Good reasons to celebrate BC

Our good friend and commenter on CVNews stories, David R. Pacey, sent us some interesting facts about reasons to celebrate our province. David, as we all know, is the President of the BC Liberal Party association for our provincial riding of Columbia River Revelstoke, so he is partial, but we have to admit that there are some pretty great items on his list. Take a look at the list and decide if you think we should maybe be a little bit justified in congratulating ourselves as a province.

• The Conference Board of Canada is predicting that British Columbia will lead Canada with a nearly 4% boost in their GDP, thanks to a $770 million kick start from the Olympic Games.

• BC led the rest of the nation when it came to home construction, which was up 20% compared to the same month of last year. Compare this to slumps of about 5 points in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

• The U.S. Green Building Council called the Olympic Village the greenest neighborhood in North America. The Olympic development was awarded the platinum status in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. The only two LEED Platinum buildings in North America are located in British Columbia.

• One BC company, Pacific BioEnergy of Prince George, is using BC’s beetle-killed trees to produce wood pellets to replace coal for European power plants. This move will be like taking 2 million cars a year off the road.

• During the Olympics, Victoria shipyard workers gained some unexpected business. 250 people were put to work on the Norwegian Star for a dry-dock refit that was valued in excess of $1 million.

• Thompson-Rivers University announced a curriculum licensing agreement with the University of Calgary and have Chris Axworthy as Dean of Law at TRU. TRU will establish the first new law school in Canada in over 35 years.

• The Kamloops real estate market is perhaps one of the hottest in BC. Comparing this month’s sales to last year’s, they were up 99% in unit sales and realized a 98% increase in dollar volume.

• During the Olympics, General Electric announced a partnership with UBC and Vancouver’s Nexterra Energy to research a new renewable electricity generating system using Nexterra’s biomass technology and a GD engine that was previously developed for use in distilleries.

• BC’s New Car Dealers Association announced that sales have jumped nearly 3% in January with close to 10,000 new cars going out the door.

• Outside magazine, a prominent US outdoor adventure publication has ranked Tofino as the best surf spot in North America.