Prince George Citizen December 20, 2018

Food drive

Local band’s equipment stolen

Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff

fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca

Someone flew the coop with music gear belonging to Flying Machine.

The local alt-rock group has been earning a wave of new fans lately, but they were set back this week by the theft of some important band stuff. A break-in at the band’s rehearsal space caused them the loss of an orange bass amp, some P.A. cables, a sixchannel mixing board and an entire drum kit (minus the stool and sticks, which band members found odd).

The caper had the hallmarks of a rush job, small getaway vehicle and/or thieves who didn’t have much knowledge about such gear. They got in by forcing open a rear door at a detached garage the band had been using for jams and rehearsals. It was located at a home in the vicinity of Eighth Avenue and Gillett Street. The theft was discovered on Sunday, but the break-in could have occurred several days earlier before it was noticed.

“It’s still a pretty special jam space and we’ll feel comfortable about practicing there again, but for sure your privacy feels violated,” said Michael Duncan, who said his bass amp was like an extension of his instrument. He can buy a new one, but he can’t buy the compatibility of sound.

Likewise, Damian Meehan’s vintage snare drum was a special addition to the drum assembly that was stolen. It had the sound and feel that fit his playing style and the band’s vibe. Stores don’t sell that off the shelf.

“I don’t think it will set back our plans. We’re still going to keep on moving forward,” said Duncan. “We can maybe borrow or rent what we need for the short-term. We will reevaluate once we’re all past New Year’s day.”

It’s a busy time of year for everyone, so there wasn’t much gigging and rehearsing scheduled for Flying Machine over the holiday season, but they have two important concerts fast approaching.

The first is Jan. 10 at Sonar where they open for The Statistics and the second is Jan. 30 when they’re on the Coldsnap Music Festival schedule.

“We are part of the regional band night at the Legion,” said Duncan. “We’ve been trying to get into Coldsnap for a couple of years now. It’s going to be a blast. We have

It’s still a pretty special jam space and we’ll feel comfortable about practicing there again, but for sure your privacy feels violated.

— Michael Duncan

to figure out a way to make sure we are ready for that.”

The other band members are Dan Johnson on guitar and vocals, and Warren Neuvonen on fiddle/violin. They had a different bandmate until recently, keyboardist Steven Cote, but there was an amicable parting of their ways. Cote is still involved with the band as the graphic designer of their latest release, the five-song EP Of Dogs & Days.

That package was launched in November at a sold-out gig at The Legion with Amy Blanding opening the night.

“It was a huge success,” said Duncan. “To know people you didn’t even know were walking out the door with music you’ve made, that was a real highlight, that’s an incredible feeling. We’re getting our EPKs (electronic press kit) ready for summer festivals and other performance opportunities. We will still work that out, but the loss of the gear definitely doesn’t help us.”

Of Dogs & Days is the second EP the band has released, following their self-titled debut EP released in spring of 2016.

They have opened for Drum & Bell Tower; appeared at the MOM Festival in Fort St. James with acts like Wax Mannequin, Madeline Tasquin, Joey Only and many others; Jimmy Pattison was briefly a member of the band (it is unknown if the B.C. business tycoon was exactly aware of this, but there is some photographic evidence); Johnson was even the silver medalist in the 2015 Limelight Quest competition.

Another recent highlight for Flying Machine was releasing their first video for the leadoff single Shirtsleeves To Shirtsleeves. It is now collecting views on YouTube and the band’s Facebook page (Flying Machine PG).

If anyone has any inklings about their stolen gear, message the band on that Facebook page and/or contact the RCMP.

School board chair applauds delay in implementing new funding formula

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

School board chair Tim Bennett is welcoming the provincial government’s decision to carry out further consultation before implementing a new funding formula.

In releasing a report from an independent review panel, Education Minister Rob Fleming said Wednesday that the process will enter a second phase in which stakeholders will provide advice on how to move forward on the key themes raised.

“We’re really with the decision of government to delay the implementation to the 2020-21 school year,” Bennett said, adding the board has written a few letters to Fleming asking him to go slow.

“Between the implementation of the new Grade 11 and Grade 12 curriculum, teacher bargaining on the horizon, and without an opportunity to really provide feedback on the recommendations, we weren’t really keen on an idea of a 20192020 implementation,” he said.

He said the next step will be for the board’s management and finance committee to take a closer look at the report and its 22 recommendations with an eye to providing comment when given the opportunity.

At first glance, Bennett said he noticed an emphasis on accountability for performance and spending and as long as providing reports on such aspects don’t

take up too much staff time, he said that could be a good thing.

“There’s only one taxpayer and we want to make sure that the money entrusted to us to run the education system here in the region is spent in the best possible way,” he said.

Bennett also noticed an emphasis on providing an equitable education system and a recognition that cost pressures in rural settings differ from those in urban settings. During a teleconference with provincial media, Fleming said one of the goals will be to figure out how to increase the high school graduation rate, which stands at 85 per cent across B.C. For School District 57, it is 80 per cent, but represents a 6.5 per cent increase over the previous year, due largely to an improvement in the rate for Indigenous students. Steps to that end have included placing an Indigenous education worker in each school, establishing a district level team to work with families and “targeted interventions” to improve literacy rates starting at Grade 2.

“We just came out of an election where we heard from parents that more needs to be done to support some of our special needs students so I hope there is a funding formula that enables us to ensure we’re able to meet the needs of those students that are entrusted to our district,” Bennett also said.

The full report is posted with this story at www.pgcitizen.ca.

Attempted murder charge stayed as guilty pleas entered from drug house shootout

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff

A Prince George man no longer faces a charge of attempted murder for his role in a shootout in the driveway of a local drug house.

The count against Michael CampbellAlexander was stayed during a hearing Tuesday in provincial court.

However, Campbell-Alexander pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm with intent to wound, killing an animal, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm contrary to an order.

The counts stem from an Oct. 22, 2017 incident at a 2000-block Tamarack Street

home in which he exchanged gunfire with Cody Aubrey Lorntsen, who was sentenced in November to a further 2 1/2 years in prison for possessing a prohibited loaded sawed-off shotgun. In video footage retrieved from a camera at the home and shown during a sentencing hearing, Lornsten is seen shortly before 6 a.m. entering the home via a side entrance with his dog on a leash. About two minutes later, Lorntsen is seen leaving the same way while Campbell-Alexander stations himself at one end of the driveway and opens fire with a .22-calibre rifle.

— see DOG KILLED, page 3

CITIZEN PHOTO BY JAMES DOYLE

Ten-year-old Louise Griesbauer, a Grade 5 student at Ecole Franco-Nord poses with a pile of donations that the

food drive. All donations collected will be going to the Salvation Army.

NEWS IN BRIEF

Driver hits toddler

A three-year-old child was taken to hospital with what appear to be non-lifethreatening injuries after being struck by a vehicle late Wednesday morning.

Emergency personnel were called to the scene at a parking lot on Ospika Boulevard at 11 a.m.

It appears the child was struck while the vehicle was backing up, police said.

A parent was close by, the driver remained on the scene and alcohol is not a factor, police added.

— Citizen staff

Hit and run reported

A 20-year-old man was the victim of a hit and run on Sunday.

Police said he was struck by a small car while walking along Lansdowne Road. He received minor injuries and did not seek medical treatment and reported the incident to police on Tuesday.

“Police would like to speak to the driver of the vehicle and anyone that may have witnessed this incident,” Prince George RCMP said.

Anyone who witnessed the incident is asked to contact the Prince George RCMP at 250-561-3300.

— Citizen staff

Gov’t aims to restore areas hit by wildfires

The provincial government says it will restore portions of the B.C. Interior that were severely affected by massive wildfires in 2017 and 2018.

Starting on Jan. 1, fire areas that are part of Elephant Hill and Allie Lake, located in

the Thompson Rivers and 100 Mile districts, will be closed to vehicles until Dec. 31, 2020.

The B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said, in a statement Wednesday, that the closure is so that staff can work to restore sensitive ecosystems.

In 2017, the Elephant Hill wildfire near Ashcroft burned an estimated 191,865 hectares.

The roads around this area have remained closed and were set to reopen at the end of 2018, however the ministry said the closures are being extended to Dec. 31, 2020 because of the extent of the damage.

The Allie Lake wildfire, northwest of Kamloops, in 2018 burned an estimated 2,700 hectares.

The government says the road closures will not apply to authorized users, and snowmobiles operating on a minimum of 0.5 metres of snow.

— Vancouver Sun

Truck thief gets jail time

A man was sentenced Tuesday to 87 days in jail after pleading guilty to being behind the wheel of a stolen pickup truck. Raymond Jarrod Pruden-Collins was arrested on Monday when RCMP identified and pulled over a recently-stolen Ford F-250 in the 2100 block of Quince Street. The truck had gone missing from an Ospika Boulevard location on Sunday. Police also found several knives of various sizes, a small quantity of heroin and drug paraphernalia in his possession. Pruden-Collins was also sentenced to a concurrent term of 30 days in jail for failing to comply with an undertaking and to one year probation once he’s finished his time in jail. After noticing a spike this month in stolen Ford F-series pickup trucks, mostly ranging from model years 1995 to 2008, police have stepped up checks of the brand seen around the city.

— Citizen staff

Bus service to Takla Lake ready to roll

Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca

Just in time for Christmas, a new twicea-week bus service between Prince George and Takla Lake is about to hit the road.

The inaugural run will happend today when a 28-seat bus owned by Takla First Nation departs from the Prince George Native Friendship Centre at 12:30 p.m. after a ceremony to mark the occasion.

“It’s really exciting and we’re really happy to finally have the project rolling,” said Levi Davis, a member of the team tasked with getting the service going.

Trips from Prince George to Takla will continue every Thursday and Sunday, both departing at 12:30 p.m. and return trips from Takla will be on Fridays, 12:30 p.m. departure, and Sundays, 7 a.m. departure.

Rides will be at no cost until Jan. 10 and then $40 each way thereafter. Tickets will be available at the Sasuchan Development Corporation office on the fourth floor of the United Steelworkers building at 1777 Third Ave. (just upstairs from The Citizen’s office) and at the bus itself and passengers can bring luggage.

There will be a stop at The Key community centre in Fort St. James on the trips to and from but a specific time has not yet been established.

It was made possible in part through a grant from B.C. Transit as part of the effort to not only provide service along Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert but to First Nations communities located off the highway. But getting it going took more than just buying a bus.

Details to work out included getting the right insurance, figuring out the process for selling tickets and how the cash flow will be monitored.

“All the aspects of building an entire business,” Davis said.

Along with that, there was the matter of properly equipping the bus. One-way, it’s

and

380

to

is

Under a leasing agreement, Diversified Transport will provide the driver. An ambassador will also be on board to carry out such tasks as helping passengers on and off the bus.

While a parcel delivery service has been in place for years, band members have typically paid someone to drive them to and from Prince George or caught a ride with someone who works in the city.

