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Conservative Candidate Jerrily Schembri Visits UNBC

UNBC is the place to get personally informed about politics

HANNA PETERSEN
NEWS EDITOR

HANNA PETERSEN
Jerrilyn Schembri and President of the Young Consevatives Rob Currie-Wood talk about pol-
itics.

Jerrilyn Schembri, Conservative candidate for the nomination for the Prince George-
Peace River riding, recently took time out of her busy schedule to drop by the campus
and speak with politically interested students.

While it was a last minute meeting, a good group of students met with the candidate

and discussed not only Schembri’s political platform, but a wide variety of issues that
affect Prince George and the north of the Province.

Jerrilyn Schembri has worked as a school based youth worker, and victim services
coordinator for the RCMP. As a mother of five children, Schembri’s political focus
is particularly attentive to the direct impact that government can have on family.
Schembri promotes that she is a passionate advocate for the family.

Furthermore, Schembri addressed the importance of communication in sparsely
populated but resource rich ridings such as the Prince George-Peace River Riding.
Schembri is also a unique candidate for the nomination because she is from the
small community of Tumbler Ridge.

A challenge for her has been the difficulties of campaigning and frequently traveling
from the northern town. Despite the difficulty, a candidate from a small town would
have expertise in representing the myriad of smaller communities north of Prince
George that are also in the riding.

This year UNBC has been a hub in Prince George for political representation. If a
politician is going to be campaigning in the area UNBC is a certain spot for them to
make an appearance.

While many people are disinterested in politics, itis nevertheless a unique experience
to sit down with a politician face -to-face. Discussing issues and outlining a political
platform with the actual person who may be representing your interests in Ottawa is
incomparable to simply seeing a name and a face on a poster.

Politicians like Jerrilyn have been presenting the university with such opportunities,
however and to a demographic that is notorious for its apathy and low voter
participation rates.

Bottle Water Free Day at UNBC!

The many disadvantages of buying disposable water bottles

HANNA PETERSEN
NEWS EDITOR

March 10th was bottle water free day at UNBC! Bottle water free day is not exclusive
to UNBC; it’s actually a Canadian wide movement in joint with the Canadian
Federation of Students and the Polaris Institute. UNBC participated whole-heartedly
in the Canadian wide initiative to encourage students to go without bottled water.
The day concluded with a free showing of the documentary Tapped at 6PM in room
7-212.

The anti-bottled water message is quite compelling when the pros and cons are laid
out in plain English. Thus, the goal of Bottle Free Day is to educate students on why
bottled water is never the best choice. First of all, Canada Health has stated that
there is absolutely no evidence to support that bottled water is a safer alternative
to tap. Actually bottled water and tap water are regulated by completely different
regulation which means that legally tap water must be tested every day (in most
municipalities it is tested every 4-6 hours) yet bottled water plants are only required
to be inspected every three years. In Canada, unless the bottled water is specifically
labeled “spring” or “mineral” water, the company producing the water can get it from
anywhere. They do not even have to legally declare where the source of their water
is if they don’t want to. It is not surprising then that over 25% of the water bought and
consumed in Canada is only packaged tap water.

Bottled water looks even less appealing when you consider the amount of waste it
generates. Bottled water is 2000 times more energy intensive than tap water. What
does this look like? Well, 31.2 billion litres of bottles water is consumed annually
in the United States, which requires more than 17 million barrels of oil to produce.
Recycling sadly is not even a realistic option to mitigate the sheer volume of waste
bottling water produces. According to one report in 2002, 235,086 tons of plastic
bottles were generated and approximately only 84,744 tons were recovered and
recycled.

In Canada annually 2.25 billion litres of bottled water is sold in Canada every year.
Translated into kilograms of waste it equals out to 215.68 million kilograms (or 475.9

SHELBY PETERSEN

million pounds) which is undoubtedly a heck of a lot. Especially when one learns
that 215.68 million kilograms is the exact weight of 1,328 Boeing 747 airplanes.
Five minutes with a plastic water bottle just adds to the enormous amount of plastic
that fills landfills every year. While recycling is commendable, everyone has always
known that tons of bottles slip by and end up in the trash regardless.

Bottled water looks even more evil when you getinto the environmental consequences
of trucking out tons of litres of water from natural sources, especially groundwater
reserves. For the sake of brevity, trucking out water from non-renewable water
resources is just plain bad for an ecosystem. And when one considers the issue
politically, bottled water is just a privatization of public water resources.