Magic carpet ride
Harold Spensley works on installing
Pot smokers celebrate legalization
Armina LIGAYA Citizen news service
TORONTO — Cannabis was “flying off the shelves” in retail outlets and online stores across the country as Canadians looked to make their first-ever legal purchase of recreational pot and participate in the historic cultural moment.
Less than 24 hours after Canada became one of the few countries around the world to legalize cannabis for adult use, some private retailers were either sold out of supply or were tending to long lineups and expected to run out by the end of the day.
Newfoundland and Labrador cannabis retailer Thomas Clarke said he sold out of his cannabis supply late in the afternoon on Wednesday, and he doesn’t anticipate receiving more products until next week.
He opened his store, Thomas H. Clarke’s Distribution, at midnight in Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s, N.L., but was turning away customers by the afternoon.
“Most of my friends and people who were gonna come today were going to come after work and now I gotta let down thousands of people, which is really bad for business and for my nerves,” said Clarke.
He said he sold out of the 100 prerolled joint packages 30 minutes after midnight. Canopy Growth Inc. and Aurora Cannabis were the only two suppliers in the province with products available for the first day of sales, he added.
Wednesday marked the opening of what’s expected to be a massive market for legal sales in Canada – as much as $4 billion in the first year, according to a report from consultancy Deloitte. Still, Canadian investors were less enthusiastic than consumers, as many of the industry’s biggest players saw their stock prices fall on Wednesday. Canadians eager to make their first
legal purchase of recreational cannabis were met with long lineups at retail stores, technical glitches online and a relatively limited product selection.
Jimmy’s Cannabis in Martensville, Sask., had a lineup of more than 100 people at one point and had processed more than 200 orders by mid-afternoon, said co-owner David Thomas. — see ‘IF DEMAND, page 3
Surgical tower still on Health Minister’s radar
Mark NIELSEN Citizen news mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Amid a small flurry of health-related announcements for northern B.C., the quest to bring a new surgical tower to the University Hospital of Northern British Columbia has not been forgotten, according to B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix.
“Quite the contrary,” Dix said this week after he was in Fort St. James to announce a new Stuart Lake Hospital has been advanced to the business plan stage and in Quesnel to unveil a new urgent primary care centre.
Any concern the Fort St. James project has jumped the queue is unfounded, he said. According to a Ministry of Health press release, discussions regarding replacement of the hospital date back to 2008.
In September 2015, Northern Health submitted a concept plan for the project to Victoria and a revised version was submitted this summer and approved this month, moving the project to the business plan stage. That process will take 12 to 18 months with procurement and construction to follow.
In contrast, he noted the previous government gave Northern Health the go-ahead to proceed with a concept plan for improved and expanded surgical services at UNHBC in April 2017, just before the provincial election.
As envisioned at the time, the centrepiece is to be a six-storey building with advanced surgical suites. Concept planning work was also to be pursued for both mental health and cardiac services.
— see ‘PART OF WHAT, page 3
Anne Genovy smokes marijuana while celebrating the legalization of recreational cannabis in Vancouver on Wednesday.
Man sought after indecent act at local drug store
Citizen staff
Prince George RCMP are on the lookout for a man suspected of committing an indecent act inside a First Avenue and Tabor Boulevard drug store earlier this month.
He is described as Caucasian, 25-30 years old, fivefoot-10 with an average build, a beard – possibly reddish – and wearing a grey hoodie, long black shorts and a black and white ball cap.
The incident occurred on Oct. 4.
Anyone who may know the identity of this suspect is asked to contact the Prince George RCMP at 250561-3300 or anonymously contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online at www.pgcrimestoppers. bc.ca (English only).
If you provide information that leads to an arrest, you could be eligible for a cash reward.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Advance voting finished, election on Saturday
The all-candidates forums are over and the advance polls have all closed. General voting day for the municipal and school district elections is Saturday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The Citizen will have on our website full results and reaction from the candidates as soon as they’re available Saturday night after the polls close, followed by a full recap and analysis in Tuesday’s print edition.
In the meantime, we encourage you to take part in our online poll, which runs until Friday at noon. Make your anonymous picks for council and school board. We’ll share them online so you can com-
pare your choices with everyone else. The online poll will close at noon Friday and we’ll share our results on election night to see how they compare with the final vote. Thanks in advance for participating and get out to vote.
Apartment building clears public hearing
A four-storey 50-unit apartment complex at the foot of University Hill passed through a public hearing during city council’s Monday night meeting. It is to be located at the corner of Foothills Boulevard and Glen Shee Road – on the same property as two other buildings that make up the Forest Glen Apartments. The project should take about two years to complete, council was told.
‘If demand keeps up... we could run out of some of these products’
— from page 1
“We ran out of one strain, so we still have plenty, but it will go fast here,” he said, noting his supply might run out if demand continued at the same pace.
Meanwhile, the Natural Vibe on Water Street in St. John’s was only selling ingestible cannabis oils, after selling out of all other cannabis products at around 11:30 a.m.
Most Canadians’ first purchase of legal adult-use pot will likely be online, as there were relatively few retail stores ready on Wednesday. What’s more, the stores are unevenly spread across Canada’s vast geography. While Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick had around 20 stores open in each province, some of the most populous provinces, such as British Columbia, had just one location ready.