“Having such a remote reserve, access to basic amenities is quite difficult,” Davis said. “There is only one store in the whole

Don’t get tangled in the IRS’s web

Fifty years ago, a Californian friend of mine got in an argument with her parents and stormed out on her own. I sketch her story here with enough changes to keep her anonymous. Adventurous, 18, and tired of attention from beach bums, she took her bronze skin and blonde curls and went on an adventure that landed her in, of all places, Stewart, B.C. There she worked in a bar and enjoyed the contrast it gave her to the hot and dry home she grew up in. Eventually she met a guy, married and raised a family in the region. She lost her husband to cancer about five years ago and inherited his investment portfolio and RSPs. She now sits on about $750,000, which is about right to last her for her expected life and leave a bit for her kids.

Except she has a problem: the IRS. Living next to the U.S. is like laying on the beach next to a big blue whale. He’s a friendly beast, but his shadow is long and wide and if he decides to roll over, it’s gonna hurt.

The whale has a pet alien spider named IRS with freakishly-long tentacles and a voracious appetite. The tax law fuelling IRS’s mothership can take her to any corner of the universe. There’s just no hiding.

In fact, many living in Canada would be surprised to learn how true this is. Consider these examples of people caught in the sticky web that is the U.S. tax system and might not even know it:

• Suzy, a U.S. citizen now living in HeadSmashed-in Buffalo Jump, Alta.

• Polly, a retired Canadian living in Spuzzum, B.C. also owns a cottage in Burnt Porcupine, Maine.

• And then there’s Bill, born prematurely while his Canadian parents were visiting Blaine, Wash. They were buying cheese when along came Bill before their Tim Horton’s coffee even got cold. Bill has lived in Canada since the day after his birth and is now a father himself.

• Terrance, Bill’s son, is a Canadian citizen

community and any other amenities are in Fort St. James, which is 2 1/2 to three hours away depending on road conditions.” Depending on how well it’s used, more stops may be added. For more information go to the Sasuchan Development Corporation website, sasuchan.ca/bus.

living in Eyebrow, Sask., where he works at a maple syrup farm.

• Julie, a U.S. green card holder born in England, but now living in Medicine Hat where she works as a Zamboni driver.

• Solomon, a Canadian citizen living in Stoner, B.C., just got back from his first warm and wonderful snowbird vacation in Yuma, where he spent 183 days and won the world Canasta title.

• Rosemary, a red-blooded Canadian has a tattoo of Ken Dryden on her hip, and is a retired snake trainer living in Yellowknife. She spends about four-and-a-half months every year in the States visiting her only son, Lu, who happens to be CEO of the IRS.

• Mohammed is a Canadian citizen who lives in Punkeydoodles Falls, Ont., and owns 1,000 Apple shares.

Each of these people has U.S. tax exposure, resulting from some sort of connection to the U.S. In most cases, they would have U.S. tax filing obligations.

Failure to file could result in significant penalties and possibly a visit from Rosemary and her son – whose full name isn’t Lu.

U.S. tax exposure can accrue to:

1) All U.S. citizens wherever they happen to reside.

2) Anyone from anywhere in the world who obtains U.S. green cards or spends significant amounts of time in the U.S.

3) Persons who receive certain types of income from U.S. sources and holders of certain kinds of property situated in the U.S. whatever their citizenship.

4) Persons who are neither U.S. citizens nor

even live in the U.S. but are considered to be domiciled in the U.S. Domicile in essence refers to persons who think of the U.S. as their permanent home regardless of where they reside.

Curiously, and unlike Canada, the U.S. has two tax regimes – the U.S. Income Tax System applies to income received annually and the U.S. Transfer Tax system applies to gifts of property. Persons who reside in the U.S. permanently or for extensive periods in a year or series of years and, in some cases, who are frequently present in the U.S. are caught by the former. U.S. citizens, whether they live in the U.S. or not, are subject to both. Green card holders are subject to the U.S. income tax system and likely also transfer tax.

Persons domiciled in the U.S., even if they spend little or no time in the U.S., are still potentially subject to the U.S. transfer tax system. Therefore it is entirely possible that Canadian citizens, U.S. citizens and green card holders residing in Canada, and persons that are not Canadian or U.S. citizens but are simply residing in Canada can have U.S. tax obligations. Filing obligations in the U.S. include both annual tax returns and information returns as well. The penalties for non-filing can be exorbitant.

Starting in January, I will elaborate further, showing situations where you or someone you know could be impacted. In these circumstances, it is very important to obtain tax advice from a U.S. tax expert. Such cross-border experts are few and far between in Western Canada.

Mark Ryan is an investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc. (member–Canadian Investor Protection Fund), and these are his views, and not those of RBC Dominion Securities. This article is for information purposes only. Please consult with a professional advisor before taking any action based on information in this article. See Ryan’s website at: http://dir.rbcinvestments. com/mark.ryan

Guide seeks class-action lawsuit in battle over grizzly hunting ban

VANCOUVER

— The operator of a guide outfitting company has filed a proposed classaction lawsuit against the B.C. government over the ban on grizzly bear hunting.

Ron Fleming, owner of Love Bros. & Lee, is seeking compensation for all B.C. guide outfitting businesses allegedly harmed by the hunting ban. The lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court names the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development and the minister, Doug Donaldson, alleging the province inappropriately closed the hunt over public opinion and for political or social reasons.

The statement of claim alleges the government knew its decision would harm the 2,000 people directly employed by 245 guide outfitting businesses, especially those with licences to hunt grizzlies or who lost business when the ban was announced in 2017.

The lawsuit says prior to the ban, fewer than two per cent of the bears in B.C. were hunted each year and the number of grizzlies has been increasing across the province.

None of the allegations have been proven in court and a statement of defence has not been filed. Donaldson said in a statement the government began a process to end the grizzly trophy hunt two years ago.

“The vast majority of British Columbians feel

that the grizzly bear hunt is no longer socially acceptable,” he said, and last year the government decided to ban the hunt.

“As part of the announcement, the government committed to work with businesses to assist in their transition away from dependence on the grizzly hunts,” he said. “At this time it would not be appropriate to comment on the legal claim.”

First Nations who hunt for treaty rights or for food, social and ceremonial reasons were exempted from the ban. The statement of claim says there was no government consultation about shutting down the hunt with guides, resident hunters or First Nations. It asks for financial compensation for damages.

Citizen staff

A man caught on camera committing an indecent act in a local business has been sentenced to 24 days in jail. During a hearing in Prince George provincial court on Monday, Jessie Scott Ferris was also sentenced to two years probation for the offence committed on Oct. 4. Police had issued images from the store’s surveillance camera and asked for the public’s help to identify the culprit. Ferris was also sentenced to two years probation and issued a five-year firearms prohibition for assault from a Nov. 3 incident and he was also issued a conviction for breaching probation on Nov. 1.

Ferris spent 44 days in custody on the assault charge prior to sentencing.

about

kilometres

Takla Lake

nearly 120 km

on a gravel forest service road.

A new bus service between Prince George and Takla Lake will start operating today.

MARK RYAN

FERRIS

Habitat protection widened for orcas off Vancouver Island

Citizen news service

VANCOUVER — Two new areas off Vancouver Island have been designated by the federal government as protected for critical habitat for resident killer whales.

Fisheries and Oceans Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says the decision means key foraging locations for the endangered whales are protected from destruction.

The government is increasing the amount of protected habitat from about 6,400 square kilometres to roughly 10,700 square kilometres.

The new protected area is intended to help recovery efforts for northern and southern resident killer whales, and covers an area off southwestern Vancouver Island.

The number of southern resident killer whales is down to 74 as the orcas face several threats, including a lack of prey, particularly chinook salmon, noise and physical strikes from ships, and contaminants in the water.

The state of Washington recently announced US$1.1 billion in spending and a partial whalewatching ban in an attempt to help the population’s recovery.

The money would go toward protecting and restoring habitat for salmon, boosting production from salmon hatcheries, storm-water cleanup and quieting vessel traffic.

In Canada, the government says the announcement on Wednesday is in addition to $167 million in spending announced this year to help the whales.

Measures it has introduced include requiring vessels to slow down, tougher regulatory controls on contaminants and spending aimed at protecting and boosting the stock of chinook.

Whale-watching vessels and other boats have also been ordered to stay 200 metres away from the animals.

“We know that Canadians care deeply about these whales,” Wilkinson said in a statement.

“These new critical habitat areas will ensure that the ocean space that the whales frequent and forage for prey is protected for generations to come.”

The distinctive black-and-white orcas were listed as an endangered species in the U.S. and Canada well over a decade ago.

Their numbers are now at the lowest levels in more than three decades.

One of the whales was seen this summer keeping the body of her dead calf afloat in waters off B.C. and Washington state for more than two weeks, triggering international media coverage of their plight.

The federal government’s approach to protecting whale habitat has not been without opposition as sport fishing, tourism and business leaders from across Vancouver Island warned earlier this month that jobs are at stake because fishing closures have been extended.

Seventeen Chambers of Commerce on the Island have asked Fisheries and Oceans to consider the impact of its management measures on the economies of coastal communities.

BC Parks threatens $1M fine as it closes off newly discovered cave

Hina ALAM Citizen news service

VANCOUVER — A newly discovered cave and the surrounding area in British Columbia’s Wells Gray Provincial Park has been closed off to the public, with threats of fines up to $1 million for those who don’t stay away, says an order from BC Parks.

The order issued this week says anyone who enters the surrounding area or the cave can be fined and face imprisonment for up to a year.

A person can be charged up to $1-million a day for every day that they break the order, it says.

“Until risks to public safety have been assessed and engagement with First Nations has been concluded, the newly discovered cave and surrounding area is closed to public access as per the director’s order,” it says.

Geologist Catherine Hickson, who first went to the cave in September, welcomed the order.

“I think it’s prudent on the part of (BC) Parks to do that,” she said.

“It is a very dangerous and treacherous

B.C.

area and to reiterate, we went in with a permit.”

It’s very unlikely that someone would try to get into the cave or the area around it, Hickson said.

“But you know there’s a lot of crazies in this world. I wouldn’t put it past somebody to try and get into the area,” she added.

The entrance pit to the cave is about 100 metres long and 60 metres wide, and while its depth is hard to measure because of the mist from a waterfall, initial examinations show it is at least 135 metres deep.

The cave was initially spotted in March by a helicopter crew with the Ministry of Environment that was conducting a caribou census in the northeastern part of the park.

Hickson said the cave is a one-hour helicopter flight from Clearwater, 480 kilometres northeast of Vancouver.

In the winter, the cave can be accessed by skiing about 100 kilometres from the entrance to the park, while during the summer it would require a 45-kilometre boat trip and another 15-kilometre walk.

“It’s not an easy cave to get to,” she said.

The cave is a vertical climb down with lots of water and ice, she said.

“People may try to enter the cave and that is risky unless you are well trained and well equipped,” Hickson said. “This isn’t a climb you can do on a whim.”

If someone gets into trouble, another person would have to risk their life to help them, she said.

The cave is the largest known of its type, a variety of “striped karst,” which is marble interspersed with other types of ancient ocean rock.

