leo and Green: a 54-year-old Gemini.

I didn’t listen to the radio debate, but I did watch the TV debate. Like Thanksgiving dinner with your dysfunctional family, the “open debate” sections were too much of a free-for-all. The moderator should have done her job and maybe we could have heard more. This was also noted listening to the radio debate. Both moderators were asleep at the wheel. No matter the medium, the format was the same and the sound bites were repeated. Who stood out? Sonia Furstenau. She was eloquent and called out both Rustad and Eby on their lack of action on many fronts. Eby was OK, but the continual poking gets to be tiresome. And Rustad? A toaster has more personality. It’s no wonder I don’t remember him in Crispy Clark’s cabinet.

Throughout the campaign all Eby and Rustad have been doing is trading insults about conspiracy theories and weak leadership and policy. Like the dysfunctional family dinner, it’s not pleasant listening to constant berating and pointing fingers. It’s unCanadian. Meanwhile, like the youngest sibling, we have Furstenau on the sidelines desperately trying to get our attention. And speaking of attention, what’s with the obligatory political right-hand gestures? Every high-level politician in Canada was trained by the same “message” therapist. Eby looked like he was trying to grab butterflies. Furstenau was shuffling cubes in the air. And “laser-focused” Rustad, well…

How did he ever get this far? He’s boring. Has no sense of humour. He seems to have just one expression: of a man who just ate uni for the first time and wants to spit it out but can’t. Rustad had a golden opportunity to “unleash” his human side, when he said “paper straws suck” with not even a smirk. (One of his lofty platforms is to bring back plastic straws and bags.) Someone on Reddit commented: “He is so slimy. If I were on crutches and there was an elevator that came once every 20 minutes to the 50th floor and John Rustad was in there alone, I would take the stairs every single time.”

After using my dysfunctional family analogy, on the radio debate Eby said, coincidentally: “I wouldn’t trust John Rustad to run my Thanksgiving dinner conversation with the family, let alone a hospital where my kids have to be safe, where parents and grandparents have to be safe.” And I wouldn’t let you boys sit at the same dinner table. Sonia, on the other hand, has an open invitation (but don’t forget the red wine).

And that’s the sad thing. Furstenau would make an excellent premier. She was clearly the winner in both debates. But the Green Party are full of tree huggers. They want more government intervention and industry accountability. The other two, want to fast track approvals for new mining projects – free from pesky regulations and oversight. Cut all that red tape into bits of confetti. Grow the green extractive economy – except it’s not friendly Avocado Green, it’s Army Green.

After the leader debates, someone commented, “Eby won just by not being bad.” With just over a week before election day, a poll from Ipsos Reid showed the BC NDP ahead of the BC Conservatives by a mere five percentage points. The most positive shift was for Furstenau and the Green Party, with 20% improved impressions versus 12% worsened impressions (50% stayed the same, 18% no opinion).

Both federally and provincially, we seem to vote more for our local politician versus for the leader of the party. I like Josie Osbourne. I’m not so keen on Eby. His platform is frankly not that different from Rustad’s and both have continually flip-flopped on key issues with nary a blink of the eye (especially Rustad’s). It seems the only way Eby differentiated himself in this campaign is to point out how crazy the other guy is and that has been his only strategy. Rustad has yet to explain how he will pay for any of his promises.

What is encouraging with this election, is a record 171,381 people voted on the first day of advance polls. That’s 45% higher than the previous record of 118,270 in 2017.

The NDP may have a slight advantage at this point, but the overall race is still scarily close. It’s going to be a nail biter of a weekend. We could go Pumpkin Orange or Cobalt Blue or an ugly mix of the two: Bittersweet Brown. Whatever the result, hopefully it’s with a Forest Green patina.

Green Wizardries: Quince and Steam Juicers

October 17, 2024

Quince trees love it on our islands. They are hardy, reliable and give a good crop every year. The only problem with that is that we Canadians do not tend to eat much quince and when we do it is usually as jam or jelly. I ask you, who among us really needs more sugar?

We have two quince trees and with minimal care they provide us with heaps of fruit every year. I planted them thinking it would be useful to have a supply of pectin for making jams and jellies as you can add quince juice to other fruit as a source of pectin.

