Haiti

It has been two weeks since the terrible earthquake that occurred in Haiti, and I am absolutely impressed by people's generosities and involvement. To date Canadians have given almost twenty million dollars to relief organizations and the government will be matching that figure bringing the total to over forty million dollars by Canadians alone, that's great! There have been fundraising telethons in both Canada and the United States involving just about everybody who is Rich and famous and how much total money collected by all the countries has to be staggering. The opportunity for Haiti to rebuild a more solid and stable community definitely exist now with the comforts and securities of modern buildings and an infrastructure that meets the demands of our changing world. In my opinion that's good because Port Au Prince used to be one of the worlds most violent cities, and definitely needed change, its just unfortunate that it had to happen this way. I hope we can see a speedy recovery to a desperate nation and one that will be lasting.

Time for some New Year "Goals"

Well my first blog of the New Year was a reflection of the year past, this post I intend to express my best intentions for the New Year that we are beginning. Following the tradition from my previous post I will make a list of items that are particularly important to me to pursue for the New Year.

1. I intend to continue that ever-elusive pursuit of physical fitness. I have already purchased the new stationary bicycle, with all the bells and whistles and now begins the time to adhere to the exercise regiment. My thought on this endeavour and how it pertains to my political blog is as follows; if everyone were to take seriously the goal of becoming absolutely as fit as they could be, I believe the results of that would have a tremendous benefit to our health care dollars spent. People need to take a more proactive approach to their own physical well-being, they to work as a partner with their physicians rather than just a quaint relationship that involves visits and prescriptions. Anyways the amount of health care dollars being spent is definitely high on my list because I believe if enough people take the correct approach to this issue it could have the same results as if everyone combined takes little steps to improve our environment.
2. This leads into my next item on the list of things to strive for in the New Year. I would like to continue to improve my personal environmental footprint by limiting my need for fossil fuels, through more improvements to the house and just an over-all conscience effort to use less and save more. This again leads into my next item on the list.
3. I would like to focus more outside of my immediate control when it comes to the topic of sustainability and environmental conservation. Some of the ways I intend to achieve this goal is to do more within my community by posting water saving tips at our poster board at the community centre and going to more strata council meetings to insist this item remains a priority as a community. Another way I intend to have more of an influence outside of my immediate circle is to get more involved and more vocal at work when I see a continuously gross waste of materials and energy. This not only benefits my employer by reducing costs it also acts as advertising as the other employees will have to act in a more conscientious manor when dealing with consumption, maybe the odd person will take those same measures home and apply them there.
4. Next goal is to have an increased level of involvement when it comes to an on-line presence on the social networking sites. I have recently joined a "Face Book" group called "Save our Rivers Society" and they have meetings and discussion that I could have a greater involvement with. I am also a member of the "Make Poverty History" campaign, this is the group made famous by the lead singer Bono of U2, and I can get more active in that as well. Then there is that new "Face Book" group "Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament", in one week the membership went to 100,000 people who joined and today just a week and half after it started, the membership will be over 150,000 people. The good thing about this group is that it has become a meeting place where people can stay informed about up and coming events and they can also share their thoughts and ideas for the betterment of our great country "Canada".
5. Education is my next goal, I intend to continue to progress in my pursuit of knowledge and keep my brain as active as possible. An important aspect of my life, which requires a constant and never ending improvement, is technology. With the way technology makes advances daily, I believe this will always be a priority with most people who want to keep up with the various aspects of technology. Specifically the different social net work sites require that I stay informed in order to fully utilize them as constructive tools. Another specific aspect of technology I want to learn more about is the various ways of my smart phone works and the numerous activities it can perform especially the capability to interface with my computer. One more evident aspect I would like to improve my education of is, writing and the correct use of grammar and sentence structure. The best way for me to do this is to continue reading and continue writing comments and posting to my blogs. "I may not be the most intelligent person I know, however that does not prevent me from striving for that intelligence."(Me)
6. Another goal I think I need to make an effort to improve is reading, I intend to get more involved with a book club or a suggested reading list, there are many to choose from and I'm sure that I could probably pick a different club or list every month if I wanted to.
7. Continue to increase the number of posts to my blogs and to stay active with my comments on other blog sites, this is quite self-explanatory and was on my last year list of goals as well.
8. Be more charitable A) with my time and B) with my money. Again self-explanatory, I think the world would be a much better place if everyone donated a bit of time to volunteer his or her time to a charitable organization, and as for money I always feel I can do more then I presently do.
9. I also want to strive to be more patient with other people and make a more conscious effort to see things from the other persons point of view.
10. The last goal is to take the time to pursue my interest and hobbies more often and share in those hobbies with family and friends more often.

Well that is a list of New Year aspirations I hope to achieve this up and coming year, it will be interesting to re-visit these goals at the end of the year to see just how well I did with them.