Those who first spotted the cave from the helicopter named it Sarlacc’s Pit because of its similarity to the lair of Sarlacc, a creature from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

Caves support a very unique ecosystem because they are dark so the flora and fauna living in such areas are acclimatized to those conditions, Hickson said and that is one of the other reasons that Parks BC is trying to protect the site.

“It’s to help with safety of the people and the cave.”

Appeal Court upholds stay in terror case over alleged bomb plot

VANCOUVER — The RCMP’s conduct in its investigation of an alleged bomb plot at the B.C. legislature was a “travesty of justice” when officers continued to pursue the case against a couple who didn’t have the means to commit an act of terrorism on their own, the province’s Appeal Court said Wednesday.

A three-judge panel unanimously upheld a lower court finding that John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were manipulated by police to conduct the terror operation on Canada Day in 2013.

While the trial judge made some errors in her analysis, she made no mistake in finding they were entrapped by the Mounties, Justice Elizabeth Bennett says in the ruling.

“In this case, the police eventually knew Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody had little to no ability to commit an act of terrorism. Certainly, they were right to commence the investigation, and certainly they had reasonable suspicion that the two might commit a crime,” she writes on behalf of the Appeal Court panel.

Bennett says the police “went far beyond investigating a crime,” adding that they “pushed and pushed and pushed the two defendants to come up with a workable plan.”

“This is not to suggest that Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody are harmless. They may be very dangerous. However, that danger was not apparent in the investigation,” wrote Bennett.

“There was no danger because Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody had neither the means nor the ability to carry out any of the plans without substantial aid from the police.”

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce erred by directing the jury to acquit the couple on a charge of facilitat-

In this case, the police eventually knew Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody had little to no ability to commit an act of terrorism.

— Justice Elizabeth Bennett

ing a terrorist activity, since it is possible that Nuttall and Korody facilitated one another.

She also erred in telling the jury not to consider a second charge of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, but the result would have been the same, Bennett says.

“I therefore agree with the trial judge that the overall conduct of this investigation was a travesty of justice.”

The Appeal Court ordered a stay of proceedings.

Nuttall and Korody remain free on bail. Their lawyers are scheduled to appear Jan. 7 in provincial court on a peace bond application to determine whether the pair pose a risk to the public.

The Appeal Court also called the country’s terrorism laws “unnecessarily complex.”

“It would be beneficial if Parliament revisited the legislation, revamped it, and made it comprehensible, particularly for those members of the public who sit as jury members on such cases,” the ruling says.

In a statement, the RCMP said it was aware of the decision.

“The RCMP respects the judicial process and the judgment determined by the court,” it said.

Nuttall’s lawyer, Marilyn Sandford, said her client felt “overwhelming relief”

after the court’s decision, adding it has significant implications for future police investigations.

“I think that the court has drawn a line and underscored that these type of American-style sting operations, very common south of the border, are not going to be tolerated here and that we have a strong and robust principle of entrapment that the courts are going to uphold,” she said in an interview.

“This case went far over that line and the police, in manufacturing this crime, crossed a line that the courts aren’t going to allow in the future.”

Scott Wright, who represents Korody, said she is hoping to put the case behind her, but knows it won’t be quick or easy to do so.

In June 2015, a jury found Nuttall and Korody guilty of conspiring to commit murder, possessing an explosive substance and placing an explosive in a public place on behalf of a terrorist group.

The convictions were put on hold until 2016 when Bruce ruled the two had been entrapped.

The Crown argued at the Appeal Court hearing in January that Bruce had no basis to conclude the RCMP manipulated Nuttall and Korody into planting explosive devices. Documents filed by the Crown alleged they eagerly conspired to build improvised explosive devices and detonate them as an act of jihad to strike terror in the hearts of “Canadian infidels.”

Lawyers for the couple argued the RCMP acted on unreasonable suspicions to exploit two vulnerable people. The trial heard that Nuttall’s substance abuse and mental health played a role in the entrapment.

Nuttall and Korody were arrested on Canada Day 2013 after planting what they thought were pressure-cooker bombs at the legislature.

Amy SMART Citizen news service

TUYA TERRA GEO CORP. HANDOUT PHOTO BY CATHERINE HICKSON

A newly discovered cave in a remote valley in British Columbia’s Wells Gray Provincial Park is seen in an undated handout photo. The cave and the surrounding area has been closed off to the public, with threats of fines up to $1 million for those who don’t stay away, says an order from BC Parks.

Third Canadian detained in China not believed to

be linked to other arrests: PM

Andy BLATCHFORD Citizen news service

OTTAWA — Chinese authorities have detained a third Canadian but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says there’s no reason yet to believe the case is linked to the recent arrests of two other Canadians in the country.

Trudeau said Wednesday that the latest case, so far, doesn’t involve serious allegations related to China’s national security.

“These are two very different situations,” Trudeau told a news conference in Ottawa.

“There are tens of thousands of Canadians who live, travel, work in China in any given year – there are obviously regular situations where Canadians require consular assistance.”

He added that the government is taking the most recent case seriously and that it’s looking into details that don’t “seem to fit the pattern of the previous two.” He raised visa issues as the sort of thing that might draw Chinese authorities’ attention.

The case involves an Alberta woman who has been teaching in China for months and has indeed been held over a visa irregularity, Conservative MP Erin O’Toole said Wednesday in an interview. Until her detention, he said, she hadn’t had any problems with her visa.

O’Toole said the woman’s case was brought to the attention of a Tory MP in Alberta; O’Toole is the party’s foreign-affairs critic so he relayed the information to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday.

He declined to give any additional information about the woman, citing privacy concerns. O’Toole said he didn’t know whether the woman was still being detained by late Wednesday.

Several news outlets reported on Wednesday that the woman is a teacher named Sarah McIver.

The National Post reported that she was teaching at a school in China when she was detained due to “visa complications,” and that arrangements were being made for her return to Canada.

Consular officials are providing assistance to the detainee’s family, Global Affairs Canada said.

“There’s hundreds of Canadians in one way or another working (in China) and is this something that they should worry about – existing visas?” O’Toole said.

“That’s what’s very disconcerting about this... Canadians should know if suddenly visas are going to be pulled and reviewed and reconsidered.”

If China is indeed scrutinizing existing visas, O’Toole said Ottawa should post a new travel advisory to alert Canadians.

The latest detention comes with Canada locked in a diplomatic dispute with the Asian superpower.

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of tech giant Huawei, was arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1 at the request of the United States, where she is wanted on fraud allegations. Law-enforcement officials allege that she lied to U.S. banks about a corporate structure devised to get around sanctions against Iran.

Her arrest enraged China. It has demanded her release and warned of serious consequences for Canada.

Days after Meng’s arrest, the first two Canadians were detained in Beijing for allegedly endangering China’s national security.

Entrepreneur Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat on a leave of absence from Global Affairs, both remain in custody.

China has granted Canada access to both Spavor and Kovrig. Global Affairs Canada has said John McCallum, Canada’s ambassador to China, met with Kovrig on Friday and Spavor on Sunday.

Meng has since been released on bail and is to return to court in February for what most legal observers predict could be a long, drawn-out legal process.

Spavor is director of the Paektu Cultural Exchange and one of the few people from the West to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

He also helped arrange a visit to North Korea by former basketball star Dennis Rodman.

Kovrig served as a diplomat in China until 2016 and has been working for the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental agency focused on ending conflicts.

Feds looking at minimum income program

Jordan PRESS Citizen news service

OTTAWA — The Trudeau Liberals appear to be warming to the idea of a guaranteed national minimum income as they search for ways to help Canadian workers adapt to an unsteady labour market.

A guaranteed minimum income means different things to different people, but at its core is a no-strings-attached payment governments provide instead of an assortment of targeted benefits.

What it costs in additional spending, the thinking goes, it makes up in reduced bureaucracy for both the government and recipients.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos have argued that the Liberal-created Canada Child Benefit, among other measures, amounts to a guaranteed minimum income already.

But in an interview this week, Duclos said the current suite of federal programs could one day be enhanced to provide a minimum income of sorts to all Canadians, particularly those without children who aren’t eligible for federal benefits for families, seniors or the working poor.

“Whether this is going to be enhanced eventually to a broader guaranteed minimum income for all Canadians, including those without children that are not currently covered by a guaranteed minimum income at the federal level, I believe the answer is yes,” Duclos said. “At some point, there will be a universal guaranteed minimum income in Canada for all Canadians.”

As for when, Duclos was less clear: “One day we will get there too, but that day has not yet arrived.”

Federal officials have considered the idea as one of a wide range of possibilities to reshape social-safety-net programs for a modern labour market marked by automation, more short-term “gig economy” jobs and a need for people to retrain several times in their working lives.

The thinking is the current suite of programs is outdated because it was designed for a workforce that needed help only at certain points, such as upon losing a full-time job, having children and retiring. Lifetimes of freelancing, contracts and multiple part-time jobs punctuated by returns to school weren’t in the model.

Trudeau, in a separate interview, pointed to his government’s various attempts at providing workers some stability that “can add up to something that is helpful like a guaranteed minimum income.”

He spoke about changing employment insurance to make it easier to land benefits and creating the income-tested Canada Child Benefit; and looked ahead to the Canada

Workers Benefit that will expand a Stephen Harper-era wage subsidy to boost the incomes of the country’s working poor.

Despite all that, Trudeau said a guaranteed income is one of the tools the government is looking at to help Canadians who are struggling.

“I don’t think I’d be speaking out of turn to say that it’s still something that is in the universe of all sorts of tools that we’re looking at on how to best help Canadians,” he said.

The parliamentary budget office has estimated federal spending would need to increase $43.1 billion annually to provide every low-income household with an average of $9,421, beefing up the $32.9 billion Ottawa already spends on support for low-income Canadians.

Before forging ahead with any new spending, the federal government would need buyin from provinces, territories and municipalities, said Conservative critic Karen Vecchio.

Figures from Statistics Canada show those levels of government spent almost $69 billion in 2017 on programs to help children, the elderly, those with low incomes, the unemployed and people with disabilities.

“In order for it to work, you would need to overhaul the entire system,” Vecchio said of a minimum income. “It’s not that it’s a bad idea by any means, but we have to look at the cost

and is this going to be beneficial to Canadians in the long run?”

Decades after the first test of “mincome” in Manitoba, Ontario’s previous Liberal government launched a pilot project last year, but Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government cancelled it shortly after coming to office.

Trudeau and Duclos were clear the federal government won’t revive Ontario’s pilot, saying it isn’t Ottawa’s job to step in when provinces change or eliminate programs. But the federal Liberals could offer, as part of an election platform, to help finance future provincial tests so the country to figure out whether the idea works, said Hugh Segal, a former Conservative senator who helped design the cancelled Ontario program.

The pledge could pull votes away from the New Democrats and Conservatives, and offer cash-strapped provinces an avenue to cut costs, Segal said.

“Part of what you do when you’re in government is you try to bring forward policies that will make life better for Canadians, make the economy more productive, and that is affordable,” he said. “But you also want to set up the odd little roadblock and detour for your primary opponents and I think there’s a good chance the primary opponents would fall into the trap.”

