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Thursday, October 22, 2020
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PRINCEGEORGECITIZEN
Frizzell new FCM president CHRISTINE HINZMANN Citizen staff
Prince George city councilor Garth Frizzell is the newly-elected president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM).
SUBMITTED IMAGE
This map, submitted by Baskerville Gold Mines, shows the proposed location of the Cariboo Gold Project mine site.
UNDERGROUND GOLD MINE PROPOSED FOR WELLS ARTHUR WILLIAMS Citizen staff
Billy Barker may be back in business.
Last month, Barkerville Gold Mines Ltd. applied to the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office for approval to build a new underground gold mine in the District of Wells. The proposed mine would employ roughly 250 people during the two-year construction period and 460 people during the 16-year life of the mine, Barkerville Gold Mines vice-president Chris Pharness
said during a presentation to the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George board. “Our goal is to hire as many local people as we can,” Pharness said. “We’re preparing to do a lot of training.” People with work experience in the forestry section are a natural fit to transition into mining, he added. Currently, the company employs many underground miners from Saskatchewan at its operations, Pharness said, but they hope to take advantage of government
training funding to train people from Wells, Quesnel and Prince George to work at the proposed Cariboo Gold Project mine. The majority of the employees at the mine will work on a two-weeks-in, two-weeks-out schedule, and live in a planned 200-person camp on site when working. The proposed mine site is just southwest of the Wells townsite, between Wells and Jack of Clubs lake – roughly eight kilometres from the Barkerville Historic Town. See PROJECT on page 3
The FCM is the national voice of municipal government and it includes 2,050 municipalities in the nation from the largest city in Canada to the smallest, Frizzell said. “Right now, each of those municipalities is dealing with the affects of the pandemic and feel that in everything from budgeting, to the amplification of problems like housing and the opioid crisis,” Frizzell said. “It’s a real year-long series of challenges that’s been compressed into the last six months and while the federal government and some of the provincial and territorial governments have already come forward with support we’re not sure how long it’s going to last and what kind of impact it’s going to have.” Frizzell interest in the FCM was peaked as he was looking to make an impact during his time as a newly-elected city councillor in 2008. When he went down to the annual conference during his first year as a city councillor and heard about what the FCM did, he knew the direction he wanted to take. “I saw all these municipal people coming together from all over and talking about issues and it was a big eye opener,” Frizzell said.