TUESDAY AUGUST 11, 2015
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HOUSE ON THE MOVE
ALMOST 75 YEARS OF FAMILY FUN
Craig Bay home barged to San Juan Islands
Our business profile takes a look at Riverside Resort in Qualicum Beach
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LABOUR DISPUTE IN QUALICUM
Looks like an impasse
Both sides thought they had a deal on the weekend AUREN RUVINSKY
writer@pqbnews.com
The positions are close but the rhetoric is heating up in the Qualicum Beach labour dispute. “The mayor’s a very good person… so he calls it ‘somewhat inaccurate.’ I call it a bald faced lie,” Coun. Neil Horner said of CUPE Local 401 Blaine Gurrie saying council isn’t offering anything new. Mayor Teunis Westbroek said he and chief administrative officer Daniel Sailland met with Gurrie at the Qualicum Beach Inn on Aug. 4 with a new offer totalling eight per cent in increases over four and a half years, along with the existing $1,800 signing bonus and the addition of reduced Sunday staffing, which union members requested. Westbroek and Sailland said they left the meeting optimistic that they had a compromise and staff would be back at work by the end of the week. “I’m sure they’re telling you something different,” Gurre said of that meeting, agreeing he left thinking they had a tentative agreement, but things fell apart over a proposed “one and one” increase for 2014, the first year of the contract. Gurre said he interpreted that as a one per cent increase in January and another one per cent bump in July, but council interpreted it as a one per cent increase in January, plus a July increase of just one per cent of the January increase. Westbroek said the union’s two per cent annual wage increase demand adds up to just over a million dollars for tax payers over the five-year contract, requiring a one per cent annual property tax increase. See UNION SAYS, page A6
CANDACE WU PHOTO
VAULTERS WOW THE CROWD: The West Coast Vaulters, based in Parksville, put on an entertaining show Saturday afternoon warming up the audience before Lord Strathcona’s Horse Musical Ride at Arbutus Meadows. For more photos from the Musical Ride, see page A3 today and visit our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/PQBNews.
ANIMAL WELFARE
Investigation underway in Bowser CANDACE WU news@pqbnews.com
The SPCA launched an investigation in Bowser after allegations of animal abuse came forward last week from concerned neighbours. “What I saw was enough to make me cry for two and a half hours,” Karen Latiff told The NEWS Thursday morn-
ing, referring to a home in Bowser apparently housing various distressed animals, including a pig and a parrot. Oceanside RCMP Cpl. Jesse Foreman confirmed police attended a residence in Bowser, along with the SPCA, on Aug. 5. They found three cats, two dogs, a pig and a parrot in the residence in
conditions “not suitable” for animals with little food, according to Foreman. By Friday, no animals had been removed from the residence. “Animals have been neither seized nor voluntarily surrendered,” said SPCA senior animal protection officer Tina Heary. See NO ALLEGATIONS, page A6
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