Ontario won’t have any physical stores until next year.
Shopify Inc., whose e-commerce software had been chosen by provinces including Ontario and several private retailers, said Canadian cannabis websites were processing roughly 100 orders per minute. The websites powered by Shopify also processed “hundreds of thousands of orders” in less than half a day, added company vice-president Loren Padelford.
Alberta’s cannabis sales portal saw a wave of traffic after it went live at 12:01 a.m., prompting the Alberta, Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis commission to put online customers into a virtual queue to avoid an outage.
“While the site had been rigorously tested, the surge of users quite simply exceeded our expectations,” said a spokeswoman for the commission. By 12:50 a.m., the queue had cleared and by 11 a.m. it had processed more than 5,000 orders.
The Ontario government’s website OCS. ca – currently the only way to buy cannabis legally in Ontario – was running smoothly, but drawing mixed early reviews on social media.
While there was product available, the number of dried cannabis items listed online continually shrunk throughout the day.
In the legislature on Wednesday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the website handled over 38,000 orders after it launched.
Meanwhile in Winnipeg, a private cannabis store was struggling to keep up with online demand as well.
Gary Symons, with Delta 9, said 100 orders were processed in the first minute or so when the company’s website went live at midnight and the online store was sold out by 4 a.m.
“Our product is literally flying off the
Two charged for allegations they fed bears along highway
Citizen news service
VICTORIA — Two people have been charged after British Columbia’s Conservation Officer Service says they posted photos of themselves on social media hand feeding Timbits and hot dogs to bears.
Conservation officer Sam Harris says it’s alleged the man and woman were feeding bears from their vehicle as they drove along the Alaska Highway. He says the charge under the Wildlife Act says a person must not intentionally feed or attempt to feed dangerous wildlife. The pair are due to appear in a Fort Nelson court next month.
A photo tweeted by the service shows what Harris says is a young grizzly being hand fed a doughnut hole. Harris says someone tipped the service to the photos posted on social media, which led to the charge.
“Our big concern with people feeding bears is that once a bear becomes habituated to people and he starts associating people with food, then they become a danger to the public,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
shelves. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “If demand keeps up like this, there is some thought that we could run out of some of these products.”
Industry players and watchers had warned to expect product shortages at the outset. Licensed producers and retailers have said it has been a compressed timeline for such a complicated endeavour.
Think-tank C.D. Howe warned in a report last week that current supplies of cannabis in the fourth quarter would only meet between 30 and 60 per cent of total demand, but it said the shortages would be “shortlived” as more producers are licensed and production capacities expand over time.
These supply issues were “widely expected” as it is a “brand new marketplace,” said Allan Rewak, the executive director of the Cannabis Council of Canada, which represents licensed medical marijuana producers.
“Over the coming weeks and months we’ll see more variation in products available through the various Crown options and private options... And it’s simply a result of a brand new stream coming online.”
Despite the bumps in the initial rollout, many consumers were ebullient at simply being able to buy a drug that had been prohibited in Canada for nearly 100 years.
At one of the six retail shops that opened in Edmonton on Wednesday, “cannistas” at Fire & Flower Cannabis helped customers make their selections and punched their orders into tablets.
“The store’s beautiful,” said Curtis Hrdlicka, the first to walk out of the shop carrying a Fire & Flower tote bag. “It’s a mix of a pharmacy and a jewellery store.”
When the doors of the cannabis store in Kamloops opened at 10 a.m. local time, the line had grown to a few dozen people and a cheer erupted from the crowd. It was the province’s first and only government-run cannabis store and Craig McCarthy drove for two hours from Chilliwack to be there, arriving at about 2 a.m.
He has been smoking cannabis for 20 years and normally purchases a form known as shatter from an illegal dispensary. He said he’ll buy marijuana online from now on instead of purchasing illegally.
“I’m just happy it’s finally here,” he said.
“It’ll absolutely change my life. It’s like a feeling, a weight lifted off your shoulders, when you’re constantly hiding it to a degree.”
— with files from Holly McKenzie-Sutter, Laura Kane, Kevin Bissett, Stephanie Marin, Steve Lambert, Chris Purdy and Michael Tutton
‘Part of what we want to do is provide better care in communities’
— from page 1
In April, when he was in Prince George to announce plans to increase hip and knee replacements at UNHBC, Dix said a concept plan for the tower was received in December 2017.
On Tuesday, he said it remains in draft form “and we’re working with them on it.”
Made up of modular buildings, Stuart Lake Hospital was opened in 1972 and was to last only 20 years. “And now we’re working on 46 years,” Dix said and contended a new hospital in Fort St. James will help take the load off UHNBC.
“Part of what we want to do is provide better care in communities,” he said.
So far this year, similar announcements have also been made for Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake, Mills Memorial Hospital in Terrace and South Peace and District Hospital in Dawson Creek to go with those in Fort St. James and Quesnel.
None of them are located in ridings held by NDP MLAs, Dix noted.
“I just make that point that I’m taking this very, very seriously,” he said. “And I believe that one of the most important
Economy,
things to do for residents of the north is to ensure their health infrastructure is there.” Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond said she’s always happy to see investment in northern B.C. and will continue to advocate for improvements to UHNBC. She said extensive work was done prior to the latest proposals for the hospital being advanced to the concept planning stage.