I have found a new use for quince as the fruit of one of our trees has come ripe. I am lucky to have two cultivars that ripen at different times, allowing me to deal with one load of fruit before the other arrives. Many of our quince fruit split on the tree, especially the larger fruit. The fruit are golden when ripe and have a bit of a furry coat that washes off easily. They have a delicious scent and flavour. When cooked, they turn a beautiful shade of red.

The fruit do not become fully ripe here but they would in a warmer climate. They look like a lumpy cross between an apple and a pear and are a member of the apple family.

A friend gave me a Finnish steam juicer and it is my new favourite kitchen toy. My friend uses her steamer to make vegetable stock, juice and to steam meals. It really is an interesting and useful kitchen treasure. It has a chamber for water at the bottom, then a chamber for the juice and a basket on top which you fill with the food to be steamed. The juice comes out of the collecting chamber via a little hose. The whole thing is very low tech and really cannot go wrong as long as the chamber for water is not allowed to run dry.

I loaded my steamer up with chopped apples which were not of a good enough quality to wrap for the winter, some over-ripe pears and a bunch of washed and chopped quince. I turned it on and went away to practice the cello for an hour and came down to find it almost done.

The fruit or vegetables in the top compartment are much reduced and look dry when they are done. I sweetened the juice with a little honey in the collecting chamber and poured it into hot pint jars that I was holding in a little metal jug. The jug is necessary as the hose has to be lower than the reservoir and the jar will be too hot to hold in an oven mitt when the juice comes out of the chamber. The juice come out scalding hot so banish children and pets from the kitchen while you are doing this.

You will need to have your canning jars hot before you put the juice in and one way to do this is to put the jars on a baking sheet in an over set at 275 degrees Fahrenheit and leave them there for ten minutes. Another way is to pour boiling water from a kettle into each jar to heat it before you empty the jar and fill it with juice.

The book which comes with the canner explains how they can juice successfully in Finland and it seems to work as well here. You put scalding hot juice into a hot jar and pop the lid on, screw the ring down and leave it to cool. No processing in a water bath canner is required which makes the whole operation so easy and pleasant.

The juice was a fetching shade of pink and I had a little left over after canning six pints. We had a little of the juice chilled and topped up with soda water. It was a very pleasant and refreshing drink.

Quince can also be added in small quantities to apple sauce or pies to improve the flavour and to give a hint of colour. A friend taught me to wash quinces, wrap them in tinfoil and bake until the fruit is soft. Then, I unwrap the fruit and pour a drizzle of honey on it and eat it as a winter treat.

The Spanish make membrillo ( a thick quince jam that is eaten with cheese and walnuts) and the Portuguese make marmelada which is similar and they will tell you it is the best.

October and November are good months to plant fruit trees and every garden and orchard can benefit from having a small quince tree. The fruit is sometimes so heavy on the trees that it makes the whole tree look golden.

Whose Lens Are We Looking Through?

October 17, 2024

Al-Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has just released an 80 minute film: Investigating War Crimes in Gaza, documenting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza which is the most disturbing film I have ever seen. The aspect that takes it completely over the top is that a large percentage of the film is made up of video footage shot by Israeli military soldiers and posted on their social media. Al- Jazeera has a data base of over 2,500 individuals celebrating the cruel carnage, torture, mindless destruction and sadistic terror currently being inflicted upon the Palestinians of Gaza. Footage of aid trucks being attacked, of starving children, of living people buried in rubble, of men being raped in Israeli prisons, men raped by dogs – these utterly devastating acts of inhumanity are being posted on dating sites in Israel, and then reposted, set to music, obscenely cheered on by people who have lost all connection to their humanity.

It is impossible to watch this film – and every adult among us ought to watch it, as hard as it is – without feeling deep despair about the role of the West in arming and supporting this madness. According to the international law/international humanitarian law experts who speak in the film, 69% of the weapons Israel uses are from the US, 30% from Germany. The UK is deeply involved in surveillance missions flying from their base in Cypress over Gaza, providing AI- generated “target location” data, and Canada does its part as well, fulfilling existing contracts with the Israeli army and selling US weapons components to the US. We are utterly complicit by our failure to condemn, our failure to augment the world’s protest and take the drastic action needed to end this sociocide of a whole people, this utter annihilation of Gaza. And if you think I’m being overly dramatic, consider the fact that the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza has dropped steadily since April of this year, from a daily average of 165 trucks to just 13/day. The average number of trucks allowed in before 10/7/23 was 500/day. Starvation of Gazans is intentional Israeli policy. (Helena Cobban, Just World Ed, citing UN-OCHA statistics, October 12, 2024.)

