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Awaiting rescue in the lamentable divide
e-KNOW Editorial
By Ian Cobb
British Columbia is a province with two realities.
There is the reality of life in the southwestern corner of the province where about 85% of the 4.817 million provincial population dwells and the reality of life beyond Hope, where about 15% of B.C.’s population resides in 95% of the rest of the province’s 944,735 km² land base.
One reality overpowers the other at every turn due to the sheer volume of numbers. And yet much of B.C.’s economy relies on the land base outside the Lower Mainland and Greater Victoria.
Thanks to always rising costly fixes and legislations that are designed to tackle the cluster pook that is the southwestern corner of the province, those of us living beyond Hope lament its lack – and not in jest.
At no time is this lamentable divide (for those of us living in rural B.C.) more obvious than when the provincial government hands down its annual budget.
We in the 95% await word on funds coming to fix our transportation and other infrastructure troubles and we are almost always left shaking our heads at how ‘the troubles’ of the Lower Mainland gobble up our fair share of taxation resources.
Even though we rural British Columbians pony up vast buckets of riches for Victoria with our natural resource and tourism enterprises, we have to turn water to wine in order to get our fair share so we can fix what we need to fix, like a medical system that sees professionals abandoning rural areas in favour of urban due to facility funding and development needs.
Of course it is not an easy thing for our elected officials to balance, when considering the overwhelming needs of the majority of B.C.’s population. The games they must play are as old as B.C. itself.
However, all that said in an attempt to be fair to Victoria, each year there are absolutely STUPID aspects to provincial budgets. We’re not talking about the right wing and left wing divide here. We’re not talking about rural and urban, either. It’s items that don’t seem to register with the suit and frock-garbed loaf-heads in Victoria.
This year’s budget’s most glaring screw up in the budget is the lack of funds heading to B.C.’s 80 Search and Rescue organizations, including the five organizations in the East Kootenay.
In a province that crows about its tourism industry like tinseltown dandies singing for their supper, with our vast stretches of Crown land available for any variety of recreational fun and enterprise, it is criminally negligent to not adequately fund search and rescue organizations.
For starters, these volunteer-run agencies are to the unit, entirely overwhelmed due to lack of funds and members.
Yet they are the people we all turn to in moments of panic and despair in the backcountry, when we residents and many, many visitors, brain-cramp in the bush or experience life-threatening medical crisis.
SAR volunteers save hundreds of lives every year in B.C. – yet they do not merit this provincial government’s respect, apparently.
And that makes us sick to our stomach.
According to the government, British Columbia’s tourism industry had an extraordinary year in 2017, with a total of 5,713,926 overnight international visitor arrivals, including 3,691,074 visitors from the US, 1,277,878 from Asia Pacific, and 553,480 visitors from Europe.
Many of those people, urban as they come, venture into our sprawling backcountry, many through the always more provincially pushed parks system.
Time and time and time again, weekend after weekend, 52 weeks a year, SAR volunteers are pulled from their families and livelihoods in order to go save people from cliffs, rivers, crevasses, avalanches and to go in search of those who are lost.
They risk their lives for complete strangers. Yet our government can’t find what amounts to zip all in the grand scheme of things to provide $5 million a year for the 80 organizations – a drop in the bucket each when divided.
These SAR volunteers and their friends and families fundraise in order to allow them to come to our rescue; to race to the rescue of Albertan snowmobilers buried in avalanches, European tourists stuck on mountaintops, American visitors tipping their canoes and being stuck on snags in whitewater creeks.
These SAR volunteers, most dedicated professionals in various aspects of search and rescue work, are also the strong arm of help utilized by the RCMP in searches etc.
While the need for decently funded and supported SAR organizations may not seem necessary to apartment dwelling urbanites and gang bullet dodging suburbanites, it certainly becomes ABSOLUTELY VITAL when one of them goes missing in the bush.
Perhaps the elected public trough-slurpers in Victoria ought to all go for a nice trek in some wilderness and get lost in order to get a whiff of how short-sighted and, frankly, cruel they have been in Budget 2019 by not providing funds for SAR groups.
If you want wilderness tourism, you damned well better have safety considered, otherwise you’re just a negligent nitwit. And my dear NDP/Green Party fumblefest, your nitwittery is showing.
In closing, here’s a quick example of how our tax dollars are spent – and remember – we out here in the 95% pay just as much to Victoria as those living in the crowded five per cent.
In the budget – the province is investing $9 million over three years to implement “government’s commitment to modernize the taxi industry and enable ride-hailing in B.C. This includes funding for enhanced vehicle compliance and enforcement activities, and supports the new provincial regulator, the Passenger Transportation Board.”
Sounds great for the umbrella clutching suits in Vancouver. But it does diddly-squat for we folks in the East Kootenay.
That $9 million (or $3 million a year for three years) would help our SAR organizations continue to do the heroic and ultimately necessary work they do – though it is still not enough to get the job done properly.
If one drilled into the budget we are certain one would find other examples of government waste and toadyism to backers.
The tourism ministry, at least, should be able to find the funds needed to ensure British Columbians and the visitors we beckon over with promises of the world’s finest natural settings have a reliable safety net to help them when things go wrong – which they do every week in rural B.C.
If you’re not going to provide that safety net, Victoria, perhaps you ought to shut up about how B.C.’s SuperNatural terrain wants you to play in it.
Lead image: Fernie Search and Rescue working at Leap of Faith Falls. Fernie SAR photo
– Ian Cobb is owner/editor of e-KNOW