“Prince George is a regional hospital,” she said. “It serves people across northern British Columbia and during the tenure of our government, we made significant improvements. And the next logical step is to move forward with substantive work to increase capacity, to look at the issue of cardiac care and the planning and much of that work was done prior to agreeing to a concept plan.”
Meanwhile, work on a new inpatient unit at UHNBC remains ongoing. By the time it’s finished, the hospital’s second floor will be home to a 24-bed unit with exercise-rehabilitation, dining and common lounge areas. IDL Projects was awarded an $8-million contract to carry out the work, which is expected to be completed by early next year.
environment go hand-in-hand, says natural resources minister
KITIMAT — Canada’s natural resources minister says the environment and the economy go hand-in-hand after he toured the site of a new liquefied natural gas venture in British Columbia, days after the United Nations warned more needs to be done to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Amarjeet Sohi said Wednesday the government is showing leadership on climate change to meet the requirements of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement by putting a price on pollution, encouraging more investment in renewable energy and bringing in better regulations to reduce emissions.
“We feel that oil and gas will remain a source of energy for the foreseeable future and it is very important that Canada is expanding its non-U.S. global markets to continue to create jobs that Canadians deserve,” he said in an interview after touring the LNG Canada facility.
While the government must take action to reduce the impact of climate change, he said it also has a responsibility to reduce the country’s dependency on “one single customer” for oil and gas: the United States.
The tour of the LNG Canada joint venture in Kitimat comes after a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said there will be irreversible changes and the entire loss of some ecosystems if the world doesn’t take immediate and intensive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions far more than is occurring now. Canada will have to cut its emissions almost in half over the next 12 years to meet the stiffer targets that dozens of international climate change experts say is required to prevent catastrophic results from global warming.
Sohi said a Scotiabank report earlier this year concluded that delayed oil pipeline construction is causing a steep discount for Canadian crude, which is costing the economy about $15.6 billion a year. That revenue can be used, among other things, to transition towards a cleaner and greener economy, he said. The $40 billion LNG project that’s planned for Kitimat and a 670-kilometre pipeline delivering natural gas from the northeast corner of the province has been criticized for increasing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Citizen news service
CP PHOTO
Fred Jackson exhales while using a pipe to smoke marijuana in Vancouver on Wednesday.
This job’s a breeze
Healthier You Expo to feature BodyBreak’s Hal and Joanne
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
Canada’s favourite fitness gurus will headline this year’s Healthier You Expo.
Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod, known to television viewers nationwide as the BodyBreak duo, will be the keynote speakers when the event is held this Sunday at the College of New Caledonia, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
They’ll be there to both inform and inspire when they hit the main stage at 1 p.m., just like they did when they were in Prince George five years ago.
At that time, they had just finished competing in the inaugural season of The Amazing Race Canada – they were eliminated midway through the reality show’s run – and appeared on the premiere of This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
Fast forward to today and they remain as busy as ever. He’s 62 years old and she’s 60, but for both age is just a number. For his 60th birthday, they traveled to Ireland with daughter Sierra in tow, where they walked 163 kilometres of the Kerry Way, one of the country’s iconic and very mountainous trails, in four days.
“We did it certainly just to challenge ourselves,” Johnson said in a telephone interview from the couple’s cottage in Muskoka, Ont. “It’s like, OK, I’m 60 and I’m not dead and the whole attitude is you don’t stop playing because you get old. You get old because you stop playing.”
And to celebrate her 60th, McLeod competed in an Ironman triathlon, made up of a 2.4-mile (3.86 km) swim, a 112-mile (180.25 km) bicycle ride and a marathon 26.22-mile (42.20 km) run. Johnson said
he spent plenty of time paddling his kayak as McLeod swam the local lake to get ready.
The payoff was gaining a newfound resiliency.
“She used to just do marathons and now that she does triathlons she finds that her body doesn’t take the same kind of pounding,” Johnson said.
Among the messages they will bring is that it’s never too late to adopt healthy habits. A good first step is to surround yourself with people of like mind.
“Join a cycling club or a hiking club,” he said. “All of those people are going to have that healthy habit and you’re going to be able to just fall in line.”
As a personal goal, Johnson said he wants to be in better shape next year than he is this year. The two will spend the winter lifting weights and riding their bikes in preparation for a cycling trip in North Carolina.
“At the end of the day, your health is the most important thing you have,” he said. “Take care of it and treasure it.”
Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond will be among those attending. Along with the “household names” that are Hal and Joanne, she said there are many other good reasons to give the event a visit.
“It’s a chance to spend some time on a Sunday afternoon taking a look at some of the great organizations in our community,” Bond said.
YMCA of Northern B.C. will have a major presence as they lead demos and workouts ranging from seniors and weights to tai chi.
It’s also a chance to get a free flu shot, get your vitals checked and check out the Northern Health Connections bus.
There will also be door prizes and, for the kids, a scavenger hunt.
Upwards of 25 exhibitors are on the list.
Cod Gone Wild playing local show
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
Cod Gone Wild was a Coldsnap headliner two years ago and now they are back for another splash in Prince George.