Happy New Year

Well the "New Year" is here, I love this day! The "New Year" makes you give pause for the year that was and more importantly makes you think about what is to come in the year ahead. So 2009 and what a year that was I think I'll make a top ten list of things that happened in the last year that I found particularly important.

1. Steven Harper prorogues parliament again with no valid reason. many people think the only reason he is doing this is so that he can avoid a court order to release documents regarding the Afghanistan detainees. Others think that he is trying to avoid criticism from opposition while the world is watching us at the "Vancouver Olympics" what ever, it's just wrong period.
2. The Copenhagen Climate Conference of 2009 came and went without a binding legal agreement. Barrack Obama did have a last minute think tank session in which all the major countries were involved, however Canada was not invited (what a shame). Barrack Obama was able to get the U.S.A., China, India, Great Britain, Germany, and all the other major countries present, that this is the most serious issue facing humanity to date and needs to be discussed in further meetings A.S.A.P. (a step in the right direction).
3. Canada won the "Fossil of the Year" award in Copenhagen, many thought Canada was the most disruptive country there and they were said to have been obstructive at every turn. I know that all the M.P.'s from Canada were trumpeting the same message months before the Copenhagen Conference, Steven Harper at the G-8 meeting, Jim Flaherty at the finance ministers meeting, and any other news interview or sound bite, "that Canada did not believe anything productive or meaningful would be achieved at Copenhagen. Steven Harper operates the same way every time, when he is about to do something extremely bad he feeds it to the media in small sound bites properly prepared in advance.
4. Quebec passes legislation that requires automobile manufacturers to provide vehicles that have a better fuel consumption then the automobile being produced today, these specifications are the same as the state of California has legislated. What a shame that the federal government hasn't done anything to this effect in the last four years they have been in power.
5. The province of British Columbia legislates a provincial "Carbon Tax" and starts a major campaign to spend these new tax dollars improving bicycles paths and train transportation throughout the province. They have also launched a public awareness campaign to help assist people about the various ways they can do their part to help the environment, again what a shame the federal government can't or won't do anything like this.
6. The B.C. Salmon Stock collapse that took place this fall finally got a little attention from the federal government, on November 5th, 2009 Steven Harper announced that he would launch a "Judicial Inquiry" into the disappearance of over nine million Sockeye Salmon in B.C. waters. Maybe there is still hope for our environment yet, however with the whole prorogation and all I wonder if the inquiry will still go ahead. The bottom line seems to be that fish farms make huge political donations so the politician help keep them in business. We should be employing people to restock our oceans with fish, not enabling the industries that are suspect for the collapse.
7. On a municipal level, I and many other citizen of Kelowna were thoroughly disgusted by the actions of our city council in the recent months. The council contracted an artist to come up with a new logo for the city, and when he does sell the artwork for a mere eleven thousand dollars, we find out that the logo is almost identical to a company from the United States. After a barrage of complaints from the public, the mayor has the audacity to say on camera that, "they would not be holding a plebiscite on the matter because the council would be ignoring the results, as the public elected them to make these type of decisions". The total cost to tax payers to change all the signs and equipment for this new logo was seventy thousand dollars, and almost everyone agrees that the old logo described Kelowna extremely well and the new one has no resemblance to what the region offers.
8. Again on a municipal level, the council decided to make an H.O.V. lane out of the new right hand lane on Hwy. 97 (the main artery through town), this is not a freeway and in fact has a traffic light every block. People are finding it impossible to access all the shopping along this roadway and finding it hard to merge and exit the Hwy. What gets me the most is that Kelowna has no pedestrian over passes and people are constantly getting hit by vehicles on this roadway, this new H.O.V. lane only makes things worse. Again council wanted no input from the public they said they had made their decision, they rule as if they have no intention of being re-elected and by the sound of things, they won't be re-elected.
9. On a more positive note, the government of Canada continues to show true leadership in the development of national parks and conservation areas with the announcement that "Lancaster Sound" at the eastern part of the North West Passage would get five million dollars to develop a marine conservation area. Also in June of this year the government announces the expansion of the Nahanni National Park Reserve, to increase it six times it's original size making it the third largest Nation Park in Canada, almost the size of Vancouver Island.
10. Again on a positive note, Neptune Canada was completed and is up and on line, the largest underwater exploratory Lab in the world. This project started in 2006 with the university of Victoria launching the Venus program and now that has developed into the Neptune Project. This lab stretches over the entire Pacific tectonic plate (at its narrowest point), just off the coast of Vancouver Island and is accessible to anyone who logs on, very very cool!

Anyways that's my top ten thing of 2009 and because this turned out to be quite a large post I'll have to list some of my goals and inspirations for the year to come on another blog post. Again, happy new year.