Ray Chipeniuk, March 6, 2012 My wife Sonia Sawchuk and I understand that the CRB is considering how to react to letter-writing and petition campaigns that have recently been launched to try to bring about the termination of the Summer RAMP process. As I've indicated before, more casually, the two of us strongly support the process. Ray Chipeniuk, Feb 23, 2012 Thanks, Jill. Please don’t read my first message as implying criticism of how the Summer RAMP process has been handled. I thought your team exhibited really impressive grace under pressure yesterday. There was obviously a concerted effort on the part of one group to conduct political theatre, and to do so with bullying tactics and very bad manners, yet your facilitators behaved with composure and restraint. My wife and I, by the way, fully support the Summer RAMP process. Ray Chipeniuk, Feb 24, 2012 Participation in local environmental planning – and RAMP is a kind of environmental planning – as a human right emerged from Local Agenda 21, a UN-sponsored agreement flowing from the Rio Conference in the early 1990s. Canada is a signatory to Local Agenda 21, which includes a great many chapters. I don’t have time right now to search for the relevant text, but it’s in there, and the last time I looked, Local Agenda 21 was available from the Web. However, I wouldn’t worry too much about a citation to specific wording in Local Agenda 21. Denial of ability to participate in a local planning exercise which directly affects a resident is covered by the BC Ombudsperson. The very Web site of the Ombudsperson mentions participation in planning processes. A year or two ago representatives of the Office of the BC Ombudsperson were touring NW BC. I met with them and asked them directly whether exclusion of a particular resident or group of residents from a government planning process affecting them was grounds for a complaint to the Ombudsperson. (The particular case I was interested in at that time was the Telkwa Wildfire Protection Plan process.) Their answer was an unequivocal yes. The Ombudsperson reps I spoke to at that time were Rochelle Walter and Scott Wingrove. They can easily be reached through the general office number 1-800-567-3247. Why don’t you give them a call and get the story directly from them? I regard what the Rod and Gun Club is up to as a very serious matter. It’s fair enough for them to question the legitimacy of the RAMP process, and even to keep hammering away at it as a group. But to co-ordinate acts intended to deny other groups the right to participate in a process, and to intimidate other groups, is beyond the pale. What it reminds me of is the way American blacks used to be excluded from public decision-making, often by repressive stunts like the “real” Americans monopolizing opportunities to speak in meetings. Ray Chipeniuk Feb 23, 2012 BVCRB Recreation Subcommittee Dear Subcommittee Members: During the BVCRB Summer RAMP public meeting in Smithers yesterday, February 22, a number of people in the room stated or insinuated that only members of the public whose family has lived in the Bulkley Valley for many decades should have a say in how local Crown lands are used for outdoor recreation. Participation in local planning processes affecting a person or household is now widely recognized by the international community as a human right. Length of residence has nothing to do with this right. I understand that indeed, the B.C. Ombudsperson will investigate complaints of denial of this right. If the BVCRB Recreation Subcommittee were to accord any exclusive or even special status to the views of persons who have lived in the Valley since birth, or childhood, or any similar arbitrary qualification, it would, in my opinion, be denying an important human right due to all the other permanent residents. I am certain that was not the intention of the BVCRB Recreation Subcommittee during the public meeting yesterday. However, I recommend that when participants in BVCRB processes refer to length of residence in the Valley as if it were a qualification for the expressing of views about local land use planning, facilitators should warn them that the BVCRB is morally and perhaps legally obliged not to pay attention to such discriminatory language and that what the speaker is doing infringes on the human rights of their fellow citizens. Raymond Chipeniuk