This band is a blend of old-time Celtic music with a modern folk edge. It goes together like fish and chips.
“Through their uplifting energy, tight vocal harmonies and remarkable stage presence, they weave together a tapestry of tales that evoke a nostalgic experience of days gone by,” said concert organizers.
The Cods are comprised of lead singer/multiinstrumentalist Andrew Mercer who now calls the Okanagan home but he’s straight outta Newfoundland by original upbringing.
“Growing up in Newfoundland and being exposed to traditional music at a young age, there will always be a strong Newfoundland influence in Cod Gone Wild’s music,” said Mercer.
“Having musicians from various musical backgrounds allows us to create something a little more modern and edgy that will have a broader appeal to audiences across the country and around the world.”
Mercer is joined in the band by:
• Susan Aylard (fiddle), a classically trained violinist who also currently performs with the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra and has performed in venues all over the world;
• Sean Bray (electric guitar), a well-respected guitarist that studied at the Manhattan School of Music. CBC Radio named Bray as one of Canada’s top 50 guitarists of all time;
• Martyn Jones (bass), an accomplished studio and live bassist who has over 70 album credits to his name and an Aboriginal Music Award-winning album with Art Napoleon;
• David Mihal (drums) a studio drummer for artists all over the world who has toured with the likes of Rita Chiarelli, Shawne Jackson, Oliver Jones and Refugee forerunner Michael Fury.
Cod Gone Wild is in the middle of a double tour, celebrating their most recent studio album called The Islander and also hinting at their soonto-be-released Christmas album.
The Cod Gone Wild concert happens Saturday at The Legion starting at 8 p.m.
Tickets for the show are available in person at Central Interior Tickets, 3540 Opie Cres., on-line at www.centralinteriortickets.com or by phone at 250-596-0020.
Tickets are $20 (plus fees) in advance and $25 at the door (if available).
CITIZEN
City crews blow the leaves off of Connaught Hill park Wednesday afternoon.
Art show looks to preserve degradation
Frank PEEBLES Citizen staff fpeebles@pgcitizen.ca
The flakes of old industrial activity have been swept by Colin Lyons into a new arrangement. Their previous uses are still hinted at, but they have been altered or replicated or reimagined into Prototypes for the Preservation of Degradation.
Preserving degradation is a time loop, a catch-22, a cycle of things held up for observation as they are falling apart. Lyons has captured this condition in his new and all original art exhibition, and he has added value as well. The degrading pieces of chain and concrete, spikes and steel hooks, have in many cases been polished or artistically enhanced to amplify their voices from the past.
In some cases, Lyons has used the remnants of his own main medium, printmaking, to make recycled figures of industry out of his own industry. He did this by using zinc etching plates to shape other items like miniature buildings, replicas of the buildings that surrounded him in a transitioning neighbourhood of Montreal when he lived there.
“This part of the show is called Boomtown,” he said. “I did it back in 2007-09, it’s the oldest part of this exhibition.” He observed the large old warehouses and light industrial buildings around the Lachine Canal were often empty, unkempt and in some cases being converted to totally different uses. He took his used print plates and repurposed them for the miniature replicas that he piled up in a faux scrap heap at the centre of the Boomtown chapter of the exhibition.
“Using them in that form made them obsolete but also gave them a second purpose, which is what I was seeing in Montreal,” he said.
Boomtown set in motion a decade of similar work. He moved to seven provinces or states in that past 10 years, always exploring the concept of old industry fading away and new uses growing through the cracks in that concrete.
One of the places he lived was Kamloops and there, despite having to bend some railroad rules, managed to find and make a study of Six Mile Mill, an abandoned sawmill north of the downtown only accessible across rail company land.
Part of what he did was take found objects there and treat them with printmaking
chemicals “not the way a chemist would use them but more as an alchemist would,” but also make replicas so there was a juxtaposition of old steel made to look newer and new creations made to look like those abandoned and rusting old bits of machinery. That chapter is called New Monuments/Old Foundations.
Another chapter looks at the Chicago Harbour Lock that played a role in halting a cholera outbreak when that city’s sewage and drinking water met in the same spot on Lake Michigan. These reflective representations of old and new, cutting edge and obsolescence, fill the entire Canfor North display space at the Two Rivers Gallery. The craft of printmaking is ever-present in spite of all the different components that make up the
overall exhibition. Some have been on public display before, some is new, and it has never been assembled by Lyons into a single aggregate show like this one.
“I’m trying to think about printmaking, about obsolescence, about the way we represent industry in history, about all the processes,” Lyons said.
“We can represent these time spans without glorifying them, or being sentimental. We can look back, we can assess, we can also add new labour to it and make it something somewhat different. I am imbedding labour into this new history.”
Our own new history has to accommodate new thinking in the way industry is set up and the way lives are lived. Like the extreme wildfires of B.C. becoming so routine it must now be considered the “new normal,”
so to are previous flood plains and storm patterns and other environmental conditions no longer applicable to the previously understood time frames.
“We can’t calculate what normal will be, in the new frames of time,” Lyons said.
“I’m trying to confront that we are hitting the point of no return. If we don’t do something now to fix it, we will need technosolutions, and that will trigger their own unpredictable changes. Every industrial action has its side effects.”
