About Ruth Madsen’s accusation today

 

These days I’m more used to being in the news business than being in the news. However, Ruth Madsen publicly attacked me today in a statement released to the media. The part about me says this:

“Due to interference with the registration of its original appellant, Thompson Institute of Environmental Studies, by a local news editor, the group’s ability to initiate an appeal with the B.C. Environmental Appeal Board was hampered.

 
“Ruth Madsen, a founding member of the institute in 1989, will attempt to have the Board agree to an alternative appellant : herself.”

Really, I’m not sure how I could have interfered with her initiation of the appeal, since the Environmental Appeal Board wrote her on Feb. 12 that her appeal had been received and that it was deficient.

On Feb. 17, in checking on whether Thompson Institute of Environmental Studies was a registered society, I went online and applied for the name to find out. You can’t reserve a society name without paying a fee, submitting, and waiting for the Registrar to reply on whether or not you’re approved.

Had I known more about the process, I could have done it another way. However, I do think it was Ruth’s responsibility to make sure she was applying correctly, instead of doing so under the name of a society she allowed to lapse and be struck from the Registry several years ago.

I contacted Ruth early last week and offered to transfer the name, and asked her to check into the process for that and let me know. Today, when I called her about her press release, she told me she “doesn’t have time” to do that. I would think if it was truly important, she’d have the time, but since she didn’t, I called the Registry myself and found that I could verbally cancel my reservation on the name, which I did, then informed her of same.

All she had to do today was go online, reserve the name, and by the deadline tomorrow she would be able to use the name in her revised application.

And, by the way, I think the appeal should be allowed if there’s a way to do it. There’s no better way to have a thorough airing of the issues surrounding the ACC project.