Tag Archives: Government Transparency

Politics

Concerns raised over Port Moody’s move to stop recording and archiving land use committee meetings

Editor’s note: While this story comes from the Lower Mainland, government transparency and accountability is an important issue everywhere. Other governments could follow the city of Port Moody’s example.

By Patrick Penner, Tri-Cities Dispatch, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The City of Port Moody has stopped recording and archiving the meetings of its land use committee (LUC), removing a long-time record keeping feature.

The public has been able to review LUC meetings since 2015, when the committee was permanently moved to council chambers.

Coun. Haven Lurbiecki spoke out against the decision on April 25, criticizing the lack of public notice or discussion.

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Rivers & Oceans

Report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

Originally published by the Parliament of Canada

On 1 February 2022, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans (the Committee) agreed to undertake a study to “examine how the Department of Fisheries and Oceans prioritizes, resources and develops scientific studies and advice for the department, how the results of scientific study are communicated to the Minister and Canadians, and how the minister applies data and advice provided by the department and other government departments to ministerial decisions.”The Committee heard from 57 witnesses over nine meetings held between 26 April 2022 and 7 October 2022.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Recommendations from the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

Originally published on by the Parliament of Canada

As a result of their deliberations committees may make recommendations which they include in their reports for the consideration of the House of Commons or the Government. Recommendations related to this study are listed below.

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Health, Politics

Why a Top BC Heart Surgeon Quit for Politics

By Moira Wyton, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Dr. Sanjiv Gandhi was more frustrated than usual. The pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon and former chief of cardiac surgery at BC  Children’s Hospital had just spent a shift in the midst of an  unrelenting respiratory illness season. In between caring for his most  urgent patients, he’d had to inform some parents their children’s  non-emergency surgeries were being postponed yet again.

Before driving home that  night of Nov. 14, Gandhi fired off a tweet to his few dozen followers at  the time, calling for mask-wearing as a “mandatory inconvenience”  during such a crisis. 

The tweet blew up,  gathering more than 11,500 likes to date. It also added to the ire from  Gandhi’s employer, the Provincial Health Services Authority, for his  comments to media outside the official channels. 

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Rivers & Oceans

16 scientists condemn ‘scientific failings’ of ‘flawed’ DFO report

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Editor’s note: The following article is joint letter to the Honourable Joyce Murray, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard

Academic scientists’ critique of DFO Science Response Report 2022/045

Dear Minister,

We are a group of 16 professors and research scientists who, collectively, have extensive research expertise in fisheries, epidemiology, and the environmental consequences of aquaculture. We write to express our professional dismay at serious scientific failings in a recently published DFO Science Response Report (#2022/045) about sea lice on salmon farms and wild salmon in BC. We are deeply concerned with the report’s flaws and its main, unsupported conclusion: that the presence of parasitic sea lice on wild juvenile salmon is not significantly associated with sea lice from nearby salmon farms.

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