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Sentinel
Northern
www.northernsentinel.com
Volume 57 No. 43
Community wish list Cameron Orr From the Haisla Nation to the Tamitik Status of Women, people pitched their needs to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services when they were here last week. The bipartisan committee is on tour to gather public input to determine priorities for next year’s provincial budget. With seven scheduled speakers at the Oct. 15 meeting, it would be impossible to go into length on each one in our space here, but we will include the highlights of each presentation below: Northwest Community College Cathay Sousa (Registrar) and Dr. Denise Henning (President) The Northwest Community College had two main priorities for the committee: provide funding to upgrade their trades building on the Terrace campus and also to implement a funding formula that they say would be more suitable. They compared their funding formula to that of the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, a First Nations college-university which receives $14,100 per student, said Cathay Sousa, NWCC registrar. The NWCC received about $10,400 per student. They say when applying the difference of funding for just their 41 per cent of the student body which is First Nations, the college is down $3,700 a student in comparison. As for their Terrace building, Dr. Denise Henning, college president, said that they are looking to replace their building with a new one that is slightly bigger but, more importantly, up to code and able to provide modern training. “We have a mice-infested, below-code facility that would require more than $5 million just to upgrade,” she told the committee. The process of ‘futurizing’ the building would also allow them to install multi-million dollar simulators, equipment which simply cannot be installed in the current building. When asked about what facilities the college has, in particular Kitimat, Henning said that their Kitimat campus is “under-utilized”, but
does have three classrooms and a computer lab. The campus currently serves about 50 students. Haisla Nation Council Chief Elected Councillor Ellis Ross The Haisla Nation is seeking a better way to engage with proposed industrial projects in the region as their resources are stretched to thin to make effective decisions on referrals of projects from the Crown. The Haisla are given referrals on projects but Ross said that “We don’t have the in-house resources or expertise to evaluate these referrals and to determine if a particular case is one we have to be concerned about or not.” He asked the committee to propose to the government a way to allow the Haisla to address referrals without drawing on their own resources, and as well approach referrals through regular meetings with senior government officials to outline each referral, allowing the Haisla to make a decision on which referrals need a full study. He said that they currently have 17 referrals, all to do with the proposed Pacific Trails Pipeline, and 10 more are still coming. “We’ve already agreed in general about some of the conditions in the environmental certificate, but now it’s coming down to the specific referrals that we’re having problems with, and there are just too many. It’s death by a thousand cuts to us,” he said. Those suggestions aside, Ross was complimentary to government (in power and the opposition) for their position on economic activity in the area. “Let me also thank the government and the opposition for their consistent support of the LNG export opportunity that we’re trying to take advantage of,” he said. “We’re pleased to see both parties working to agree on such an important issue.” Kitimat Child Development Centre Margaret Warcup, executive director Presenting on behalf of Smithers’ Kerri Klaus and other representatives of the BC Association for Child Development and Intervention, Margaret Warcup advocated
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
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The on-duty fire crew took some time last Tuesday to visit the old fire truck at their training grounds. The truck is being donated to a fire hall in Peru. See page 7 for more. Cameron Orr that funding for children and youth with special needs “be deemed a core service.” She said they want attention especially in the therapies, such as speech language pathology and family support. “Our second recommendation is that we immediately address the funding and the policy direction, which you’ve already started, for the provision of school-age therapy services,” she said, adding there are massive gaps for children in schools for therapies they need. She said she wants the government to address service gaps by funding and implementing policies for youth with special needs who are transitioning to adult services, and also for students to have adequate therapy services funded so they can be successful in schools. One way to achieve this is for the Ministry of Child and Family Development to stop issuing single year contracts and
return to a system of three-year contracts. “This enables us to have security of funding, retain our professional staff and operate a viable business,” she later told the Sentinel. Kitimat Health Advocacy Group Rob Goffinet, Chair In the Kitimat Health Advocacy Group’s continual effort to promote local health services, Goffinet promoted sustained capital funding for Northern Health in the coming fiscal years. “It’s absolutely crucial that the health care facilities of the north in general be maintained and, where necessary, expanded.” Referring to Kitimat specifically, he said that our “rapidly changing demographics have required the expansion of our emergency room facilities to the tune of almost $300,000.” The expansion, he said,
would improve efficiency at a hospital where up to 30 per cent of acute care beds are taken up by multi-level care patients. Goffinet said that capital cutbacks of almost 90 per cent almost put an end to ER improvements, but the advanced state of the project have effectively kept the project alive. And similar to that topic, he also asked the committee to recommend additional funding to construct and staff more multilevel care beds. At the same time he hopes for continued support of initiatives such as age-friendly communities, home care services and healthy communities programs. NWCC’s Students’ Union Mikael Jensen The tuition structure in B.C. is hypocritical and unethical, claims the head of Northwest Community College’s student union. Continued on page 3
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Kitimatians gleefully wait for Halloween...page 6