Canada Is Mother Natures Richest Country

Canada Is Mother Nature’s Richest Country - Sara's Substack

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Canada Is Mother Nature’s Richest Country Why the Similkameen needs proactive protection before permanent decisions are made Jul 02, 2026

I contemplated posting this today… Canada Day. Not because I do not love Canada. Because I do. I love this country enough to believe we are responsible for what we have been given. Canada is Mother Nature’s richest country. We are rich in water. Rich in forests. Rich in salmon. Rich in soil. Rich in minerals. Rich in farmland. Rich in rivers. Rich in coastlines. Rich in biodiversity. Rich in Indigenous knowledge. Rich in everything much of the world is already running out of. But that kind of wealth is not just an economic opportunity. It is a moral responsibility. If we cannot protect what we have been given, then our abundance becomes extraction, our privilege becomes negligence, and our legacy becomes damage running downhill. And right now, I believe the Similkameen Valley is standing at that kind of crossroads. I was honestly flabbergasted to receive a national park mailout. Not because I do not believe this valley is worth protecting. This valley is God’s country. But because I thought we had already laid this to rest years ago, after the first national park process divided our communities, our families, our neighbours, and the people who all love this land in different ways. At the time, the conversation split the valley into camps. The conservationists. The bird watchers. The hikers. The cross-country skiers. The park people. Against the hunters. The dirt bikers. The ranchers. The farmers. The 4x4 families. The people whose families had used those backroads, ridges, lakes, and hunting grounds for generations. It became park versus no park. Nature people versus local people. Protection versus access. But that was always the wrong division. Because the people on both sides loved the land. They just had different relationships with it. And while we were fighting each other over how to protect this place, a much larger risk was growing above our heads. Copper Mountain. This is the part I cannot stop seeing now. We cannot responsibly lock this valley into a national park decision while there is a massive unresolved mine and tailings risk sitting upstream in the same living system. The proposed South Okanagan-Similkameen National Park Reserve process is still active. Parks Canada says Canada, British Columbia, and the syilx/Okanagan Nation, represented by the Lower Similkameen Indian Band and the Osoyoos Indian Band, are proceeding with negotiations toward a formal national park reserve establishment agreement. Parks Canada also states that private land cannot be expropriated for the park and would only be acquired on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis. But even if private land is not expropriated, a national park reserve still changes the future of a place. It can change access. It can change roads. It can change hunting. It can change recreation. It can change land values. It can change tourism pressure. It can change who gets heard. It can change who gets regulated. It can change what kind of life is possible for the people already here. That does not mean the land should not be protected. It means the people most affected need a real say. In British Columbia, assent voting — commonly called a referendum — is one way electors can vote on whether a proposal should move forward. For something this permanent, this emotional, this culturally significant, and this locally disruptive, there needs to be a clear local consent process for the communities most directly affected. But even that is not the whole picture. Because before we argue over park boundaries, we need to ask a bigger question: What does it mean to protect land on paper while ignoring a potential watershed disaster upstream? Copper Mountain Mine is not just a mine-site issue. It is a Similkameen River issue. It is a farming issue. An organic agriculture issue. A salmon issue. An Indigenous food-system issue. A Washington Apple Grower issue. A Columbia River issue. A worker-safety issue. A transboundary responsibility issue. A future-generation issue. In 2026, B.C. issued Mines Act and Environmental Management Act permits for the New Ingerbelle expansion at Copper Mountain Mine, allowing operations to continue beyond 2040. Hudbay also announced it had received key permit amendments for the New Ingerbelle expansion through B.C.’s Major Mines Office process. That is not a small decision. That is a generational decision. And it is happening above a river that does not stop at Princeton. The Similkameen River flows downhill. It does not stop at Keremeos. It does not stop at Cawston. It does not stop at Chopaka. It does not stop at the Canada-U.S. border. It connects Canadian farms, Indigenous food systems, salmon restoration, irrigation, orchards, the Washington Apple Growers and all agriculture, the...

Canada Is Mother Natures Richest Country

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