Many sectors of Canadian society are still in shock, reeling from the recent budget cutbacks announced by the Harper Conservatives. The CBC, the National Film Board, Elections Canada, Canadian Border Services, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Veterans Affairs and Fisheries and Oceans have all been slashed.

For more than a quarter century, logging companies at the government's blessing have been on a tear through British Columbia's expansive interior forests.

In the name of "salvaging" economic value from forests attacked by mountain pine beetles, beginning with a smaller outbreak centred in the Williams Lake area in the 1980s and followed by the much larger beetle epidemic that erupted a decade ago, millions more trees have been logged than would otherwise have been the case.

Residents of Wakefield have been fighting the extension of Highway 5 between Chelsea and Wakefield for almost 2 years. The extension threatens old-growth pines in Gatineau Park as well as Valley Drive (Wakefield) Spring. More than 3,000 local residents depend on the spring for their drinking water needs year round, while an additional 2,000 people use the spring seasonally.

All certificates have been approved, and the cutting of trees at Brown Lake will start any day now.

A5X, a growing group of citizens concerned with the impact of a 4-lane highway on the village of Wakefield and its environment, are urging people to contact Jean Charest and other politicians.