Those who feel they cannot watch this devastating film ought to see instead the ½ hour interview of Richard Sanders, the filmmaker, with Middle East Eye’s Peter Osborne (Youtube, October 3, 2024), and you will learn of the value of these soldiers’ posts as evidence for the International Criminal Court, given that they are being uploaded with soldiers’ real names and ranks. It’s not just rank & file soldiers; it’s also high-level military officers including a Battalion Commander and senior Israeli government officials. They may feel they can act with impunity right now, but most certainly, accountability will come.

When this ends, and at some point it will, what will you be able to say you did to stop this? Diana Buttu, Palestinian-Canadian human rights lawyer, and former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, who lives in Ramallah, says in the film that no one can say they didn’t know what is going on, no one. We can look the other way, we can do the “both sides are to blame” bit, we can stay silent for fear of the ever-useful accusations of antisemitism, we can tell ourselves we’re “not political” and offer up any number of excuses for our passivity and failure of courage. But the truth is that we have been deluded by propaganda and numbed to the suffering of other human beings if we fail to step up. Now is the time to

step up, after a year of this insanity. History will remember this as a very, very dark time. What do we want the young ones following us to know about our part, our morality, our humanity? Will we be like those Germans who, after the war were conveniently opposed to the Nazis, but did nothing to stop them during the Holocaust? Where is our integrity if we don’t demand a ceasefire, a total arms embargo, and an end to this genocide?

Israel is too far gone to help itself; it must have the severe censure of the international community, boycott, severance of aid, of funding, the complete halt of weaponry. It must be shamed and disempowered by a world community that says “ENOUGH NOW’.

Another eye-opening fact from Al-Jazeera is that a significant percentage of these sickening videos was shot by Israeli army members with dual citizenship, that is, people like the “lone soldiers”, soldiers who don’t have family in Israel. Soldiers whom we subsidize by giving huge charitable tax receipts to their sponsors (such as Canada’s Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers) and reward with university educations when they return home with blood, torture and the smell of death on their hands.

And lest we think that all Israelis are so hardened they are unaffected by this carnage and the celebration of it, apparently 30% of Israeli military injuries this past year are mental health ones. Clearly some are made sick by what they see and do. Those who aren’t are soul sick and my heart aches for them too. We must help everyone caught in this nightmare, this living hell, and each one of us has responsibility to take action. What will you be able to say that you did?

Opposing The Western War Machine Is The Most Important Thing You Can Do

October 17, 2024

If there’s one thing this past year has made clear, it’s that opposing the foreign abuses of the western empire is the most important task you can undertake if you care about truth, justice, and human rights. There are other important fronts upon which this struggle takes place, but opposing western warmongering, militarism and empire-building is the most important.

It’s the most important because it’s the most consequential. Western warmongering is responsible for the most death, destruction, displacement and human suffering out of any of the abusive policies our governments inflict upon people.

As abusive as domestic issues can be, nobody here at home has to worry about western bombs being dropped on their houses.

Foreign abuses get less attention than domestic issues because they are inflicted upon strangers in other countries instead of upon our friends and neighbors, and because the imperial media work tirelessly to convince us that those foreign abuses are good and necessary. But they are the worst.

Foreign abuses also get less attention than domestic issues because opposing foreign abuses puts you at odds with all mainstream western political parties and everyone who supports them. Your progressive friends who might be on your side with regard to racist policing policies or LGBT rights will be uncomfortably at odds with you when you start calling Kamala Harris a genocidal monster. This makes standing against the imperial war machine less fun than other more widely supported expressions of activism.

It’s also less egoically gratifying. In a western “left” that generates so much of its energy from identity politics, where everyone wants to see themselves as part of some marginalized minority who can finger-wag about the privilege of non-marginalized groups, it’s a bit deflating to realize that as a westerner you’re a part of the problem, and that you receive a fair amount of privilege yourself just from living where you live.

Depending on what your politics are like, it can be a kick in the ego to get real about the fact that however underprivileged you might see yourself, you still directly materially benefit from the imperialist extraction of the global south that all this warmongering is meant to protect. It can be a hard pill to swallow that even if you’re an autistic biracial trans pansexual, you’re still sitting a lot more comfortably than any straight cis man in Gaza, and your concerns for your safety and security are much less urgent than his.