CP FILE PHOTO

Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Jean-Yves Duclos speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Oct. 26. Duclos said his government is considering a guaranteed minimum income program for all Canadians.

Coaching is a thankless job

Iam a coach of the one of the senior basketball teams in Prince George.

The majority of you put in your hours at work and go home to your family. I put in hours at my job, but instead of going home to my family, I am rushing to the gym to make the three practice times and one league game a week. Instead of doing house chores on the weekend or spending time with my family, I am coaching three games each weekend. When the game ends you get to go home. I am still at the school waiting for the last person to be picked up.

I have received angry emails and texts, full of “suggestions” about who should be playing where and how I lost that day’s game for the kids.

I thought I’d write an open letter to all of you who don’t volunteer your time coaching. I am a volunteer. I’m the one who answered the call when the school said they didn’t have enough coaches. Without me, or someone like me, there’d be no team for them to play on.

Why would anyone want to volunteer so much time away from their own family to

coach your son or daughter? Not only do I not get paid to do this – it costs me money. There are plenty of rewards and I remind myself that while you’re at the office working, your kid is saying something that makes us all laugh or brings a tear to my eye. However, the negatives outweigh the positives. I just wish that those who don’t choose to volunteer their time would leave the coaching to the few of us who do.

I’m

— Anonymous

Editor’s Note: As a rule, The Citizen does not publish anonymous letters but was willing to make an exception for this letter. This is a personal issue for both the publisher (Colleen Sparrow was an active student athlete during her days at Duchess Park – go, Condors!) and me, as the parent of a player on the Kelly Road senior girls basketball team (go, Roadrunners!).

Youth coaches, whether it’s for minor hockey or any other extracurricular sport or for school teams, are mentoring our children and giving them the tools to grow up

to be responsible citizens. These coaches are doing far more than offering instructions on how to shoot a puck or sink a basket. They are teaching their players valuable lessons about leadership, teamwork, effort and resilience. In the classroom, students that do everything right get 100 per cent on their test. On the playing field, athletes learn that you can do everything right and still lose. That’s an essential life lesson that builds grit and will help them cope with the many challenges and disappointments they will face in adulthood.

It’s wonderful if your child is the star player on a winning team but the enduring lessons come from the tough losses, whether that’s on the scoreboard, not making the team at tryouts or sitting on the bench while better players shine.

On Tuesday night, the Kelly Road senior girls lost to Duchess Park by 54 points but everyone was smiling at the end. Kelly Road, with Grade 9 and 10 players on their roster, played some of their best basketball

YOUR LETTERS

Taxpayers can’t take it anymore

Remember the old saying “the straw that broke the camel’s back” – what did it mean?

It’s the final limit of capacity, including patience. An Arabian anecdote told of a camel whose owner loaded the beast of burden with as much straw as possible. Not satisfied with the staggering load he had put on the camel, the owner added just one more piece of straw. Even that one wisp was too much and the animal collapsed with a broken back, leaving the owner with no way to take his goods to market. The story is a parable for all the times you’ve been repeatedly irked until you can’t take it anymore and you explode.

If we substitute government taxes and charges from entities like B.C. Hydro and ICBC and companies whose rates are controlled by the B.C. Utilities Commission for the straw loaded on the camel, we can see very quickly where we are at and what the outcome of increased taxes, utility charges, and general increases for various and sundry items, will be.

The city has announced a possible five per cent increase in taxes for 2019 and the mayor and city council directed staff to develop a three and four per cent scenario to see what that would look like. So the scenario is a five

per cent, four per cent or three per cent increase. Seems the city has a very restricted vocabulary and seems not to have the words “no increase” or “a decrease in taxes” in their vocabulary. No increases or a tax decrease is in fact a very viable and important factor when you look at the burden that taxpayers are presently packing.

B.C. Hydro increases were four per cent in 2016, 3.5 per cent in 2017, 3.5 per cent this year and possibly another three per cent increase in 2019.

Fortis Gas gave a six per cent decrease in 2018 or approximately $45 per year per household. However they are now talking about an increase in 2019 that will amount to $68 per year on average.

ICBC is looking to increase rates by 6.3 per cent.

There appears to be no connection between the increase in taxes by government, ICBC, B.C. Hydro, Fortis, businesses etc., all hell bent on increases with absolutely no concern as to whether or not citizens are able to pay these increases.

Hydro does make some allowances for lower income people, however this just means other citizens have to pay more. Most people in Prince George will not get any increases in their wages to cover these additional costs. So in my opinion the time of blindly increasing taxes, utility costs and the price of goods for

no other reason than that’s what we do every year has to stop. It’s time for our elected representatives and staff to take the responsibility to stop these increases, increase production, reduce costs and basically become fiscally responsible.

Our mayor and new city council have four years to make a difference. Let’s start now and see what can be done.

Eric Allen Prince George

How about cell service?

I’ve read in The Citizen that Wells is getting high-speed internet, which is great. However, there is a community eight minutes from Prince George that can’t get cell phone service. Old Summit Lake Road is stuck in a weird vortex where cellphones are useless. There is service on the way to McBride through rough terrain and also on Highway 16 West to Vanderhoof and Highway 97 North to Bear Lake. Could we get a cell tower out here, say at Shady Valley School or the Telus building on Goose Country Road? It’s positively primitive out here. In the event of an accident, ambulances are minutes away but there’s no way to call 911.

Guy Cosh

Prince George

of the season so far against a taller (with one noticeable and impressive exception), stronger, older team that will challenge for a provincial championship in the spring. Good sportsmanship was on full display the whole game and the coaches played their entire benches, encouraging their players to keeping working hard. The Kelly Road girls took away one additional lesson about the level they will have to play at if they want to be elite players on an elite team in the years ahead.

Thank you, local coaches, and please don’t be discouraged. You are doing essential work and you will feel your sacrifice will have been worth it years from now when one of your former players, now an adult with a family of his or her own, will see you in the grocery store and stop to thank you, not for making them a better athlete, but for the fun times, the great memories and helping shape them into a decent person.

You might not even remember who they are when that day comes but they’ll remember you and – most importantly – what you gave them.

—

Editor-in-chief

Neil Godbout

Political correctness excluding Christmas I

n 1974, I recall my sisters returning from school in tears after a Christmas break, telling my parents how a chubby man in a red suit came down chimneys with gifts for children who had been good. He never visited us.

The next morning, we found new colouring books and crayons in the fireplace. We had no heat, no furniture and little food, but there it was: Christmas in our fireplace.

Though my maternal grandfather came to Canada from India in the early 1900s, my parents arrived in the mid-1960s and started a family. They had $7 and little education when they landed in Vancouver, but they made a priority of becoming employable by learning to speak, read and write English. They befriended neighbours through conversations in broken English, creating bonds that have lasted until today. My mom encouraged neighbours to take advantage of her “open door, open kitchen” policy. Few could resist. My parents hadn’t just immigrated; they integrated. They continued celebrating Indian traditions and adopted some of the customs of the community to which they now proudly belonged. As a family, we learned the value of diversity and developed a group of friends and a way of life that reflected it.

Three decades later, I found myself on the defensive after my employer, a Canadian TV station, surveyed employees and decided to replace the annual Christmas party with a “Winter Festivus” in February. Though I voted against the idea, colleagues glared at me. One – albeit jokingly – blamed the decision on “my people,” even though he knew I was born in Canada.

There was a time when my grandfather, like other Canadians of Asian origin, didn’t have the right to vote, so I am grateful that Canada legislates inclusion. Our charter also protects freedom of religion. Yet as governments and employers work to acknowledge and respect the multicultural nature of our society, political

correctness has become a one-way road that’s left Christmas out in the cold. It doesn’t seem to matter that Christmas is the country’s most significant tradition or that Statistics Canada says two-thirds of Canadians identify as Christian. This isn’t just happening in Canada. Recently, Britain’s national equality chief said businesses should bring back references to Christmas. He said employers who are worried about offending other religions are infringing on the religious freedom of Christians. In my opinion, we are in an era of reverse exclusion and intolerance. We don’t modify greetings for Chinese New Year, Diwali, Id and Hanukkah, but saying “Merry Christmas” risks giving offence, even though Christmas has a cultural significance for many non-Christians.

I am proud to be part of a society that fosters understanding among all religions and traditions, a country that allows us so many freedoms, including cultural parades. However, the courtesy is seldom initiated or returned.

Today, too many people immigrate without integrating into Canada’s great multicultural fabric. According to the latest census data, there are close to 300 ethnic enclaves across Canada, up from just six in 1981. We’ve become more insular as a society, which hurts the ability to understand and appreciate the experiences of others. It’s a shame, because we all miss out.

Our family’s story came full circle when my mom died six years ago at 64. On my first visit to Costco without her, a clerk – a Muslim man – stopped me to say, “We will miss her. She was a friend to us all.”

So, from my Hindu family to yours, Merry Christmas. Renu Bakshi is a communications strategist who specializes in crisis management and media training

LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submissions should be sent by email to: letters@pgcitizen.ca. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 250-960-2766, or mailed to 201-1777 Third Ave., Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7. Maximum length is 750 words and writers are limited to one submission every week. We will edit letters only to ensure clarity, good taste, for legal reasons, and occasionally for length. Although we will not include your address and telephone number in the paper, we need both for verification purposes. Unsigned or handwritten letters will not be published. The Prince George Citizen is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact Neil Godbout (ngodbout@pgcitizen.ca or 250-960-2759). If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the web site at mediacouncil.ca

RENU BAKSHI

Guest Column

Special relativity allows Santa to make his rounds

Editor’s note: this is an updated version of a previous column explaining Santa science.

Amid the sounds of sleigh bells ringing and children singing, I sat in the bleachers of the local ice rink. I was taking a moment to rest and to think.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a man we all know at this time of year. Or at least that is how he looked to me – a sight for sore eyes and something to see.

He was dressed all in fur and that caused quite the stir. But his eyes – how they twinkled and his dimples were quite merry. His cheeks were like roses and his nose like a cherry.

He had the stump of a pipe held tight in his teeth but due to anti-smoking laws no smoke for a wreath.

He had a broad face and plump belly, which shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.

He sat down beside me as quick as could be. I knew it was St. Nick for all to see.

And being a scientist, I put caution aside as I had to ask questions ranging far and wide.

So, I worked up my courage and asked “Are you …?”

He looked at me and said “Of course not. You know I don’t really exist? I mean how could I be? Scientifically speaking, hasn’t physics declared me an impossibility?”

“But you look just like him.” I said “And there are so many questions running through my head. Would you consider answering a few?”

“Go ahead and ask,” he replied, “I will make up some stuff. Will that make you happy?”

“Sure,” I replied with some hesitation. I mean, how often do you get to ask questions of the source?

Straight from the horse’s – or reindeer’s –mouth, so to speak?

“So I guess the first question is one about time. I mean, if you start at midnight and work until dawn, even with the time zones around the world, that only gives you 32

hours to deliver all of those presents. And there are an awful lot of presents!” I asked.

He chuckled and his belly shook.