Lyons will be at the Two Rivers Gallery tonight for an artist’s talk as part of the unveiling of Prototypes for the Preservation of Degradation. The free public reception gets underway at 7:30 p.m. All are welcome and refreshments will be available.
Group warning of health risks of marijuana
Citizen news service
A coalition of groups concerned about the health risks associated with marijuana is calling legalization a “dark day for Canada.”
Members of Smart Approaches to Marijuana Canada, Air We Share and Airspace Action on Smoking and Health tried to share the message from the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery Wednesday, as pro-pot hecklers shouted over them.
Coalition spokeswoman Pamela McColl says she believes legalization normalizes a dangerous sub-
stance and positions Canada to be the base of the marijuana industry’s global expansion.
She says she wants to see regulation tightened to ban smoking marijuana from any multi-unit residence and anywhere that children live.
Sitting across the square, Topher Graham and Tristan Risk said they took the day off work to celebrate legalization.
Graham said it means he won’t have to buy pot from his friends anymore, while Risk said it means she can smoke weed legally, safely and publicly without feeling like a “sneaky teenager.”
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Artist Colin Lyons works on installation of his exhibit in Two Rivers Gallery titled Prototypes for the Preservation of Degradation, which opens today.
CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN
Fact-checking the all-candidates forum
Most of the city council candidates at Tuesday night’s all-candidates forum, hosted by The Citizen, the Prince George Chamber of Commerce, the B.C. Northern Real Estate Board and UNBC, were asked in several different ways how they would change the city’s overtime policy for senior managers.
With the mayoral candidates going first before those seeking to become city councillors and with Willy Enns not in attendance, Lyn Hall, seeking his second term as mayor, was asked about the overtime policy right off the top.
The two-and-a-half page Exempt Employee Overtime procedure sets out overtime scenarios, guidelines and pay rates for all exempt city employees.
The exceptions are the city manager, general managers and directors (that would be the nine-member city hall management team), the fire chief and deputy fire chief.
For them, the only additional compensation they’re entitled for any extra hours is two additional weeks of vacation time per year.
The final paragraph states that all exempt employees, including the exceptions, working under the Provincial Emergency Pro-
gram (which oversaw the Cariboo wildfires response) “are entitled to claim overtime for all hours worked outside of their regular working hours at two times their regular hourly rate.”
Hall said he’d like to take a look at the policy in light of the concern expressed by city residents after it was revealed senior city staff were paid as much as $235 an hour in overtime during the 2017 Cariboo wildfire evacuation crisis.
He mentioned in passing that the policy was 20 years old and in need of review. A few minutes later, current city councillor Garth Frizzell repeated that the policy is 20 years old.
The exempt employee overtime procedure is actually far more recent than 20 years.
It was approved by city manager Kathleen Soltis on March 11, 2015, shortly after Hall became mayor. It was this document city communications staff provided when asked by The Citizen to provide the written policy justifying the payment of overtime to senior managers and directors in 2017. In addition, in a letter to The Citizen published in August signed by Hall, Frizzell and the rest of council, the same document was cited as the guiding policy for overtime for senior staff.
The policy might be based on a 20-yearold document but that’s irrelevant. It was
updated in 2015 and was enforced in 2017.
Furthermore, in reply to a request for information from The Citizen about whether senior staff were paid overtime to manage the 2018 wildfire evacuation and, if so, how much, the city replied it wouldn’t be able to provide that information until late this year or early next.
Incumbent city councillor Frank Everitt brushed away the question about there being more than 100 new city employees in 2017 over 2016. Although the 2017 Statement of Financial Information report provided to city council in June shows there were 1,071 city employees in 2017, up 116 from the 955 members of staff the year before, Everitt said the actual difference was 34 employees, without providing any information on where he got that number, which doesn’t appear anywhere in the report.
There were, however, 34 more employees making more than $75,000 per year in 2017 than there were in 2016, rising from 289 to 323.
Everitt was also blunt about passing on to local taxpayers the $1.4 million cost to the City of Prince George to collect the provincial Employee Health Tax. It’s simply impossible for the city to absorb such a large one-time expense without raising taxes, he argued.
YOUR LETTERS
Condo concern
Driving downtown, I see the new apartments going up at city hall. Who is going to buy them when they go for a walk and have to step over people sleeping on the street? Should these problems not be cleaned up before they make it out to just so wonderful? With an election coming, maybe come up with a plan.
Lynne Middleton
Prince George
Pot thoughts?
To the city candidates, your futures are at stake. The election is coming and I would like for you to tell us your views on pot smoking, especially where, and all the rest of it. Nova Scotia just passed a law with no smoking pot anywhere outside. What’s yours?
Warner Bliskis Prince George
Money for bridge could be better spent
I was reading in your paper that the elder on the Shelley reserve (north side) wants a bridge across the river. He said it would provide an escape in an emergency. All well and good, but did he forget the right-of-way road on the power line? This road comes out by the bridge at Salmon Valley. I know it’s there because I’ve been through there. Now about that bridge. It would cost millions to build and only provide access to Shelley
reserve (south side). Instead of spending on a bridge, how about paving all the road to Shelley and their streets and driveways? You could lose a wheel there. Oh, while they are at it, fix the back road to Salmon Valley. A bridge would make a nice short cut to that new gas station on the south side.
