Dear Editor:
I have deep appreciation of the reporting Richard McGuire has done for the Osoyoos Times on the national park issue over the past several years.
The offensive way in which the government has manipulated the thousands of responses to the Intentions Paper should be of concern to all of us interested in keeping a democratic process alive and well.
We were told the government wanted to know what we thought and many of us indeed spent hours responding as thoughtfully as we could.
The seven pre-determined questions themselves tried to illicit only specific responses based on assumptions many of us did not accept.
So we responded to the fullness of the issue.
Years ago, I was taught if you ask people whether they want to die by the noose or by lethal injection they regularly fail to see the real question – do you want to die?
I guess our government officials took the same course on questionnaires I did.
After the Intentions Paper garnered huge response, our local MLA Linda Larson formed a secret committee to make sure she got only the answers she wanted.
When that created outrage, a delay process went into place in hopes, I guess, that the populace would settle down or perhaps to make sure the results came to the surface when locals are extremely busy in late spring with tourism, farming and visitors.
The Intentions Paper went out last August and the results were only very recently made public.
Delay or not, busy or not, many of us care deeply about the parks issue and we were waiting and watching.
Next we heard that the government decided that Mount Kobau won’t be included in a national park reserve. Period. No discussion.
This decision was based on none of the scientific information available and contrary to the expressed concerns about connectivity which did emerge in the Intentions Paper responses.
Does this mean we can look forward to mining on Mount Kobau?
Or perhaps the incredible and severe environmental degradation by ATVs seen on provincially ‘protected’ Oliver Mountain?
We were also told that only some of the Intentions Paper responses were going to count.
Many of us were under the assumption that this is a national park issue, but also a provincial issue and only the responses from local respondents would count.
Of those responses submitted, did our MLA then choose just the local respondents that she knows will vote for her?
Given the Osoyoos Secondary School closure, that may mean only specific people in Oliver count.
Given the strong support for a national park in the Oliver area, that may mean hand picking the right “votes” will be hard even for our MLA and her government.
In short, the manipulative handling of the whole park issue is an affront to anyone interested in democratic informed decision making.
Thank goodness, good investigative reporters like Richard McGuire are not yet jailed in this society.
Marion Boyd
Oliver, B.C.