He winked and said “But only if you believe in a Newtonian construct for time. Old Sir Isaac believed in a sequential time with one event preceding the next or one event following the one before.

“Very medieval. By the way, you know I dropped that apple on his head? Trying to get him to wake up.”

“Really?!?” I replied.

“Of course, that doesn’t really answer the question does it? I mean, are you saying time is not sequential?”

“Of course it isn’t” he replied.

“Einstein showed that with his theory of relativity. Using the Lorentz equation, it is easy to show time is related to velocity. The faster you move, the more time you have. Indeed, time does not pass for a photon.”

“But how then does that work?” I asked

“Photons have no mass. They are packages

of energy. Indeed, a photon is really just the amount of energy required to shift an electron or molecule from one energy state to another.”

“That is one view of a photon. But it is very limited view. Rather, if you follow through the Einsteinian view of the universe, everything is ultimately composed of photons – of energy. Remember energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. And photons don’t experience time.”

He chuckled to himself. It was obvious he was enjoying this obscure trip into physics.

“The question really is one of time. Indeed, it is all about time.

“Your perception of time is limited by the progression of matter towards an entropic end of the universe.

“However, if you really consider everything is made of energy and energy does not experience time, then you begin to realize time itself is not a variable – it simply

doesn’t exist. Double time doubly so.”

He smiled with an elfin grin and added

“You have all the time in the world – in the universe – if you so choose. And quite frankly, my boy, I so choose.

“Indeed, the whole question of energy and matter is one which most people seem to find quite perplexing. They are just two sides of the same coin. I have seen physics articles claiming I could not carry all the presents or flying fast enough but what they don’t understand is I have all the time in the world,” he said.

“Except, of course, right now.”

He got up and said “Sorry, my boy, I know there are many things I have left unanswered. But I have to be elsewhere right now.”

And with that, he walked away down the bleachers.

But he turned and smiled at me before he disappeared from sight, saying “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

Saturn’s rings halfway to their death

Sarah KAPLAN Citizen news service

If dinosaurs had possessed telescopes and the will to gaze skyward 100 million years ago, they might have seen a very different Saturn –one without its iconic rings.

And if humans manage to survive another 100 million years, our descendants may also miss the discs of ice and dust that encircle the golden gas giant.

We live in an extraordinary era, scientists say – the brief blip in the 4.6-billion-year life of our solar system in which Saturn’s rings are visible. According to a study published this week in the planetary science journal Icarus, the material that makes up this feature is “raining” into the planet’s interior at a “worst case scenario” rate. The rings are already halfway to their death.

“We are lucky to be around” right now, the study’s lead author, James O’Donoghue, said in a statement.

Scientists have long debated whether Saturn’s rings were born with the planet or are a relatively new acquisition. Some models suggest that the ring material is debris left over from the planet’s formation more than four billion years ago. But others theorize that the rings formed when objects like comets, asteroids or even moons broke apart in orbit around the massive planet.

It’s hard to imagine the sixth planet from the sun without its most famous feature. Though Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are also banded, Saturn’s adornment is by far the most impressive in the solar system. The planet’s rings are more than 270,000 kilometres across and are bright enough to be visible with a child’s telescope.

And although they look solid from Earth, observations by the Voyager and Cassini spacecraft have revealed that the rings are instead made of floating bits of material, ranging in

and the main rings.

size from as small as specks to larger than the Empire State Building.

They stay suspended around the planet’s midsection through a careful balance of gravity, which tries to pull the material inward, and their orbital velocity, which seeks to sling them into space.

But sometimes ring particles get electrically charged by light from the sun or other cosmic phenomena. This makes them susceptible to the siren song of Saturn’s magnetic field, which bends inward at the rings.

The particles slide along magnetic field lines into the planet’s atmosphere, where they va-

porize, generating glowing, charged hydrogen and droplets of water.

O’Donoghue and his colleagues observed this phenomenon with the huge Keck telescope in Hawaii and concluded that a combination of Saturn’s gravity and magnetism pulls an Olympic-size swimming pool worth of material into the planet every 30 minutes.

Combining this analysis with data collected by the departed Cassini spacecraft, which dove through the rings before plunging into Saturn last year, O’Donoghue predicts that the rings have less than 100 million years to live.

Look up while you can.

U.S. announces creation of Space Command

Christian DAVENPORT Citizen news service

WASHINGTON — U.S. Vice President Mike Pence announced Tuesday that the White House had directed the Pentagon to form a Space Command, a significant step toward the administration’s ultimate goal of establishing a department known as the Space Force that would become the first new branch of the Armed Services since the Air Force was created in 1947. While the Space Force would need congressional approval, U.S. President Donald Trump could establish a command, which Pence said at a speech at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida would be led by a four-star general and consolidate the 18,000 military and civilian personnel who work on national security issues in space. The announcement follows a speech in August in which Pence had said the White House would push to set up a command by the end of the year to help it fight war in space the way the Indo-Pacific Command oversees those regions.

The announcement follows a speech in August in which (U.S. Vice President Mike) Pence had said the White House would push to set up a command by the end of the year to help it fight war in space...

For years, lawmakers and Pentagon officials have been increasingly concerned with actions by the Russians and Chinese targeting sensitive United States satellites. The United States military is dependent on a network of orbiting spacecraft that perform all sorts of essential functions, including missile warning, GPS and guiding precision munitions, communication and even spying. But many of those satellites were put up at

a time when space was considered a peaceful domain. In recent years, however, potential adversaries have demonstrated an ability to take them out with missiles or to jam with an array of technologies including lasers.

To combat those advancements, Pence said the United States needs to act quickly to ensure that “American national security is as dominant in space as it is on Earth.”

The new combatant command would be the Pentagon’s 11th, sitting alongside those that oversee geographic regions, such as Europe and operations, such as the Special Forces. Pence said that the White House has been working with Congress on legislation to stand up a full Space Force by the end of 2020. But it’s unclear whether that proposal has enough support to pass.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has said it would cost as much as $13 billion to establish a new branch of the military. But other estimates, including from Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, have said it would cost far less, even below $5 billion.

Scientists lobby Mexico over endangered porpoise

Mark STEVENSON Citizen news service

MEXICO CITY — A group of prominent scientists issued an appeal Wednesday to Mexico’s new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, calling on him to take the unprecedented step of outlawing the possession of gill nets in the upper Gulf of California to save the critically endangered vaquita porpoise.

The vaquita is the world’s smallest and most endangered porpoise, and lives only in the Gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortez.

Experts say as few as 15 of the marine mammals remain in the wild, and none have ever been held in captivity. The vaquita has been driven to the brink of extinction by gill nets set illegally to catch totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder commands astronomical prices and is considered a delicacy in China. Vaquitas become entangled in the totoaba nets and drown.

While the Mexican government has banned the use of such nets in the vaquita’s known range, the rule has been almost impossible to enforce.

So the scientists are calling in an open letter to Lopez Obrador’s top environmental officials that the government ban possession of the nets in the whole area.

The researchers also called for land patrols and inspections of boats setting out to sea to enforce the ban. At present, authorities patrol the area but poachers often flee in highpowered boats and make it to shore.

“This is the only practical option for effectively enforcing the law,” wrote the scientists.

THE REGISTER-GUARD PHOTO BY CHRIS PIETSCH VIA AP Juniper the dog gives Santa Claus a kiss a during the Santa Paws photo shoot to benefit the Greenhill Humane Society in Eugene, Ore., on Dec. 16. The Lorentz equation shows that the faster Santa’s sleigh flies, the slower time passes for him.

This image was made as the Cassini spacecraft scanned across Saturn and its rings on April 25, 2016, capturing three sets of red, green and blue images to cover this entire scene showing the planet

TODD WHITCOMBE

Relativity

U.S. Fed bumps interest rate

Martin CRUTSINGER

Citizen news service

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate Wednesday for the fourth time this year to reflect the U.S. economy’s continued strength but signalled that it expects to slow its rate hikes next year.

Despite the forecast for fewer hikes, investors sent stocks plunging once Chairman Jerome Powell began a news conference, apparently disappointed that Powell didn’t go further to signal a slowdown in rate increases.

Wednesday’s quarter-point increase, to a range of 2.25 per cent to 2.5 per cent, lifted the Fed’s benchmark rate to its highest point since 2008. It will mean higher borrowing costs for many consumers and businesses.

The Fed’s move came despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks in recent weeks on its rate hikes and on Powell personally. The president has complained that the moves are threatening the economy. At a news conference after the Fed’s announcement, Powell said Trump’s tweets and statements would have no bearing on the central bank’s policymaking.

The statement the Fed issued Wednesday after its latest policy meeting said that only “some” further gradual rate increases are likely; previously, it spoke simply of “further gradual increases.” And its new forecast projects two rate hikes next year, down from three the Fed had predicted in September.

U.S. stocks had been up sharply before the Fed’s announcement, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down about 352 points. Bond prices surged, though, sending yields lower.

The central bank has raised rates with steady regularity as the U.S. economy has strengthened. Wednesday’s was the Fed’s ninth hike since it began gradually tightening credit three years ago. But a mix of factors – a global slowdown, a U.S.-China trade war, still-mild inflation, stomachchurning drops in stock prices – has led the Fed to consider slowing its rate hikes to avoid weakening the economy too much. It’s now likelier, as Powell said at his news conference, to suit its rate policy to the latest economic data, to become more flexible or, in Fed parlance, “datadependent.” Powell acknowledged the shift in the Fed’s strategy.

U.S. stocks had been up sharply before the Fed’s announcement, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down about 352 points.

“We’re going to be letting incoming data inform our thinking about the appropriate path” of future rate increases, he said. In recent years, the Fed has managed to telegraph its actions weeks in advance to prepare the financial markets for any shift. But now, the risks of a surprise could rise. Next year, Powell will begin holding a news conference after each of the Fed’s eight meetings each year, rather than only quarterly. This will allow him to explain any abrupt policy changes. But it also raises the risk that the Fed will jolt the markets by catching them off guard.

Some analysts say the Fed might want to pause in its credittightening to assess how the economy fares in the coming months in light of the headwinds it faces. Contributing to this perception is Powell’s view that rates appear to be just below the level the Fed calls “neutral,” where they’re thought to neither stimulate growth nor impede it.

Asked at his news conference whether the Fed’s key rate is near neutral, the chairman said he thinks it’s at the “lower end” of a neutral range.

His comment reinforced the notion that the Fed might be poised

Clean technology fund gets support

CALGARY (CP) — An industry-sponsored fund designed to help develop clean technology using Canadian natural gas is launching a $3-million call for project proposals.

The Natural Gas Innovation Fund says the call for applications, with a February deadline, is being made possible by the addition of seven western Canadian natural gas producers to a membership previously made up of six natural gas utilities.

The new members include the Canadian branches of two partners in the proposed $40-billion West Coast LNG Canada project: Royal Dutch Shell and Petronas; along with Canada’s largest natural gas producer, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.

Fund managing director John Adams says the new program will target projects in the upstream or producing part of the industry, making up to $1 million available per project to cover as much as 25 per cent of its eligible expenses.