But the biggest reason why foreign abuses get less attention than domestic ones is because of the propaganda. War is the glue that holds the empire together, so our rulers do everything they can to keep us arguing about domestic policy and ignoring foreign policy. The imperial spinmeisters wildly exaggerate the differences between the two mainstream political factions while downplaying the empire’s foreign abuses as normal and nothing to worry about, because the last thing they want is the rise of a robust antiwar movement in powerful western countries.

If you take your stand against the imperial war machine, you are standing against the very most abusive and tyrannical injustices in our world — but you are also standing against what everyone around you has been trained to believe is the truth. If you oppose the imperial war machine consistently and forcefully, you are setting yourself up to look like a kook, a traitor, or a weird contrarian in the eyes of other westerners. Not because anything you are saying is wrong, but because they have been indoctrinated to believe the opposite of what you are saying about the nations and groups that are being targeted for destruction by the western empire.

The other day some liberal American author retweeted an anti-war thing I wrote with the comment, “This is one of the most fascinating accounts on Twitter. She’s like an AI programmed to say the opposite of what everyone agrees makes sense. Everyone crazy on the left AND right follows her. 400k people! The replies people are like her — well-considered, reasonably informed, and totally off the rails.”

This stood out for me, because it’s like a condensed version of all the criticisms I’ve received from denizens of the western empire over the years. Look at this weirdo! She’s saying the exact opposite of everything we all agree is the truth!

At no time has it ever occurred to this person to seriously examine why it is that everyone he knows agrees with the narratives which support the geostrategic objectives of the US government and its allies, thereby making anyone who contradicts these narratives look like a deranged nut. He just takes it as a given that all the information he ingests about international affairs aligns perfectly with the foreign policy objectives of his government because his government is simply on the side of truth and virtue. The well-documented fact that the mass media administer propaganda to advance the information interests of the US empire never crosses his mind as a real possibility.

That’s the current you are swimming against when you take your stand against western warmongering. The current of the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed.

It can be challenging to consistently speak the truth in this way to a civilization that is deeply indoctrinated to believe in lies. But it is also the very most important work you can do, because it helps spread awareness of the single most urgent and egregious injustice in our world today.

And that’s how you change the world: spreading awareness. Problems don’t get fixed until enough people see them and understand them. Once enough people do, using the power of our numbers to force real change becomes a real possibility. And there is nothing more urgently in need of real change than the end of western warmongering.

_______________________________________________________________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go hereto buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Featured image via Stephen Melkisethian (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Biggest Cock Of All

October 17, 2024

One fine April morning as they sat at the breakfast table Farmer Brown said to his wife, “You know, young Tom has been asking that we get him a dog. I’m just not sure he’s responsible enough. What shall we do?”

“I’ve got just the idea,” Mrs. Brown replied. “Why not get the boy his very own rooster! This will teach him a lot about being grown up enough to own a pet”.

“What an excellent idea!”, beamed Farmer Brown. “I’ll take the boy into town tomorrow and he can pick out a rooster for his very own!”.

The following day found the two at Roosterama, looking over hundreds of the finest birds in all the land.

“There’s so many, Father, how shall I ever choose?”, queried Tom.

Farmer Brown smiled and said, “Choose with your heart son, and you are never wrong”.

Tom thought for a moment and announced, “Then…..I choose this one!” and held up the smallest, skinniest rooster of them all.

“Are you sure Tom? Do you really want that little runt?”, his Father asked, looking over his spectacles and scratching his head.

“Yes, I’m sure”, nodded Tom. “He’s special. I’m calling him Petey!”

So into the old truck they climbed, Farmer Brown, Tom, and Petey the little bantam rooster.

Soon the two became inseparable. Tom would get up early every day and play with his little cock until it was worn out. After school he would race home as fast as he could, reach down and grab his cock, and stroke its head and tease it ’til it was too tired to stand up anymore.

“That boy sure loves playing with that cock of his”, Mrs. Brown said one day.

“Oh, Sarah, let him enjoy himself. After all, he is a young boy, you know!”, winked Farmer Brown.

One day Tom decided to take Petey to school for show and tell. He walked proudly into the classroom and exclaimed, “Look Mrs. Johnson! Look what I have!”. And with that he unzipped his pouch to expose his tiny cock.

But Tom’s classmates did not share his enthusiasm.

“You call that a cock?!”, laughed Willie. “What good is a tiny pecker like that!?”.

