Editor:
A letter in the Tribune recently stated, in regard to Taseko Mines’ latest application for Prosperity mine, “ … we need these jobs if this town is to grow. Without growth there is nothing.”
The growth mythology is a relic from an earlier age that achieved its apex at the height of a passing colonial era.
The writer refers to economic growth only as measured by GDP, a flawed measurement that finds even the greatest disasters indicators of economic well being. It perpetuates the myth that Williams Lake is an economic-disaster zone, something far from the truth.
With two large and expanding operational mines and resurgence in the logging industry, the resource industries remain a powerful economic factor.
But continuing reliance upon these with the boom and bust cycle they bring obscures the need for a new economic model that is far too slow to emerge.
Williams Lake has consistently made errors in past planning by councils that saw only short-term economic benefit from large industries that rely upon subsidies and arguably illegal access to lands and resources owned by First Nations.
It is time to undo these blunders and come to terms with the new reality of resurgent First Nations rights and title and generous offers by First Nations to work co-operatively with settlers in devising new and better ways of living in this land without wrecking it.
There is a way that represents a different kind of “progress” promising a gentler and more sustainable way of living here.
David Williams
President,
Friends of the Nemaiah Valley