the broken typewriter

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas yesterday, and got the chance to relax with family and look out at the snow rather than having to be out in it!

Interestingly with our record snowfall this month, the story that came in at #10 was about the city’s snow clearing success last winter.

At #11, I discussed the impact of the NDP’s policies on northeastern BC and Premier David Eby’s apparent determination to strangle the life out of the province’s economy.

#11 – Progress doesn’t happen in isolation

Progress doesn’t happen in isolation.

But British Columbia Premier David Eby seems determined to isolate the province and its people from progress and prosperity with his resistance to new petroleum development.

Nowhere is the impact of that resistance felt more than in northeastern BC, where new exploration and development is strangled by red tape – CleanBC emissions targets, policies that prioritize climate goals over economic growth, uncertainty over protected land, and prolonged permitting processes.

Resource extraction has been BC’s economic backbone for decades, but since taking over in 2017, NDP policies have cost the industry 30,000 direct and indirect jobs, upstream development is down 33 percent, and the Fraser Institute reports that BC has the greatest barriers to investment in Canada.

For example, in December 2017, the Crown Sale of Petroleum and Natural Gas Rights saw 24 drilling licenses offered for sale. Ten were purchased, with a Tender Bonus (Average price per hectare x number of hectares sold) of $882,835.72. In the December 2025 sale, just one lease was offered for sale. That 260ha parcel was purchased with a Tender Bonus of $54.860.00. The December 2025 sale marked one year since sales had resumed after a three-year hiatus following the Yahey Decision in June 2021.

Now, with Canada looking to diversify its markets and find new trading partners, the spectre of a long-cancelled pipeline project from Alberta to the northwest coast of BC has risen, getting Eby’s back up in the process.

Click to continue reading

#10 – Public Works dept says new snow clearing method is working

Since the arrival of winter and the accompanying snow, Fort St. John residents have spoken out on social media, voicing their concerns that the city streets are not being plowed in a timely fashion, particularly on the so-called priority routes.

In their Snow and Ice Control report to council on January 6, public works and utilities staff explained the changes they’ve made to the snow clearing operation, and why they feel the new snow clearing procedure is better.

Past snow clearing methods used plow trucks to clear the streets, which although they enabled the city to get the roads opened in three days, they ended up blocking resident’s driveways with hard berms of snow. The windrows of snow also froze against the catch basins, which caused problems with flooding when the snow melted.

“Now it takes a little bit longer, but we don’t plug driveways, and we clear the parking lanes right to the curb so when there’s melting the water can get to the catch basins,” said Jeremy Garner, Director of Public Works.

“It takes quite a bit more time to clear the city, more than three days, and more machines, more operators, and there’s quite a bit more snow and gravel on the boulevards. But it’s not in the roadway.”

Click to continue reading