Then all the boys laughed and the girls whispered and giggled amongst themselves.

“C’mon Petey”, cried Tom. Let’s get out of here!”, and out of the classroom and back home they ran.

When Tom finally got home he went up to his room and cried and cried.

Soon Mrs. Brown came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Tom, the school phoned and told me what happened. I know you meant well, but I think you must understand that you shouldn’t have pulled out your cock in front of the class like that”.

“I’m sorry, Mum. I’m just so proud of him, I wanted everyone to see!”

“Don’t you worry Tom”, soothed Mrs. Brown. “I have a good feeling about this cock of yours. It will all work out. Trust me. Mums just know these things”.

Summer holidays arrived and the bond between Tom and his cock grew stronger. As the days passed, Petey began to eat and eat and grow and grow. He got bigger with each passing day, and by August had sprung to a full twelve inches!

One day, as Tom and Petey walked to the market, a crowd began to gather. A stranger piped up, “My goodness, look at the size of that guy’s cock!!”.

“Yes, its huge!”, said another.

“May we touch it?”, asked a group of giggling girls.

“Ummm….you better not”, replied a nervous Tom. “You see, its never been touched by a girl before and I’m scared it might go off!”.

Just then the Mayor appeared.

“Tom”, he said, “that’s just about the biggest cock I’ve ever seen, and trust me, I’ve seen many! How would you like to represent our town at the big fair? You’re sure to win with one that big!”.

“Gee, we’d be honored, wouldn’t we Petey!”, he beamed .

Tom turned to head back home and as he walked away he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Willie from school, and he was with Suzie Lanford and her cute little cat.

“I owe you an apology, Tom”, he sheepishly said. “I’m sorry I poked fun at your cock. Will you forgive me?”.

“Aw shucks, Willie”, smiled Tom. “Sure. I forgive you!”.

Suddenly Suzie’s cat meowed and struggled to jump from her arms. “Gosh, my pussy sure wants to get at that big cock of yours, Tom”, she nervously admitted, her cheeks red with embarrassment.

“Not today, Suzie”, Tom quipped. “I have to get home and practice for the fair!”, and off they went.

Soon word of young Tom’s huge cock spread throughout the land, and there was much anticipation as the day of the fair was finally upon them.

As Tom waited nervously at the side of the ring, he couldn’t help looking at all the other boys’ cocks. But his was clearly the biggest and strongest of them all.

But suddenly, to his horror, a boy from the city showed up. The new lad looked at Tom and gave a smug smile as he pulled out his massive cock. It was HUGE!!…a full four inches taller than Petey and its red head glistened in the light as the boy stroked its powerful neck.

“Get ready to lose, sucker!”, said the smart mouthed boy to Tom.

“Gee, Petey, I guess we’re sunk”, sighed Tom. “Let’s just get this over with and go home”.

Each boy took their turn before the judges, proudly showing off their well groomed cocks. Tom and Petey gave the best show of all, Petey remaining well behaved and rigid with discipline the whole time.

Now it was the city boy’s turn. He entered the ring and it soon became clear to everyone he had no control over his robust rooster.

“That fellow certainly has the bigger cock, but it’s clear to me he has no idea what to do with it!”, said the lady judge.

Upon closer inspection, it became apparent to everyone that this boy had been abusing his poor cock, its neck swollen from rough handling and the skin worn off the head from repeated pulling and stretching.

Just then Mayor stepped into the ring and pinned the winning red ribbon on Tom’s shirt. “Congratulations, Tom! Your fine cock has made our town proud!”.

And an elated Tom picked up Petey and gave him a big hug.

“C’mon Petey”, he said with a grin, “let’s go find Suzie Lanford!”.

And the townsfolk cheered and cheered and everyone agreed that they had all learned a valuable lesson that day.

THE END

Letter to the Editor – Oakley Rankin

October 17, 2024

Grapevine: Elections

We will have two elections over the next twelve months and the Carbon Tax is front and centre; it consists of two procedural levels:

(1) a tax per unit (litre, cubic metre, tonne) on 22 categories of fossil fuel including various fuel oils, gasoline (17.61 cents per litre), natural gas, and coal. This is the one that politicians keep hammering away at as it is by far the most visible to voters. It is a regressive tax paid at the same rate by everyone irrespective of income but 90% of the revenue from this tax is returned directly to individual Canadians as a rebate fixed by the province you live in. It is estimated that 80% of citizens receive more in the rebate than they pay in tax. This is the inadvertent redistributive effect.

