RANGERS STAVE OFF ELIMINATION WITH 7-3 VICTORY
ACTOR FACED CANCER WITH MIX OF FACT, HUMOUR/C5
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Red Deer Advocate WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 2015
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Thousands evacuated
STAFF MOVED FROM STATOIL, MEG OILSANDS SITES AS A PRECAUTION BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
WILDFIRES FORCE ABOUT 5,000 PEOPLE TO LEAVE HOMES IN NORTHERN ALBERTA
Photo by ALBERTA WILDFIRE INFO
ABOVE: A wildfire burning out of control 22 km east of Slave Lake is shown in an Alberta government handout photo. Wildfires have forced about 4,000 people from their homes in north- central Alberta but officials don’t believe any houses have been lost. INSET: The North Wabasca Lake fire is pictured on Sunday, May 24, 2015. BY THE CANADIAN PRESS About 5,000 people remained out from their homes Tuesday as wildfires continued to burn in north-central Alberta. The evacuees included people from Wabasca, the Bigstone Cree First Nation and two municipal districts in a rural area north of Edmonton. Agriculture and Forestry Minister Oneil Carlier said he hopes people will abide by a provincewide fire ban. “Most of the province is under a high to severe fire threat and it is incredibly important at this time that we all do everything we can to keep people safe.” The Municipal District of Opportunity and the Bigstone reserve, along with the MD of Lesser Slave River, were under states of local emergency, which allow local authorities to order evacuations and control travel in affected areas. An evacuation order was lifted
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Most of the province is under a high to severe fire threat and it is incredibly important at this time that we all do everything we can to keep people safe. — Oneil Carlier Agriculture and Forestry Minister Tuesday afternoon for the area of the Old Smith Highway, and about 300 residents were expected to begin returning over the next day. However, those who returned were told to remain on a 30-minute evacua-
tion notice, and Chief Jamie Coutts of the Lesser Slave Regional Fire Service advised they should not disable or remove any sprinklers on their property.
CALGARY — Wildfires have prompted more evacuations from oilsands sites south of Fort McMurray, Alta., adding to the list of operators to be affected by outof-control blazes in northeastern region of the province. MEG Energy (TSX:MEG) has bused about 900 workers out of its operations in the Christina Lake area, with about 80 staying behind for essential functions, spokesman Brad Bellows said Tuesday. The facility was undergoing some scheduled maintenance work so there were more than twice as many people on site than would be there ordinarily. Affected workers have either returned to their homes in Edmonton or are being put up in hotels there while the company awaits word from provincial authorities that it’s safe to return. “The movement of staff off-site was purely a precautionary measure,” said Bellows. “There was no imminent danger to our people, most importantly, or to our facilities.” Meanwhile, Statoil Canada has removed more than 150 nonessential employees and contractors from its Leismer project south of Fort McMurray. About 30 workers are staying behind to keep the around 20,000-barrel-a-day facility running, said spokesman Peter Symons. “At this point, we haven’t had any interruption in our oilsands production and we’re just keeping a really close eye on the weather,” he said. On Tuesday afternoon, about 90 workers left Cenovus Energy’s (TSX:CVE) Narrows Lake oilsands project 150 kilometres south of Fort McMurray due to a forest fire burning about 15 kilometres away. Narrows Lake doesn’t produce any oil yet and construction work on it has stopped because of low crude prices. A work camp was being completed at the time of the evacuation. Two workers have also been taken out of Cenovus’ Birch Mountain natural gas plant by helicopter.
Please see OILSANDS on Page A2 Please see WILDFIRES on Page A2
Faith no more: Faculty rejects RDC leadership SYMBOLIC NON-CONFIDENCE VOTE SUGGESTS 70% DISAPPROVE OF COLLEGE’S DIRECTION BY LANA MICHELIN ADVOCATE STAFF Some faculty members are unhappy with Red Deer College’s leadership and direction. Administration at RDC is being expanded at a time of falling student enrolment and cuts to staff and programs, said Faculty Association of Red Deer College president Ken Heather. His association organized a nonconfidence vote on the leadership of RDC president Joel Ward and board of governors chair Shelley Ralston. Of the faculty association’s approximately 350 members, 146 voted on the question, and about 70 per cent of ballots indicated a lack of faith in the direction that Ward and Ralston were setting. The non-confidence vote is only symbolic, said Heather.
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“There’s no strength in this gesture,” except to alert Central Albertans that their education spending is not being maximized in the classroom. Heather maintains that not all course and program reductions are because of falling provincial funding. As the college restructures to try to become a degree-granting polytechnical university, “administrative costs have gone up by $2.7 million in the last five years,” he added. He arrived at this figure after doing a FOIP search of expenses submitted to Alberta Advanced Education. Heather said these documents also show RDC’s administration costs had leapt by 114 per cent since 2010. Meanwhile, student enrolment at the college has fallen by about 10 per cent and faculty positions reduced by about 15 per cent. Ward and Ralston dispute these
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numbers, saying they are not being interpreted “in context.” Ward said he understands “it’s been a difficult year,” and that changes and some job losses are not easy to accept, but there’s good reason for the restructuring at RDC. It’s being done to comply with professional standards that outline what it takes to become a degree-granting polytechnic university. The longer-term goal is better serving the needs of Central Albertans by ensuring they have opportunities to earn their degrees at home instead of having to leave the area to go to a larger centre, he added. Comparisons between administration levels at RDC today and in the past aren’t easy to determine, as there used to be an overlap between instructional and administrative responsibilities. For instance, Ward said many
of the college’s former 23 chairs (who have been replaced with seven associate deans) had to do some administrative work, as well as classroom instruction. Instructors can focus on their educational roles since their administrative responsibilities now rest with the new associate deans, said Ward. Heather lists some program and course eliminations over the last five years: hospitality and tourism, computer systems technology, French, Spanish, printmaking, auto service and health-care aide certificates. He believes Central Alberta’s postsecondary students are getting a raw deal, since the less program choice they have locally, the more they will have to go elsewhere for their education.
Please see RDC on Page A2
Voluntary CCP savings eyed The Conservative government said Tuesday it’s thinking about giving Canadians the option of hiking their CCP contributions. Story on PAGE A5
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