George Getty Prince George
Thanks to library
As a school district worker for the last 27 years, a parent of two students who graduated from School District 57 and the president of CUPE 3742 support staff, I understand and value the important role of our school trustees in our community and I thank all candidates for their commitment to public education in Prince George. I’d also like to thank the Prince George Public Library for hosting the coffee with the school trustee candidates on Saturday. This event provided an open and friendly environment where citizens could drop by and have an informal chat with all the trustee candidates. The work and planning the Prince George Public Library did in hosting this event was very much appreciated. Providing welcoming and accessible public spaces for civic engagement is just one example of how our public library contributes to our strong and healthy community.
Again, a special thanks to the Prince George Public Library.
Karen Wong President, CUPE 3742 Support Staff SD57
Wildlife ministry gets failing grades
Communities with urban wildlife problems didn’t much go to the locals before running to B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources to ask them what to do. After all what do the locals know about wildlife? This is a job for city slickers in suites. Wrong move. Under this ministry, wildlife management is in shambles. In just 10 years, B.C. lost half its elk population. A mountain caribou herd teeters on extinction, down to three animals. Habitat loss is prime suspect that they starved to death. As for urban wildlife, after a decade of communities taking bad advice from this ministry, we’re no further ahead. They’re not even looking for a solution but grasping for an excuse to amend the Wildlife Act – before getting arrested for animal cruelty. They want the act to read like the Fisheries Act that Harper previously gutted. It says, “Got no commercial value, you got no rights, buddy. Starve if we care.” International trade deals don’t allow for pesky flora, fauna, fish or foul – or citizens – to impede the profits of international investors as they gut Canada’s resources.
We are told a “resounding majority” of the mayors and directors of the UBCM groupthink puppet society have already pledged to do whatever the ministry tells them, ignoring local concerns. What kind of democracy is that?
Bryan Stawychny Edgewater, B.C.
Mailing address: 201-1777 Third Ave. Prince George, B.C. V2L 3G7
It’s not impossible, of course, to find less than one per cent from the city’s annual budget in savings but it would require the kind of belt tightening households do all the time but the City of Prince George hasn’t done in recent years.
•••
As for the significant increase in the wages of senior city staff over the last four years, there could be a battle brewing between the incumbent city councillors. Most of the candidates and all of the incumbents were asked in several different ways about how they felt about those wages and whether they would review them if they won reelection.
Terri McConnachie provided the technically correct answer that city council only has one employee – the city manager – and does not directly manage anyone else, including senior staff. She used the analogy of a ship, where the city manager is the captain while city council instructs the captain on what direction to steer.
That was not enough for Brian Skakun, who said he would be pushing for more regular operational meetings with the city manager and more direct oversight. That is also technically correct because city council has the authority to manage its city manager as much or as little as it sees fit.
— Editor-in-chief
Neil Godbout
Wide-ranging views on setup of pot shops
For the past decade, surveys have consistently showed that Canadians, and British Columbians, support legalizing marijuana. Centre-left minded voters were more likely to say they have enjoyed cannabis recreationally in the past, and some centre-right minded voters saw an opportunity to tax a sought-after resource.
In spite of this high level of support, the road to legalization has been complex. In specific cities, bylaws related to cannabis commercialization have not been enforced. Just three years ago, more than 100 so-called dispensaries were selling marijuana and marijuana-related products in Vancouver alone.
The dispensaries were able to acquire a business licence from the city, even though selling non-medicinal marijuana was illegal.
The process of granting permits and business licences needs to be clear, and communities must be allowed to have their say about where marijuana will be sold.
Now, with legalization here, existing dispensaries need to apply to the provincial government for a business licence. The process is long. On the day the legalization was enacted, there was only one B.C. Cannabis Store operating. It is located in Kamloops.
The current state of affairs calls for a detailed look at the way British Columbians would react to the location of pot shops. A survey conducted this month by Research Co. shows some staggering differences.
Across the province, seven in 10 British Columbians (70 per cent) say they approve of establishing marijuana stores in their municipality. The level of support drops to 56 per cent when residents are asked about a pot shop that will be doing business in their neighbourhood.
When asked whether they approve or disapprove of a marijuana store located a block away from their home, the numbers tighten dramatically. Across the province, 50 per cent of residents say they approve of a pot shop located that close to their dwelling, but 48 per cent disapprove.
