Tag Archives: Cortes Island

Politics

Area C Director’s Report: Support Service Allocations

From the desk of Regional Director Robyn Mawhinney

Warm greetings to residents of the Discovery Islands and Mainland Inlets, where the annual tree frog choir has begun its serenade.

Support Service Cost Allocations

As you may have gathered from local media reports, the February Board meeting was a little unusual. During the February 19th Board meeting we got only to agenda item four, where we stalled for the remainder of the meeting. Item four was a report titled “Support Service Cost Allocations”.

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Energy, Politics

A Peek Into Big Oil’s Playbook with Environmental Defence

Environmental Defence just released a report showing that last year oil and gas company lobbyists were targeting the Conservative Party, in preference to the Canadian Government, by more than a 2 to 1 ratio. Cortes Currents interviewed Emilia Belliveau, lead author of ‘Big Oil’s Playbook, A Summary of Big Oil’s 2024 Federal Lobbying’ and asked Max Thaysen, from the Cortes Island Climate Action Network for his insights.  

Emilia Belliveau:  “Environmental Defence is a charity, so we are nonpartisan. What I can do is simply relay the facts, which are that the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party did not take any lobbyist meetings. The NDP took a very small number, four. Then you have most of the lobby meetings targeting the Federal Liberals and the Federal Conservatives. The Federal Liberals had 62 meetings with ministers and 29 meetings with backbencher MPs, and Conservative MPs took 216  lobby meetings.”

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Sports

Cold Swimming comes to Folk U

On February 28, 2025, host Manda Aufochs-Gillespie was joined by Carrie Saxifrage, Jane Newman, and Karen McDiarmid, to chat about cold swimming. Are you curious about what cold water swimming could do for you? In this episode, we dive into the icy depths to explore the stories, benefits, challenges, and the sheer exhilaration of taking the plunge.

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Community, Development

This Week: 2025 Rural Islands Economic Partnership Virtual Forum

The 2025 Rural Islands Economic Partnership (RIEP) Virtual Forum is coming up on Thursday, March 6 and Friday, March 7. Two of the organizers, Francine Carlin and Kate Maddigan are my guests today.

“ It’s going to be a jam packed two half days, 9:15 AM to 12:30 PM.  Our virtual events are really unique because we all live on islands or remote coastal communities and don’t have the opportunity to get together as a collaborative regional grouping. So it’s important to have these virtual events that bring together people from all across the coast and the islands, up from North Island as far as Alert Bay, to Sooke and beyond. So we have a pretty broad reach and this year it’s really important, particularly with the events in the world around economic  issues that relate to  our local  economic and social wellbeing,” explained Francine Carlin, Chair of the Rural Islands Economic Partnership. 

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Politics

NDP Candidate Tanillle Johnson Visits Cortes Island

NDP candidate Tanille Johnson recently visited Cortes Island, where 20 people were waiting to see her in the Pioneer Room at Mansons Hall. The event was sponsored by Cortes Island’s Climate Action Network, which also provided lunch. 

Johnson said she prefers small meetings like this,  “I’ve been spending most of my time going to people’s houses, meeting with their friends,  I like to think that I’m a very truthful, honest person and I actually care about what happens in this riding. It means a lot to me, like my family, generations and generations, lived here.”

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