Thanks to all those who completed the survey and participated in Decafnation’s first-ever Local Government Performance Review.

The survey will close Saturday night and we’ll start analyzing the results. We plan to publish our story about the survey next week with appropriate charts and graphs.

The idea behind the survey was to check in on the community’s level of satisfaction roughly midway through our elected officials’ terms in office. Having an indication of whether people are satisfied or not might give some the confidence to keep doing what they’re doing and cause others to rethink their strategies.

LAST CHANCE to participate in the survey. Do it now

Based on the 2018 election, it’s possible that by this time next year candidates will start declaring their intention to seek re-election or to unseat incumbents.

— It’s interesting to see former Credit Union manager Rick Kellow reigniting his political activism in the Comox Valley. Back in 1992 when Kellow ran for Comox Town Council he said his policy was “to boldly step where no one has gone before.” It was almost a quote from Star Wars.

Kellow’s bold step was to say that councillors (called aldermen, then) should stop bickering and face hard facts, including the high cost of a park on Comox Hill and the futility of trying to keep the town “a village by the sea.”

— How sorry are you for the folks who, despite almost everyone in the entire universe telling them not to travel out of the country, went to Mexico or Palm Desert anyway? If you’re like me, the answer is, “I’m not.”

The Times-Colonist, the conservative Victoria newspaper, has been giving a voice to people who feel entitled to ignore the recommendations of Canada’s top Medical Health Officer and the Prime Minister. And now they’re running stories about people “trapped” in sunny places like Arizona.

Yesterday, the T-C gave top-of-the-page billing to a Parksville couple who want an exemption from paying $2,000 to quarantine in a hotel while awaiting results of a COVID test. Ray and Joanne Moschuk said they should be exempt because Arizona “is our home.”

Their home? Ray might want to be careful about that because if he’s claiming residence in Arizona, he’ll lose his BC Medical Services Plan.

Moschuk also questioned Canada’s legal right to penalize its own citizens. I’m guessing that’s a long shot, but just in case he’s right I’m digging up the amount I paid for those speeding tickets 25 years ago.

So many people have made sacrifices — serious sacrifices — during this pandemic in order to obey the recommendations of Dr Bonnie Henry and Dr Tam. They didn’t travel. They haven’t hugged grandchildren. They didn’t have a family Christmas dinner.

They make the Moschuk’s look like a pair of spoiled brats.

Just for some warmer weather, they travelled to a country with the third-worst infection rate in the world, where more than 120,000 new cases occur every day, and now they complain about taking a test on their return?

Recently the T-C also published a long, rambling op-ed by the Fraser Institute’s Gwyn Morgan that urged people to defy the Prime Minister and travel internationally. Along the way, he disparaged jobless CERB recipients and accused them of cheating the system.

Then, in a separate column, the newspaper’s editor and publisher, Dave Obee, defended his decision to run the irresponsible column.

Apparently, the Times-Colonist has muddled the concept of we’re all in this together and pulling in the same direction to defeat a common enemy.

— We all hope that someday someone will find a clever way for the whole world to willingly reduce its collective carbon emissions and save the human race from extinguishing itself.

But based on the level of thinking in Alberta, don’t make any bets.

The province’s United Conservative government is determined to increase coal mining in the Rocky Mountains. That in itself is mind-boggling. Worldwide coal production declined 14 percent in recent years and the US has cut coal-fired electricity generation by 40 percent.

And it gets worse.

Alberta’s elected leaders say they have enacted “strict regulatory standards,” but in reality have scrapped monitoring two rivers and a creek that have already shown high levels of selenium, a toxic byproduct of coal mining operations.

And the town of High River has asked the United Conservative government to stop coal exploration in their area.

Is there no other economic hope for Albertans than to be the eager suppliers to the world’s last remaining climate-destroying power plants? They’re going to be the pusher that delivers the last spike into the atmospheric vein?