Since at least 2001, this area has been politically banking on tourism (and tech, which is a whole other story) as its number-one industry in the present and future; despite cannabis being our top local money-maker by far for decades, and the imminent threat from pandemics and terrorism to close the borders at any time to all outsiders. Itʼs pretty hard to run a successful tourist town without any tourists. Now our officialsʼ topsy-turvy logic has served to decimate regional industry even further with the regular occurrence of forest-fire smoke summers which send tourists and citizens fleeing the area with their spending dollars in favour of anywhere that can offer clear skies and breathable air.

We know that July and August, and likely September, are going to be ruined for a good chunk of time by poisonous gases every year which kill the vulnerable among us, so arenʼt we going to need an economic strategy that doesnʼt require steady tourism numbers for months on end or else the whole thing goes bankrupt? Hasnʼt it been embarrassing for those who claim to know so much about moneymaking to see so much misery and financial despair, when they have no alternative solutions to offer anyone other than the same tired old cliches about how next summer is somehow going to be miraculously better against all evidence to the contrary? What are they going to do about making next summer free from widespread air pollution and pandemic variants other than the usual placations and platitudes that resemble failed prayers more than any substantial plan? Yes, of course theyʼre not miracle-workers who can solve our global crises by themselves, but could they not at least make plans which accommodate and acknowledge the haunting reality that next summer will probably suck just as much as last summer did, if not worse?

Why do the coin-counters think anything is going to get better, when all three levels of government default back to the same sunny optimism with blinders on at the first sign of a momentary break in the never-ending string of calamitous news headed our way? Isnʼt it a bad sign when all of our relevant leaders have proven their complete inability to read the tea-leaves of what lies ahead at any point along our recent tragic journeys? Are you instilled with confidence by their abject failures and subsequent insistences that everything they did was fine, while arguing that we should trust them to lead us going forward, even though they are consistently on the defensive about their own perceived shortcomings? Nothing to see here, folks! Just ignore the dead bodies, and how most of them are nonwhite, and keep drinking the settler kool-aid all the way to the terminal end.