Adams says the fund, created by the

to slow or halt its rate hikes to avoid weakening the economy. For now, most U.S. economic barometers are still showing strength. The unemployment rate is 3.7 per cent, a 49-year low. The economy is thought to have grown close to three per cent this year, its best performance in more than a decade. Consumers, the main driver of the economy, are spending freely.

After the two rates increases that the Fed now envisions for next year, it foresees one final hike by 2020, which would raise it benchmark rate to 3.1 per cent. By 2021, four Fed officials envision reversing course and actually cutting rates to help stimulate the economy.

The Fed’s new forecasts also reduce the long-run level for its benchmark rate to 2.8 per cent from three per cent. In doing so, the Fed is signalling that it doesn’t need to tighten credit much further to keep the economy from overheating. Its statement described the economy as strong. But it did note potential threats by adding language to say it would monitor global developments and assess their impact on the economy.

In its updated outlook, the Fed

Canadian Gas Association, has over the past two years issued about $9 million to projects focused on energy efficiency.

The fund is also announcing a partnership with federal, Alberta and British Columbia governments to collaborate and consider co-funding successful applicants with projects that deliver significant greenhouse gas emission reductions.

The upstream fund members were introduced at an event at the Calgary Petroleum Club on Wednesday.

“As a producer of natural gas, we’re big believers in the need for affordable, clean energy for all people worldwide,” said CEO Mark Fitzgerald of Petronas Energy Canada Ltd. in a statement.

“In an age where technology has become the catalyst for exponential advancements in our industry, we’re excited to be involved in the Natural Gas Innovation Fund which pursues diversity of thought and provides a platform for sharing solutions.”

lowered its forecast for growth next year to 2.3 per cent from the 2.5 per cent it foresaw three months ago. It predicts two per cent growth in 2020. Those estimates are far below the Trump administration’s insistence that its tax cuts would help accelerate annual growth to three per cent in coming years.

Given the still-healthy U.S. economy, the Fed would normally keep gradually raising rates to make sure growth didn’t overheat and ignite inflation. But this time, the risks to the economy seem to be rising. From China to Europe, major economies are weakening. Trump’s trade conflict with Beijing could, over time, undermine the world’s two largest economies.

There are also fears that the brisk pace of U.S. growth this year reflected something of a sugar high, with the economy artificially pumped up by tax cuts and a boost in government spending. The benefit of that stimulus will likely fade in 2019, slowing growth to a more modest pace.

And as U.S. interest rates have risen, loan-sensitive sectors of the economy, from housing to autos, have begun to weaken.

In addition, the Fed has been gradually shrinking the vast portfolio of Treasury and mortgage bonds it built up after the 2008 financial crisis. This process is thought to have had the effect of putting further upward pressure on borrowing rates for consumers and businesses.

Labatt partners with cannabis producer Tilray

(CP) — The parent company of Labatt Breweries of Canada has struck a research deal with Tilray Inc. that’s expected to result in the creation of a variety of non-alcoholic beverages containing some of the active ingredients found in cannabis.

Tilray chief executive Brendan Kennedy says that the B.C.-based cannabis producer and the Canadian arm of brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev will set up a joint venture to build on the expertise of their respective businesses.

Each partner has committed to provide the equivalent of about $67.5 million of funding to the joint venture, which has yet to be named.

There’s also no time-table yet for when the joint venture will have drinks ready to sell on the Canadian market. Current federal law allows non-medical use dried cannabis by adults but other forms of marijuana aren’t yet legal for recreational use in Canada.

Molson Coors Canada and HEXO Corp., a Quebec-based cannabis producer, announced a similar partnership in August. Alcohol producer Constellations Brands Inc. invested $5 billion in Canopy Growth Corp. the same month.

Kennedy says Tilray’s strategy is to partner with global companies, like AB InBev, that can help it eventually grow beyond Canada.

Reserve’s move Wednesday to increase interest rates and provide a more dovish outlook that didn’t go far enough for investors. Markets were trading higher until the 2 p.m. announcement, after which they plunged to set new lows for the year before rising a bit but not enough to prevent the lowest closings so far in 2018. The moves were “massive” for about an hour, said Michael Currie, vice-president and investment adviser at TD Wealth.

“It’s really almost impossible to find a reason for those types of up and down moves of 400 points (on the Dow Jones) within a very short time span,” he said in an interview.

The quarter-point rate hike was broadly expected, but investors thought the U.S. central bank would be more dovish than it was by saying it was looking for two rate hikes in 2019 instead of three. Some observers thought it would signal just one or no more hikes next year.

“So technically they toned it down, but not as much as people thought they would.”

The S&P/TSX composite index closed at a new low for the year, losing 152.83 points to 14,264.06 after hitting 14,272.38. The decreases were widespread, led by health care and the more influential materials and financial sectors. Energy was the best performer on the day, falling just slightly on the day even though the price of oil bounced back from three days of losses.

The February crude contract was up US$1.57 at US$48.17 per barrel.

Several large Canadian energy names posted sizable gains, including Crescent Point Energy Corp., Vermillion Energy Inc., Whitecap Resources Inc., Enbridge Inc. and Baytex Energy Corp. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 351.98 points at 23,323.66. The S&P 500 index was off by 39.20 points to 2,506.96, while the Nasdaq composite was down 147.08 points at 6,636.86.

Wednesday’s market losses marked a resumption of a negative pattern since October.

“It’s the worst December since the Great Depression, so the selling is just continuing,” said Currie, adding that time is quickly running out to end the year with a so-called Santa Claus rally.

“It

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell listens to a question during a news conference in Washington in September.

Beaudry back on World Cup for Canada

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

Serving notice

St. Rose a top-25 finisher at junior national meet

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

tclarke@pgcitizen.ca

Keanan St. Rose knew that one little slip that began his weekend on the short track speed skating ice in Calgary wasn’t going to ruin it. Making his debut as one of 32 male skaters in the Canadian junior championships at the Olympic Oval, the 16-year-old from Prince George dug in his blades and raised his game to a new level.

Unfazed by his fall in his opening 1,500-metre race on Friday, St. Rose blasted into the top-20 qualifiers and finished 11th in the 500m event Saturday and ended up fourth in the C-final. Then on Sunday, he was just twohundredths of a second from making it into the top bracket.

St. Rose placed 25th out of 32 in the overall standings – a satisfying result considering he still has two more years ahead of him in the junior under-19 competition.

“I didn’t get the results I wanted but I think still skated pretty well,” said St. Rose. “I got disqualified in the 1,500 unfortunately but the 500s went well and I’m happy with how I did there. I was really close to my PB, 43.3. My times got progressively faster, if not the same time.

“I like the sprints and the adrenaline rush.”

Quebec sent 52 of the 64 qualified skaters and locked up five of the eight Team Canada spots (four skaters in each gender) to compete in the ISU world junior championships in Montreal, Jan. 25-27.

Quebec skaters have dominated Canada’s national teams for decades and racing them in a competition with so much at stake was a new experience for St. Rose, who grew up racing mostly regional and provincial meets with the Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club. Last year, as a 15-year-old, he was ranked 33rd in Canada and just missed the cut for junior nationals.

“They’re really aggressive,” said St. Rose, “but it’s good.” St. Rose moved to Calgary with his family

over the summer and is getting more than double the icetime training with the Olympic Oval program than what he was used to in Prince George and it’s made a difference having peers to train with who can match his speed.

He and Craig Miller of the Blizzard club are now living in Calgary, as is long tracker Eric Orlowsky. One other Blizzard skater, Kieran Hanson, a long track racer will join the three Blizzard alumni on Team B.C. for the Canada Winter Games in February in Red Deer. The short track and long track events are scheduled for the first week of the Games, Feb. 12-19.

“I’m super-excited for Canada Games, it’s going to be a lot of fun just to be with my buddies and everyone there,” St. Rose said.

In the leadup to Canada Games, St. Rose and Miller will compete in the Western Elite Circuit meet No. 2, Jan. 18-20 in Calgary. They will also travel to Montreal for the Canadian Open national qualifying meet, Feb. 1-3. Orlowsky and Hanson have Canada Cup races in Calgary Jan. 3-6 and Jan. 25-27.

Spruce Kings finishing 2018 on the road

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

Two more work days to strut their hockey stuff and then the Prince George Spruce Kings head home for some rest and relaxation in the eight-day Christmas break. If all goes according to plan, they’ll win their games tonight in Langley and Friday night in Surrey and remain the kings of the B.C. Hockey League.

The Langley Rivermen and Surrey Eagles, their opponents the next two nights, obviously have other ideas and won’t lack motivation playing in their home rinks trying to knock off the first-overall Kings.

Prince George (24-9-1-2) has 51 points, one point ahead of the second-overall Chilliwack Chiefs (25-11-0-0), their Mainland Division rivals. Langley (16-18-1-0) is fourth in the Mainland, eight points behind third-place Coquitlam.

Surrey (8-25-1-2) still ranks last overall in the 17-team league but as the Eagles showed last weekend while gaining a split in Prince George, they’re playing better hockey lately and are creeping up on the Cowichan Valley Capitals, who have a five-point edge on the Eagles for 16th place and the last playoff spot.

“These are obviously two important games, they’re divisional

Every game in our division seems to be pretty tight and Langley can win any night.

— Spruce Kings coach Adam Maglio

games and we need to make sure we stay focused going into the break here,” said Spruce Kings head coach Adam Maglio. “It can be easy to sway away a bit because both teams are playing in the same boat, so we need to be mentally sharp and make sure we finish up when the buzzer goes on Friday night, not any time earlier.

“Every game in our division seems to be pretty tight and Langley can win any night. They play teams hard and play teams close and probably they’re thinking a few could have gone their way too. They’re pretty good in their home rink.”

Except for one game, an 8-1 loss in Prince George Nov. 9, the Rivermen have been tough opponents. The Kings have won three games in the season series by the slimmest of margins and lost a 2-1 decision to Langley the night after

the big blowout. The Kings will get a boost with the return of defenceman Layton Ahac, who helped Canada West win bronze at the World Junior A Challenge last week in Bonnyville, Alta. The 17-year-old Ohio State recruit is listed as a B prospect (potential second- or thirdround draft pick) in next year’s NHL draft and has been invited to the CJHL Top Prospects Game Jan. 22 in Okotoks, Alta., a gathering of 40 of the highest-ranked junior A players in Canada. He missed four games while he was with Canada West.

“We’re getting a real special player back in our lineup,” said Maglio.

“Our guys did a real good job, especially the D playing short without him and with affiliated players. Obviously Ahac in our

lineup makes us a much better team.”

On Friday the Spruce Kings will likely face Eagles goalie Hayden Missler, the BCHL player of the week who stopped 71 of 74 shots in the two-game series at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena. Missler gave up a late goal last Friday and lost 2-1 to the Spruce Kings, making 32 saves, then was the central figure in Surrey’s 2-1 win over Prince George Saturday. He made 39 saves to preserve the win while his team was outshot 40-9. The Spruce Kings left the ice after that game seething with frustration, madder than Maglio has ever seen them.