(2) a tax directly on producers as the Output-based Pricing System (OBPS) which sets limits for carbon production for some industries but not all. Any industry producing less receives credits; any industry producing more must buy credits and/or pay a tax. It is a provincial responsibility to set the limits and thus they differ across Canada; some provinces set them by sector and some, like Alberta, set them by individual factory. All the revenue from this tax is returned to the province for investment in climate change remedies.

In 2008 BC was the first province to install a Carbon Tax under the Liberal government of Gordon Campbell—of which John Rustad was a Parliamentary Secretary and later, under Christy Clark, a Minister. Initially it was ‘revenue neutral’ as the legislation implementing it required that any increase in the tax be offset with a reduction in taxation elsewhere. In 2017 the NDP did away with this requirement. In an earlier piece in the Grapevine I said the Carbon Tax was a redistributive one but in fact, although there is inadvertent redistribution, it is really an ‘incentive’ tax in the hope that as the price of fuels rise people will switch to renewables for transportation, heating, etc. In 2018 the Federal Parliament passed the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act which created a mandatory ‘backstop’ program setting base levels for both parts of the Carbon Tax and a schedule for its annual rise over time. If provinces did not introduce programs adhering to both the procedural levels set out in the Act, the Federal government would do so at one or both levels Revenue would still return to the province.

So what will happen if both Carbon Tax procedures are eliminated? Most citizens will lose income, not gain. Most polluting corporations (mining, oil and gas, forestry, etc.) will rejoice—for Conservatives the real payoff with the demise of the tax on their favoured constituency, business. It will be a big win for polluting companies and a huge loss for the government. At present all the OBPS taxation revenue is returned to the provinces to be used on carbon limiting procedures. When the OBPS is gone the companies’ profits will go up and the provincial government revenues for climate change policies will go down.

Pierre Poilievre is setting the pace by reducing the whole question to one of his simple-minded triplets, ‘axe the tax’. He claims he would ‘return’ money to Canadian pockets but in reality he would actually be removing it from the majority of citizens’ pockets—even in the unlikely event that retailers actually did drop prices by the full tax amount. Axing the Federal legislation will leave provinces free to do as they wish to levy a carbon tax or not. Eby will get rid of the tax per unit on fuels if the Feds do but he will keep the OBPS even as the NDP has granted many exceptions to it. John Rustad, like Pierre, will get rid of both levels of taxation for his business friends. Both Conservative leaders firmly believe that climate change is not an ‘existential problem’ and the economy should always take precedence—the economy being seen primarily as aid to business. But there is a good chance that you will not see any diminution of prices when industries are relieved of the OBPS as they will probably take advantage of a small windfall profit.

So does the Carbon Tax work? According to Statistica, Canada’s carbon tax revenues of 5.7 billion US dollars in 2023 were second only to France and jointly their revenues outstripped all other jurisdictions together. BC’s estimated Carbon Tax revenues for 2024-25 will be $2.6 billion of which $1 billion will be returned directly to citizens. Canada’s total tax revenue from ALL sources as a percentage of GDP was 18^th of 38 OECD nations—hardly overtaxed as 20 major Western nations are taxed at a greater percentage of GDP. According to the World Bank there are 68 direct carbon pricing instruments operating as of June 2022 in 46 national jurisdictions around the world. These comprise 36 carbon tax regimes and 32 emissions trading systems (ETS). All analyses I can find agree that while not the only way to attack climate change, carbon taxes are effective. Recently the Net-Zero Advisory Body¹ published a report backing up these analyses; the report states that the Carbon Tax is part of the Canadian government’s six climate change policies already in place and that all are needed to have any hope of making a dent in emissions.

As a CCPA Policynote states: For all of the talk of climate action and leadership—now going back 17 years—very little has actually occurred in BC to move the needle on phasing out fossil fuel consumption or production. With both major political parties seeking to end BC’s carbon tax, neither has stated alternative policies that will get the province on track to meet its GHG reduction targets. The Green Party is the only party taking climate change seriously as an ‘existential’ threat. Unfortunately we are all culpable in making sure they will never form a government to implement climate policies that are existentially necessary for our children’s environmental well-being.

Oakley Rankin

1. https://www.nzab2050.ca/publications/climates-bottom-line-carbon-budgeting-and-canadas-2035-target