This page will serve as the home of documents related to the Fanny Bay Groundwater Collective SURVEY Click here for a copy of our Survey: Click here to complete a copy of our Survey via Survey Monkey DOCUMENTS Sept 10,2025 Correspondence to Minister Randene Neill Attaching Briefing Note plus Appendices https://theholmteam.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/20250910.c.MinisterGroundwater.Briefing.NoteAppendices.public.pdf Sept 3 2025 Groundwater Briefing Note plus Appendices: https://theholmteam.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/20250903.Groundwater.Briefing.NoteAppendices.pdf NEWS CLIPPINGS: Cermaq sues Canadian government for Discovery Islands fish farm closures. March 11, 2025 Campbell River Mirror https://www.campbellrivermirror.com/local-news/cermaq-sues-canadian-government-for-discovery-islands-fish-farm-closures-7849098 Continue reading Fanny Bay Groundwater Collective
What has TRUMP got against this tiny Island nation with the big big heart that sends doctors around the world, has eradicated illiteracy and homelessness, believes in the principles of Jose Marti and dares to be socialist? Consider the following: #1. In 1998, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts engaged a consulting firm for a business trip to Cuba on its behalf #2 In 2008, Trump applied to register his Trump trademark in Cuba for a commercial activities including investing in real estate, hotels, casinos and golf courses , beauty contests, television programs, and hotel services #3 In 2013, executives from … Continue reading IT IS TIME 4 CANADA 2 EMBRACE CUBA IN AN ECONOMIC BEAR HUG
Constantly under trade attack by Washington, most recently again this week, Canada’s supply management system is the envy of farmers around the world. And here’s why. Supply management is a policy-based system where farmers of supply managed commodities – eggs, hatching eggs, chicken, turkey, and milk – produce to meet domestic demand and receive a price that covers their production costs. The Canadian market is reliably supplied by healthy products provided by local Canadian farm families. Yes, protective tariffs are in place to halt over-quota imports of US poultry and dairy products. In the 1970’s, during the Tokyo Round of the … Continue reading Supply Management. It’s a Canadian thang…
Consumers are always going to be faced with the “one potato, two potato” dilemma. One potato — produced by BC farmers using sustainable farm management practices on high cost land under stringent environmental regulations and paying fair wages — puts many benefits on society’s plate beyond the simple potato. The other — produced on a 1000 acre spud farm with more chemicals and less environmental regulations paying migrant wages and transported 500 miles to market – is clearly the more expensive choice when all factors are considered. But the consumer doesn’t see it that way. It is the … Continue reading One potato… Two potatoes…
The Columbia Treaty is basically an international catch and release agreement for water. Canada. as the upstream partner, build large reservoirs to hold the water back and agreed to release it in accordance with US needs for flood control, energy production, fish flushes and – very importantly – irrigation. The US paid for the construction of the Canadian dams and pays Canada for downstream benefits based on very low, hydroelectric generation rates, despite the fact that the use they put that water to often has considerably higher value. The irrigation of 500,000 acres of land in the Columbia Basin … Continue reading Columbia Treaty – 60 Years On
If Canadian’s understood supply management better, Canada’s former Agriculture Minister Eugene Whelan would be right up there with Tommy Douglas for having created a brilliant public policy vehicle to sustain the economic health and food security of communities now and into the future. Trump – seeking the support of Michigan and Wisconsin’s dairy farmers – will undoubtedly again call for SM’s head in upcoming tariff negotiations. Why? Cause US farmers are price-takers – at the mercy of large, vertically integrated dairy processors. Losing money, they need to milk more cows to pay the bills. If – under the guise … Continue reading Note to Carney: the TRUTH about SUPPLY MANAGEMENT
A solid minority – but a few seats shy of control. Who will the Liberals naturally turn to for support? NDP and Greens obviously. And what should be the price of that support? Liberal commitment to enact, before the next federal election, an electoral system based on a proportional ballot; joining the democracies around the world who rank far above Canada in the 2024 Democracy Index. According to Sweden’s V-Dem Institute (University of Gothenburg) Democracy Report 2025: The top five democracies in the world use proportional representation. Of the top 20 democracies, 18 use proportional representation. (And of the two … Continue reading NDP should demand proportional voting next election in return for support
In this age of globalism — where rivers of capital move silently through borderless economies, sourcing at the lowest cost and charging back to society its costly externalities – we are adrift on a raft of our own making. Firms today excel at what neo-classical economists and governments have been cheering them on to do since the mid 30’s: make investors richer and the economy will be better for it. But somewhere along the way, communities got left behind. Economic bullies have captured the flag. The question now is: how do communities take it back? As the theory and examples … Continue reading Economic bullies have captured the flag. How do communities take it back?
Canada’s discussion of Trump’s designs on our water has been focused – in the West – on the Columbia. But it is the Peace River that connects the dots to fulfill the long term dream of USACE engineers to bring northern water south to American communities east of the Rockies. Want a selfie of you with THE TAP? Go to Dunvegan, Alberta, just on the border of BC. Future site of the Amisk Dam, designed as the “elbow” that will siphon off water from the north-flowing Peace River and send it flowing south. Conveniently, all the upstream storage capacity is … Continue reading Want a selfie of you with Trump’s tap?
Like much of the Cuban experience, Finca Marta, located on the outskirts of Havana, provides a new model for resilient communities. My 2025 Cuba Tour visited Finca Marta and listened to Fernando Funes describe the model he is building. Greatly simplified, a “mother ship” farm like Finca Marta would anchor, inspire, coordinate and provide agricultural extension and marketing support to up to 15 surrounding satellite farms, ensuring the economic and ecological sustainability of local farmers and a steady source of fresh and nutritious food to area households, hospitals, schools, day cares and seniors homes. One farm couple from Ontario … Continue reading Finca Marta
