Island Insider

Forestry and fish are playing out as pivotal B.C. election issues in the North Island, as two party leaders paid a visit to the riding in the final week of their campaigns.

The Pacific Salmon Explorer, a user-friendly data-visualization tool, provides valuable insights into the current health of salmon across British Columbia. 

When the pandemic hit, the president of Walcan Seafood, a family-owned seafood processing company on Quadra Island, suddenly found himself sitting on $2 million worth of product he couldn’t find a market for. Then he reeled in a plan to deliver "tide to table."

The Quadra Island-based team is one of several in B.C. waters run by Cetus Research and Conservation Society, an organization that protects whales through research, education and direct intervention.

Acclaimed author Shaena Lambert was electrified by Petra Kelly — a founder of the original Green party struggling to save the world in Cold War-era Germany — when the activist spoke at a massive Vancouver peace festival in 1986.

Most of the items on Ottawa’s plastic hit list are pretty much non-existent on Quadra and Cortes islands, two small coastal communities wedged between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland.

Wild salmon champion Alexandra Morton is running under the BC Greens banner after Fisheries and Oceans Canada recently decided open-net pen fish farms could remain in the waters off Vancouver Island.

It's been a privilege to represent North Island for 15 years but it's a good time for change, says North Island MLA and Minister of Transport Claire Trevena, who is not seeking re-election on Oct. 24.

North Island B.C. Liberal party candidate Norm Facey worked in mills and ran boom boats and tugs before getting an engineering degree that led to management positions in large mills and forestry companies locally and across the country.

Opponents are accusing the DFO of ignoring independent science and downplaying the risks to imperiled Fraser River sockeye salmon in favour of the aquaculture industry.

First Nations are warning Fisheries and Oceans Canada that final decisions around contentious fish farms in the Discovery Islands will have to respect Indigenous rights.

The country’s economic recovery from COVID-19 depends on building a national early learning and child-care system that allows parents, particularly women, to get back to work, says Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, a national child-care advocacy organization

B.C.'s struggling tourism industry was hoping for more when the provincial government unveiled its $1.5-billion economic recovery plan just prior to calling a snap election Monday.

Michele Babchuk, a councillor for the city of Campbell River, is running as the B.C. NDP candidate in the North Island riding recently vacated by Transportation Minister Claire Trevena.

B.C. NDP leader John Horgan called a snap fall election on Monday, provoking a scathing response from opposition parities accusing him of acting in his self-interest by taking people to the polls during the pandemic.