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THE $100,000 Grand Slam of Curling bonspiel will come to Prospera Place in Kelowna Dec. 12 to 16.
IT MAY LOOK like a cute little squirrel at first glance, but the eastern grey squirrel is actually an invading pest in the Okanagan that could pose a danger to fruit and grape crops.
SWISS group eyeing up expansion plans for Crystal Mountain as a potential project for future investment.
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THURSDAY October 4, 2012 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
serving our community 1930 to 2012
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Business Co-op sends fruit grower packing owners ‘‘ given a voice Judie Steeves STAFF REPORTER
THEY DON’T WANT ME TO ASK QUESTIONS OR CALL FOR CHANGES. Kirpal Boparai , BCFGA president
STAFF REPORTER
we strive to maximize their returns in areas that
Don’t be surprised to see packs of official looking men and women streaming in and out of area businesses this morning, donning their workday best and an outof-place pair of sneakers. They’re on an official Economic Development Commission sanctioned mission and it requires comfortable shoes. By day’s end Central Okanagan mayors, city councillors, municipal staff and a smattering of representatives from business improvement areas between Lake Country and Peachland will have canvassed 300 area businesses on a pulse-taking mission, dubbed Business Walks. “We’ll be walking into businesses, and asking three questions,” said Corie Griffiths, the business development co-ordinator with the Economic Development Commission The questions are: How is business? What do you like about doing business in your area? What could be done to improve your business? They’re simple enough queries, but the answers could be used to build a much stronger economy in years to come, Griffiths explained. “What we’re hoping to glean is common themes about issues, barriers and opportunities that we can hopefully use to create a conversation,” she said. “Then we’ll create public reports on what the majority of responses are.” Individual comment, however, will remain anonymous. In the short-term, however, it will also give business owners and the municipalities policy makers and shapers a rare chance to speak. Usually, those conversations are delivered through a middleman, like Peggy Athans, executive director of the Downtown Kelowna Association. “Most of these are local, independently run businesses and they’re busy,” she said. “They’re running businesses with little staff, they don’t have as much time to write letters to visit city hall and communicate directly to them.” So, as the current ear for downtown businesses, Athans has a pretty good guess about what she’s going to hear today.
See Grower A5
See Voice A10
partments and all employees across the organization, especially in this complex industry,” stated
Schieck in the statement. “We recognize the results are not always satisfactory to all growers, but
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DOUG FARROW/CONTRIBUTOR
B.C. Fruit Growers Association president Kirpal Boparai looks over his apple crop this
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the co-op packinghouse with a refined estimate of the quantity of fruit forecast submitted mid-summer, so that sales staff know what they will have to sell and so that time on the packing line can be organized and fruit storage prepared. That’s revised again just before harvest begins so more accurate staffing levels can be determined and other preparations made. Boparai says he has been shipping through the co-op for the past 15 years without a problem, but he says many growers don’t have confidence in the cooperative, calling for upper management changes. They need to be more aggressive and to cut back on staff, Boparai added. In a written statement, OTFC chief executive officer Gary Schieck said he strongly disagrees with remarks made by Boparai that the co-operative’s workers are lazy and that they do not understand grower needs. “I certainly appreciate the dedication and expertise of the management team, their respective de-
Kathy Michaels
the
The president of the B.C. Fruit Growers’ Association has been ousted from the Okanagan Tree Fruit Co-operative, the largest packinghouse in the valley, for not honouring his commitment to the co-operative to ship his fruit there. Kirpal Boparai says since he was elected president of the grower lobby organization early this year and began talking about the need for change in the co-operative, they have been “making it tough for me.” “They don’t want me to ask questions or call for changes,” he added. However, board president Rob Dawson says losing your membership in the co-operative is a consequence of not honouring your contract to sell all your apples through that organization. All members are responsible for sharing the cost of the co-operative’s overhead, Dawson explained, and if a member doesn’t fulfill his commitment, the costs for the remaining members would increase. When there’s a breach of contract a member can be thrown out of the coop, he added. “You can’t make a commitment for the year and then not honour it,” he said. Co-operative grower members agree at the beginning of the year to ship all their apples through
★ Leathead Rd. Hwy 33w