“Those ones happen, (the coaches) weren’t upset with our team’s play by any means, we were much better than we were the night prior,” said Maglio. “It’s more about bearing down on our chances and finding a way around the net to capitalize. We certainly had more than our fair share of chances and most nights you’ll win those games.

“The group puts pressure on themselves to play at a high level every night and we don’t like losing. Guys want to win every night and that’s a good team culture for sure.”

Kings defenceman Dylan Anhorn (concussion) and winger Garrett Worth (knee) remain sidelined and won’t play the next two games.

Sarah Beaudry is back in the big leagues of biathlon. The 24-year-old from Prince George is in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, preparing for BMW World Cup races later this week and it’s all because she’s been doing so well on the secondbest biathlon circuit on the planet, the IBU Cup. Biathlon Canada has named Beaudry to the World Cup team for the second trimester after she posted three top-eight results over the past two weeks at IBU Cup events in Ridnaun, Italy, and Idre, Sweden. Beaudry, who ranks 16th in the overall IBU Cup standings, will join World Cup veterans Megan Tandy of Prince George and Rosanna Crawford of Canmore on the Canadian team. The races in Nove Mesto start today with the men’s 10-kilometre sprint, followed by the women’s 7.5 km sprint on Friday. Pursuit races are scheduled for Saturday, with mass start races on Sunday.

Canada will have four men in today’s men’s sprint – Scott Gow of Canmore will start fifth, followed in 36th position by his brother Christian, then Brendan Green of Hay River, N.W.T., (54th) and Jules Burnotte of Sherbrooke, Que., (94th). Burnotte, 23, is taking the place of Nathan Smith of Calgary, Canada’s most decorated male biathlete. Smith, 32, announced his retirement this week due to an energy-sapping health condition known as cytomegalovirus, which he first developed two years ago.

In 2012, Smith became the first Canadian male to make the World Cup podium when he won silver in a sprint race. He won gold in a pursuit that year and in 2016 combined with Green and the Gow brothers to win bronze, Canada’s first-ever relay medal, at the world championships.

“We are such underdogs in this sport,” Smith told the Rocky Mountain Outlook. “Even though I didn’t accomplish every goal, especially in the last two years, it’s still amazing to me that I had the privilege to stand on the world championships podium as an individual, and also as a team with the men’s relay. I never dreamt in my wildest dreams that either of those would happen when I first began racing internationally and realized the level of the European countries.”

Bobcats bringing bite to ice in B.C. bantam league

Ted CLARKE Citizen staff

The North Central Bobcats have lived up to their nickname. They’ve been plenty fearsome as first-year predators in the B.C. Hockey double-A bantam zone program and proved that to a home audience at the Kin Centre a couple weeks ago, reeling off a pair of convincing wins over the North East Trackers of Fort St. John. Now 16 games into their inaugural season in what is now an eight-team league, the Bobcats have risen to the top of the heap with 12 victories, one regulation loss and three ties. Heading into the Christmas break they’re six points clear of second-place OMAHA North of Vernon (10-4-1-0)

Bobcats head coach Mirsad Mujcin had just four players back from his Prince George Tier 1 bantam team last season but the Bobcats have adapted to the zone concept which allowed them to pick players from the region. A bulk of the roster played together as peewees on the Prince George team that won provincial

bronze in 2017. “First in the league, it’s been pretty exciting,” said Mujcin. “The kids are playing hard and playing well. I knew it was going to be a strong team. We had a good core of players that stayed in town and both goalies have been superb this year and they’ve been handling the pressure. “The kids are enjoying this. There’s a lot of travel involved. We wouldn’t mind getting into more tournament play and playing some different teams.” — see HIGH-OCTANE, page 10

Meanwhile, the IBU Cup tour resumed Wednesday in Obertilliach, Austria, where Megan Bankes of Calgary was the top Canadian in the women’s 15 km individual race, posting a season-best 11th-place result. Bankes was 1:09.4 behind gold medalist Caroline Colombo of France, who finished in 42:11.6. Nadine Horchler of Germany was six-tenths of a second off the winning pace. Elisabeth Hoegberg of Sweden won bronze, 18.4 seconds behind. Emily Dickson, a Caledonia Nordic Ski Club member from Burns Lake, was 44th, 4:43.7 behind Colombo. She missed three of 20 targets. Nadia Moser of Whitehorse, Yukon, was 69th and Darya Sepandj of Calgary was 91st. In the men’s 20 km individual event, Carsen Campbell of Bedeque, P.E.I., turned in his best finish of the season when he finished 10th. He hit 20 of 20 targets and was 3:02.1 off the winning pace. Simon Fourcade of France won in 50:1.9, shooting clean in four rounds. Sivert Guttorm Bakken of Norway was 59 seconds behind in silver medal position and bronze medalist Sergey Bocharnikov of Belarus was 21.83 behind. In other Canadian results, Aidan Millar of Canmore was 18th and Adam Runnalls of Calgary was 76th.

Prince George product Keanan St. Rose leads the pack during a 1,000-metre race last Saturday at the Canadian junior short track speed skating championships in Calgary.

Penguins top Capitals in feisty affair

Citizen news service

WASHINGTON — The calendar said December. The intensity felt like late spring.

The third meeting this season between longtime rivals Pittsburgh and Washington featured tight checking, strong goaltending and more than a few punches. The Penguins won 2-1 on Wednesday night, yet the Capitals appreciated the ferocity with which the game was played.

“It was a good game, especially this time of year, one with playoff mentality,” Washington goaltender Braden Holtby said. “We haven’t had one of those since Vegas.” Holtby was referring to the 2018 Stanley Cup final, when the Capitals beat the Golden Knights to earn their first championship. Washington came in with five straight wins and a 12-2 record since Nov. 14.

“Obviously, you don’t want to end up on the losing side, but I think we did a lot of good things tonight and both teams played really well,” Holtby said. “It’s one you can really learn from.”

Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust scored for the Penguins. They were scuffling along with a 1512-6 record before playing one of their best games of the season.

come to an end, one shy of the franchise record.

Lars Eller put the Capitals up 1-0 at 6:38 of the second period, pushing the puck past Murray after taking a lead pass from Tom Wilson.

Crosby tied it less than three minutes later, deflecting a pass from Evgeni Malkin into the right side of the net with Pittsburgh on the power play.

Rust made it 2-1 with just over a minute left in the period, hacking away at the puck in front of the net before it finally popped Holtby.

In the third period, Holtby snagged a shot by Malkin on a breakaway to keep Washington within striking distance.

Twice over the final 20 minutes, Kuznetsov took shots that slipped through Murray’s legs, only to be swatted away by Pittsburgh defencemen an inch before sliding past the goal line.

“We’ve got to build on it,” Crosby said. “It’s a divisional game, a rivalry, a team that we’ve seen a lot, so these kind of intense, emotional games seem to bring out the best in us. We understand we need that same intensity, same desperation every night if we want to win.”

Crosby needs to bring his game to a higher level.

It was the third meeting this season between the rivals, each of which has been decided by one goal. Pittsburgh has won two of them. In this one, Crosby had a hand in both Pittsburgh goals and logged more than 22 minutes.

Facing Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals is all the motivation

“When you play these rival-type games, there’s an elevated level of emotion associated with it,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “My experience of being around Sid is that he’s at his best in those situations.”

Rust broke a 1-1 tie late in the second period with his sixth goal in five games, and the Penguins held on behind goaltender Matt

Murray, who stopped 31 shots.

“They’re a heck of a team,” Murray said. “They won last year for a reason. They gave us all we could handle.”

Ovechkin was held without a goal for the first time in seven games and had his career-high run of games with a point end at 14.

In addition, Washington’s Evgeny Kuznetsov had his streak of eight straight games with an assist

Canadian juniors stop Swiss 5-3 in tune-up

VICTORIA (CP) — Maxime Comtois, the lone veteran on Canada’s world junior hockey team, hopes his teammates learn from Wednesday’s victory.

Comtois had two goals and two assists in Canada’s 5-3 win over Switzerland in a pre-tournament game designed to help both squads prepare for the world junior championship that begins on Boxing Day in Vancouver and Victoria. Canada outplayed Switzerland but struggled to pull out the victory after a holding a 3-1 first-period lead.

Comtois, the only returning player from last year’s gold-medal team, expects the team to get better as the tournament progresses.

“It’s a good thing this one is out of the

way,” he said. “We showed a lot of poise in the third period and we found a way.”

Comtois scored an empty-net goal late in the third after the Swiss team fought back from the 3-1 deficit.

“We’re going to figure this out tomorrow,” said Comtois, who expected the team to regroup after Wednesday’s performance.

Canada coach Tim Hunter was pleased with the team’s first and third periods, but there was a letdown in the second.

“We just took our foot off the gas a bit,” he said. “We just didn’t play as hard as we could in the second. I hope this is our worst game in this process.”

Hunter said after the second period the players were told to show leadership and

push harder. He said he expects the video review of the second period letdown to be a major focus as the team prepares for its next pre-tournament game Friday in Victoria against Slovakia.

Cody Glass, Owen Tippet and Jack Studnicka also scored for Canada, which opens the tournament Dec. 26 in Vancouver against Denmark.

Forwards Valentin Nussbaumer, Philipp Kurashev and defenceman Tobias Geisser replied for Switzerland.

Canada peppered Swiss netminder Luca Jan Hollenstein with 41 shots, while Canadian goalie Michael DiPietro faced 17 shots. He was disappointed that he allowed three goals on so few shots.

High-octane offence part of team’s success

— from page 9

“We finally got our jerseys (at the start of December) and getting our identity was important. In the end, the players will play for the crest on their jersey and that’s what they’re doing right now.”

North Central forward Nico Myatovic leads the scoring race with 12 goals and 23 assists for 35 points in 14 games and his linemate Decker Mujcin isn’t far off that pace, fourth in league scoring with 11 goals and 28 points, while Matthew Johnston (10-17-27) and Brady McIsaac (5-22-27) are fourth and fifth respectively on the league scoring chart. Scott Cousins (178-25) and Amar Powar (15-9-24) are also

top-10 point-getters. It also helps to have a pair of lights-out netminders. Jasper Tait sports an 8-1 record and 2.10 goals-against average and Tysen Smith has allowed just 1.5 goals per game and is undefeated with a 4-0-2 record.

Forwards Myatovic, Mujcin and defencemen Tye Peters and Zach Leslie are the returning players. In league play they’ve ventured as far southeast as Cranbook and as far north as Whitehorse. Including tournaments, the Bobcats have lost just three games all season. “We want to focus on puck possession and not making sloppy plays to get rid of it with

unnecessary dumps and when we carry the puck a lot the puck movement becomes easier and they get more comfortable with it and it’s been showing,” said coach Mujcin. “They get their points from it.”

The North Central zone teams replace the Prince George Tier 1 bantam and midget teams that in previous years competed in the Okanagan Mainline Amateur Hockey Association and for provincial titles. The bantam Bobcats will host the provincial championship in March.

