Gold and Democracy Don’t Mix: Vancouver-based Eldorado Gold Faces Determined Opposition in Greece

Eldorado Gold holds its annual shareholders’ meeting in Vancouver today, Canadians may ask themselves why the company’s plans to mine gold in northern Greece are meeting such strong resistance from residents and even some local authorities. There are really only two problems: what the company is planning to do, and how it is going about doing it.

Eldorado is planning to build a combination of open-pit and underground gold mines, linked to its existing Stratoni lead-zinc mine. While the company plans to use closed-circuit processing, not open-air heap leaching (as it does in Turkey, where it has caused serious problems), the potential impact on ground water and surface water flows is huge; the mines will also require the destruction of significant areas of forest.

REVIEW | “Food Shelter Water” | Ok Vancouver Ok

The yellow record label on OK VANCOUVER OK’s new food Shelter water LP reads: “CAPITALISM DOESN’T WORK AND IT MAKES YOU SAD”. That’s an unusual observation, isn’t it? Not exactly a call to arms: CAPITALISM SUCKS AND IT MAKES YOU PISSED OFF! No, in OK Van’s world, it’s sad, it’s tragic. What hope do we have for our children and the planet when our collective fixation with money & property blindsides our motivation to meet even the fundamental needs people have for safe food, affordable shelter and clean water? The marvel is that the folks in OK Vancouver OK meet adversity head-on with optimism, alternative vision, and stubborn resistance through Jeff Johnson’s poetic and heartfelt songs.

No Party for 100,000 people facing homelessness in BC

Social Housing Coalition BC statement on BC Liberal and NDP housing platforms, written from unceded Coast Salish Territory

On Wednesday, April 24th, the BC NDP released its platform statement on housing. Consistent with the party’s position on welfare rates, there is very little in the Platform for low-income people. While the BC Liberal platform is completely silent on social housing and welfare rates, the NDP platform promises are woefully inadequate.

During the current tenure of the BC Liberals, homelessness and the acute housing crisis has expanded considerably. From 2002 until 2010 homelessness in Vancouver nearly tripled to 1,713, and throughout the province over 10,000 people are visibly homeless. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface are tens of thousands of people among the “hidden” homeless and over 65,000 are at risk of homelessness, paying above 50% of their income for rent, often for inadequate and insecure housing.

Vancity elections: Democracy or patronage?

As the elections for three of the nine Board of Directors positions draw to a close at Vancity (today is the last day to vote), members will soon know who will hold the decision-making power at Canada’s largest credit union. The election results for the three board positions will be announced on May 7th at Vancity’s Annual General Meeting.

Vancity elections have been marred by controversy for the past three years, ever since rules were passed in 2011 allowing the pre-existing Board of Directors to recommend candidates through a Nominations and Elections committee. This change was made under the guise of creating a more “transparent” process in which voters would be better informed. However, beneath outward motives of transparency is a more complex process of power-jockeying and patronage, and the process has come under sharp critique from some Vancity members.

Lisa Barrett’s six years, or two three year terms, on the Vancity Board of Directors ended in 2012, after running for the third time and getting half the number of votes than three years previously. In 2009 she was elected with the support of 8,996 members. In 2012, after the recommendation system was put into place, Barrett didn’t make the list of “starred” candidates, and only 3,206 members voted for her. The same happened to another incumbent, Wendy Holm, who swung from 12,273 votes to 3,582 in the same two-year period.

After the 2011 rule-change allowing for candidate selection by the incumbent board, the five candidates who came out on top were, not surprisingly, the five who were endorsed. The power of this system lies in the fact that most members vote with the information they are given — and that’s out of the less than 5 percent of members who actually vote.