After a week off for Christmas, the Bobcats will head to Kamloops to compete in the prestigious Kamloops International Bantam Ice Hockey Tournament, Jan. 2-6. The

Early on, it was apparent that this wasn’t just another midseason game. With less than a minute elapsed, Wilson and Pittsburgh defenceman Jamie Oleksiak shed their gloves and got into a fight. Oleksiak was helped off the ice with a cut on his cheek, and both players received five-minute penalties. Oleksiak did not return.

Four minutes later, Ovechkin and Kris Letang traded blows behind the Pittsburgh net before being sent to the penalty box for roughing.

The scoreless first period featured more penalty minutes (18) than shots on goal (17).

“There’s definitely room for improvement in my game,” said DiPietro. “As the game went on I felt more comfortable.” Ian Scott will start in goal for Canada on Friday against Slovakia. Swiss coach Christian Wohlwend liked his team’s performance. He said the Swiss players, who are getting used to the smaller ice surface in Canada, fought back after being dominated and outscored in the first period.

He said being in a close game with Canada late in the third period is a huge morale boost for his team because the Swiss are largely known for their skills as yodellers and not hockey players but that is changing.

Bobcats will compete in the Randy Lindros Tier 1 Division with the Trackers, Abbotsford, Balgonie (Sask.), Pursuit of Excellence Prep (Kelowna), Vancouver, Victoria, Yale, Chilliwack, Comox Valley, Thompson Blazers, Yukon, Alaska, Edmonton, Mission and the South Zone Knights.

The Bobcats open on Jan. 2 against Victoria Racquet Club. North Central also meets Yale Varsity Lions (Jan. 3) and the Vancouver T-birds (Jan. 4). Playoffs start Jan. 4 and the Tier 1 championship game will be played on Sunday, Jan. 6 at 1:30 p.m. The Bobcats host their home tournament at the Kin Centre, Jan. 18-20, then will be in Edmonton for a tournament, Feb. 1-3.

AP PHOTO

Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Matt Murray watches the puck slip out of his glove during Wednesday’s game against the host Washington Capitals. The Penguins won 2-1.

Lopez makes own opportunity with Second Act

Lindsey BAHR Citizen news service

Jennifer Lopez learned a long time ago that in the entertainment business you can’t just sit around waiting for opportunities, you have to make them for yourself. It’s the simple reason Second Act, her first film in three years and her long-awaited return to the glossy, modern-day fairy tale, exists.

“I’m quite particular,” Lopez said on a recent afternoon in Los Angeles. “I’ve been offered a couple of movies over the past couple of years but unless it’s the right thing and I get the right types of opportunities, I’d rather create them. That’s mine and Elaine’s mantra. We don’t force things, but we don’t wait around either. If no one is giving us the stories that we want to tell, then we’ll create them ourselves.”

Elaine is Elaine GoldsmithThomas, Lopez’s longtime friend and producing partner who’ve worked together on projects like The Boy Next Door and Shades of Blue. Second Act, which hits theatres Friday, was her idea. She thought that Lopez would be the right woman to play the 40-yearold big box store worker with business savvy but no degree who gets a chance to prove herself to Madison Avenue’s elite. A little bit Working Girl, a little bit It’s A Wonderful Life, it was right up Lopez’s ally.

“We’re stuck on these movies because we know, we grew up on them and we know. They’re necessary. People need inspiration. They need to believe in a fairy tale,” Lopez said. “I think that is the evolution of the romantic comedy. It’s not so much about falling in love with Prince Charming, it’s about falling in love with yourself and your life and realizing that you have to be the love of your life.” Lopez, 49, said she even cried

Petitioners want Disney to drop Hakuna Matata trademark

Everyone who gets in business with me has to bear with me a little bit because I do so much and I always want to be great when I’m in front of you.

describing the story in a pitch meeting to STXfilms Chairman Adam Fogelson, who agreed on the spot to make the movie.

“(He) believes in these types of movies and believes in women producers,” she said.

They signed on a director, Peter Segal (50 First Dates), carved out some time in Lopez’s busy schedule (“I literally think she’s the busiest person on the planet Earth,” Segal laughed) and got to filming in New York City, which proved to be its own kind of challenge.

“It was crazy shooting in New

— Jennifer Lopez

York with her,” Segal said. “I remember one scene we’re in Central Park, going down the mall, the promenade with her, you know the same one of Kramer vs Kramer and When Harry Met Sally and there are all the vendors who are selling caricatures, and their sketches are like Michael Jackson and Barack Obama and Jennifer Lopez! It’s like, ‘Hey can we turn those around?’ She’s everywhere.”

Then there were the ever present looky-loos and paparazzi, some of whom they had to digitally erase from shots in post-

Citizen news service Hakuna Matata, a song about having no worries, is now bringing Disney worries. An online petition urging Disney to drop its trademark on the Swahili phrase attracted more than 57,000 signatures as of Wednesday morning amid anticipation for the company’s upcoming live-action remake of The Lion King.

production.

It’s just part of doing business with Lopez, an industry unto herself. She knows she is tough to pin down, but always makes sure to give her all when she’s there.

“Everyone who gets in business with me has to bear with me a little bit because I do so much and I always want to be great when I’m in front of you,” she said. “Once you get in the rhythm of that, you’re like, OK she’s going to show up. It may take her a minute for me to get her but when I get her, she’s going to be 100.”

She hopes that people find inspiration and hope in Second Act.

One person who already found himself quite emotional about the film is Lopez’s boyfriend Alex Rodriguez, who related to being self-conscious about not having a college degree.

“He didn’t get to go to college

(Yes, the one starring Donald Glover, James Earl Jones and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.) The petition states that the phrase has long been used by Swahili speakers in many African countries –Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and more – so Disney “can’t be allowed to trademark something that it didn’t invent.” Disney originally applied to trademark “hakuna matata” for use on merchandise in 1994, the

Too much going on in Aquaman

Michael

O’SULLIVAN Citizen news service

How is the Aquaman movie? A better question might be: how are the Aquaman movies?

The new action-adventure flick, a stand-alone spin-off of DC Comics’ Justice League franchise centring on the amphibious superhero Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), doesn’t register as one movie but a myriad. Some, to put it kindly, are better than others.

The overarching story is kind of poetic, a myth-like fable of a half human, half-Atlantean hero whose very nickname – conferred on him, in this telling, by social media – expresses his dual nature: part landlubber son of a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison), and part sea creature, born to the queen of the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, Atlanna (Nicole Kidman). Part fish, part fella, he’s a man at war with himself, torn between the terrestrial and the marine. That sounds pretty good, right? Except in this busy-to-the-point-ofbaroque blowfish of a movie, the titular protagonist is not really at war with himself but with a host of other external adversaries. At times, the plot feels like the 12 Labors of

Hercules, with a couple of extra thrown in just for the heck of it. There are two main villains.

The first (and most straightforward) one we meet is a high-tech pirate (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a man whose early defeat by Arthur/Aquaman – and the collateral death of the pirate’s father (Michael Beach) – drives him to become the cartoonish evildoer Manta, a bad guy in a bug suit with one thing on his mind: vengeance. The second antagonist has even more issues. He’s Arthur’s jealous half brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), the son of Atlanna and her royal consort Orvax, and the betrothed of Mera (Amber Heard), a Xebelian mermaid – with two legs instead of a tail, and an iridescent cat(fish)suit – who eventually leaves Orm and becomes Arthur’s squeeze. That romantic side story, which at times plays out like a silly, meet-cute romcom, is actually sort of entertaining, although Heard, outmatched by the screen presence of her charismatic costar, feels like a fish out of water. But it’s exhausting just to write all that, and we haven’t even dived below the surface of this 20,000-league-deep (yet surprisingly shallow) saga. Imagine having to sit through the movie, which, at 139 minutes, is about

45 minutes, and five extraneous subplots, too long. Here are a few of them: Orm wants to wage war on the humans for their pollution of the seas with trash and warships. To do so, he must defeat or persuade the other undersea kingdoms. To stop him, Arthur is tasked with finding his ancestral power-weapon, a search that will lead him and Mera on a journey to the Sahara desert, a Mediterranean village, the lair of a scary talking sea monster (voiced by Julie Andrews) and various other submarine locales, all the while pursued by Orm, Atlantean stormtroopers and Manta, who is now armed with a weapon that converts water into beams of “energized plasma.” (In other words, it’s a squirt gun.)

There are also flashbacks to the teenage Arthur (Kekoa Kekumano) receiving martial-arts training from the Atlantean courtier Vulko (Willem Dafoe).

To recap: Aquaman is an eco-conscious superhero origin story that at times is reminiscent of Clash of the (Sopping Wet) Titans, Romancing the Stone, a couple of Japanese monster movies and The Sword in the Stone. It’s also wildly in violation of nearly every law of physics. — One and a half stars out of four

because he went into the big leagues at 18 years old and he always missed that,” Lopez said. “When he saw it he was like ‘I felt inadequate because of that.’ He’s one of the greatest baseball players of all time who has made some of the biggest contracts, but it’s not about that, you can feel inadequate being measured up to others because of their privilege and intelligence.”

Lopez herself only attended one year of college, but for her, that was a choice that was necessary to jump-start her performing career. Still, she remembers feeling selfconscious and not worthy of some of her successes early on, like becoming the first Latin actress to get $1 million for a role (Selena).

“I probably didn’t realize how important it was. I was so young at the time. And there was a lot of to-do made about that,” Lopez said. “Back then you were kind of ashamed like maybe I didn’t deserve this. You come from a culture where you don’t ask for anything. But now I realize that it was important because our community needed that boost to say, ‘Yes we are just as valuable as any other actor playing leading role in Hollywood in a big film.”’ Lopez doesn’t like the word “reinvention – it implies that you have to be something different than you are – but rather she prefers evolution. And she believes change is happening in the entertainment film industry because women are forcing it to.

“It takes time for us to believe in ourselves. I didn’t believe it back then and it happened to me,” she added. “Now I’m at a point in my life where I think yes, I do have worth and value and I should be compensated in this way or that way and I do deserve to have a good life and I do deserve to have love. We all are our own activists, we all are our own change, we all are our own vessel to have the life that we deserve but we have to believe that we deserve it.”

same year it released the original Lion King. It was eventually granted the trademark in 2003, by which point American audiences probably associated the phrase with the Elton John and Tim Rice tune sung by an animated meerkat and warthog. But Disney wasn’t even the first to include the phrase in a musical number. Kenyan band Them Mushrooms featured hakuna matata in their song Jambo Bwana (Hello Mister) in 1982.

PHOTO BY BARRY WETCHER/STXFILMS VIA AP

In this image released by STXfilms, Jennifer Lopez and Milo Ventimiglia appear in a scene from Second Act.

PHOTO BY DC COMICS/WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Amber Heard plays Mera and Jason Momoa portrays Aquaman in the new Warner Bros. Pictures movie.

Autos / Recreation Automotive Wanted 1981TRANS-AM Iamlookingfora1981 whitetrans-amwitha bluebirdonthehood.Will paytopdollar. 250-962-0486 percy.johnson @outlook.com

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