There is a gender divide: a majority of men (54 per cent) see no problem with a pot store near their home; a majority of women (51 per cent) eschew the idea. Age also plays a role, with British Columbians aged 18 to 34 voicing the highest level of support for a pot shop near their home (60 per cent). Their older counterparts are not convinced, with approval dropping
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to 48 per cent among residents aged 35 to 54, and to 44 per cent among those over the age of 55. In Metro Vancouver, where many stores located in specific cities were able to offer marijuana under the guise of medicinal treatments, there is a complete split: 48 per cent of residents approve of a pot shop near their home and 48 per cent disapprove of it. On Vancouver Island, disapproval reaches 52 per cent. Political allegiance also plays a role in shaping views on the future location of pot shops. A sizable majority of British Columbians who voted for the BC New Democratic Party in the last provincial election (60 per cent) have no qualms about a marijuana store being located a block from their home. BC Green Party voters are staunchly divided (50 per cent approve, 49 per cent disapprove) and BC Liberal voters are more likely to object (55 per cent). The last layer of analysis is ethnicity. While 54 per cent of British Columbians of European descent approve of having a pot shop nearby, the proportion drops dramatically to 33 per cent among those of East Asian descent. East Asian British Columbians have consistently voiced displeasure about marijuana and its legalization, so this finding is not a surprise. It is evident that the legalization of cannabis will not go as smoothly as originally envisioned. The process of granting permits and business licences needs to be clear, and communities must be allowed to have their say about where marijuana will be sold. There are more than 100 applications for BC Cannabis Stores that are waiting to be processed. The prospect of marijuana being sold close to homes is not particularly thrilling for all British Columbians. All levels of government would be wise to consult and engage with a public that is deeply divided, not on legalization, but on location.
— Mario Canseco is president of Research Co. His column appears exclusively in Glacier Media publications
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MARIO CANSECO Glacier Media
Guest Column
PHOTO
AP
Frances H. Arnold, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work on the directed evolution of enzymes. Arnold was awarded half of the $1.01 million prize, while the other half was shared by George Smith of the University of Missouri and Gregory Winter of the MRC molecular biology lab in Cambridge, England.
Directing evolution of enzymes earns Nobel Prize
The question of how the world went from an abiotic to biotic environment remains one of the great challenges in science.
We know we live in a world filled with a multitude of living organisms all dependent upon chemical reactions. We know all life on this planet has a single common universal ancestor. We know inorganic compounds are able to generate the constituent molecules required for life. Putting together cells and creating functioning organisms still escapes our grasp. There are a number of hypotheses as to how it might have occurred naturally and how we might achieve synthetic organism but we are not there yet.
However, since the days of primordial soup, living organisms have multiplied and evolved. Life has grown in complexity. It has diversified. Life on Earth has been almost wiped out by at least five mass extinctions. And it has been affected by a multitude of minor extinctions along the way.
Each shift or change in environment be it physical, such as the changes in the atmosphere occurring 2.7 billion years ago, or biological, such as the rise of fish, has impacted all life on this planet. Evolution necessitates adaptation since the organism best adapted to its environment are able to reproduce and leave a living legacy.
For billions of years, evolution blindly increased the fitness of organisms within their environment through the simple brutality of natural selection.
With the rise of homo sapiens, things changed. Our capacity to communicate information from one generation to the next allows for the accumulation of knowledge. It taught us how to engage in science and one of our first experiments was the domestication of wild animals.
The best evidence we have suggests a species of wolf might have been domesticated to become our dogs. Dogs and wolves still share some commonality and, in some cases, can be cross-bred. From some common ancestor, all of our modern dog breeds have emerged.
A great Dane and a chihuahua are vastly different in appearance and size yet they share a common biochemistry and for the most part a common set of genes. That is, they both have the same set of genes controlling their basic metabolism but it is how the genes are expressed which generates the differences in each animal.
Early humans began breeding for various traits with little understanding of the mechanism involved. Various species of dogs appeared mostly through happy accidents or careful selection. For the longest time, no one really knew why breeding would generate specific results or why some attempts at generating off-spring failed.
The discovery of genetics changed all that.
Here was a mechanism, explainable by simple chemical reactions, which allowed the master plan found in DNA to be expressed to give all of the molecules which make up cells and allows them to bind in a way so as to produce multicellular organisms.
The mechanism of evolution had been discovered. The trick to generating new proteins and other molecules were slowly untangled. While the natural evolution of enzymes, for example, was a key step in the development of life on this planet, modern biochemistry devel-
oped the power to modify organisms ourselves.
One half of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Frances H. Arnold for her work on “the directed evolution of enzymes.”
Enzymes are a broad class of biochemical molecules capable of catalyzing a wide variety of reactions in living creatures. Through directed evolution, Arnold was able to enhance the ability of specific enzymes to carry out reactions much more efficiently than their native form.
Essentially, she copied the process of natural selection. She identified an enzyme able to carry out a reaction, she tweaked its structure through modification of its originating DNA, and then she watched the results. If the resulting organisms were better adapted – if some performed better – she was able to identify the particular organisms and run those organisms through another cycle of improvement.
There is more to it than this simple description but the principle is really that straightforward. And because it occurs at a molecular level without having to wait for the maturation of a whole organism, directed evolution is much more rapid than standard breeding or natural selection.
Her work has resulted in enzymes capable of generating everything from pharmaceuticals to biofuels, performing reactions which chemists struggle with at the bench.
The other half of the Nobel Prize was awarded to George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter for their work on “the phage display of peptides and antibodies.” This is the directed evolution of a mechanism to allow the insertion and expression of DNA within a phage to generate proteins on the surface of the cells.
While nature has equipped all living organisms through evolution, we now have the capacity to engage in directed evolution of specific useful molecules.
Truly worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Insect populations in major decline, studies show
Ben GUARINO Citizen news service
Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of longterm studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized.
Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico, the study found, and the forest’s insecteating animals have gone missing, too.
In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 per cent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 per cent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves.
The latest report, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that this startling loss of insect abundance extends to the Americas. The study’s authors implicate climate change in the loss of tropical invertebrates.
“This study in PNAS is a real wake-up call – a clarion call –that the phenomenon could be much, much bigger, and across many more ecosystems,” said David Wagner, an expert in invertebrate conservation at the University of Connecticut who was not involved with this research.
“This is one of the most disturbing articles I have ever read,” Wagner said.
“If anything, I think their results and caveats are understated. The gravity of their findings and ramifications for other animals, especially vertebrates, is hyperalarming.”
TODD WHITCOMBE
Kinder Morgan CEO says company may sell Canadian assets
Dan HEALING Citizen news service
CALGARY — There’s a “seller’s market” for attractive assets like those held by its Canadian subsidiary, the CEO of Kinder Morgan Inc. said on a conference call Wednesday to discuss thirdquarter results.
The company is working on a strategic plan that could include a sale or sale of assets for its Canadian arm even though it likely won’t distribute funds from the sale of its major asset, the Trans Mountain pipeline system, until January, said Steve Kean, who is also CEO of Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd.
“On the KML assets, we think they’re great assets,” he said, list-
ing crude tank storage and rail terminals in Alberta, the Vancouver Wharves Terminal and the Cochin Pipeline system which transports condensate from the United States to the Edmonton area.
“We think that asset packages like this are rare, anywhere, but they’re rare to come to market and they’re rare to come to market in Western Canada, so we do think that it tends to be a bit of a seller’s market for these assets.”
Kean added on the call that it makes sense for the Cochin Pipeline to be owned by one party, rather than being split at the border into portions owned by the Canadian and U.S. branches of the company.
KML minority shareholders are
We think that asset packages like this are rare... so we do think that it tends to be a bit of a seller’s market for these assets.
— Steve Kean, CEO Kinder Morgan Canada
to vote in November on a proposal to pay out about $1.2 billion or $11.40 per restricted voting share from the Trans Mountain sale.
Kinder Morgan Inc. has said it is in favour of the payout and would use its portion, about $2.8 billion, to reduce debt. Kinder Morgan Canada trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange but is 70 per cent owned by its Houston-based parent. The Canadian company sold its Trans Mountain assets to the federal government for $4.5 billion in a deal that closed Aug. 31. The day before, on Aug. 30, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal quashed regulatory approval of the Trans Mountain expansion project, setting in motion an extended review by the National Energy Board and a new set of Indigenous consultations on the project. Founder and executive chair-
man Richard Kinder congratulated Kinder Morgan Inc.’s leadership team on the call for having “extricated ourselves on favourable financial terms” from ownership of the Trans Mountain expansion.
Kinder Morgan Canada reported third-quarter net income of $1.35 billion on Wednesday, with most of that resulting from the Trans Mountain sale. It said it realized net income of $1.308 billion from the sale, net of tax. Third-quarter income from continuing operations came in at $22.2 million, up from $9.8 million in the same period of last year, it reported. Quarterly revenue was $94.3 million, versus $85.9 million from the same time last year.
Bernardo denied parole
PERKEL
BATH, Ont. — Serial rapist and killer Paul Bernardo pleaded unsuccessfully for a second chance on Wednesday, arguing low selfesteem drove him to commit the sexually twisted crimes he now rues and that he no longer poses any threat to the public.
Bernardo made his pitch for parole before a two-member panel, which also heard impassioned pleas from the parents of two of his murder victims that he be kept behind bars.
“I’m a very flawed person. I know I’m not perfect,” Bernardo told the Parole Board of Canada panel. “What I did was so dreadful. I hurt a lot of people. I cry all the time.”
At the same time, the now 54-year-old Bernardo was adamant he has never been violent since his arrest, and would never reoffend if released.
“I’m so nice to everybody,” he said. “Everybody is scared but there is no reason to be scared.”
The panel did not buy his arguments. They took about 30 minutes to turn Bernardo down for both day and full parole. Their written reasons are expected in a few weeks.
Dubbed the “Scarborough Rapist,” Bernardo could make another bid for release in two years. He has already spent 25 years of his life sentence in prison – most in solitary.
Bernardo was convicted in 1995 of first-degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault among other offences. His crimes over several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of which he videotaped, had sparked widespread terror and revulsion.
Among his brutal acts, Bernardo and his then-wife Karla Homolka kidnapped, tortured and killed Leslie Mahaffy, 14, of Burlington, Ont., in June 1991 at their home in Port Dalhousie, Ont., before dismembering her body, encasing her remains in cement and dumping them in a nearby lake.
Mahaffy’s mother, Debbie Mahaffy, described the crushing pain the parole hearing had rekindled, saying the “unspeakable and brutally sadistic acts” Bernardo committed defied description.
“This is an emotional hell for us,” Mahaffy told the hearing at the Millhaven penitentiary, choking back tears.
Members of the media and other observers watched the highly anticipated proceeding – Bernardo’s first attempt at parole – via videolink from nearby Bath Institution. Bernardo, dressed in a blue T-shirt, slouched in his chair and listened with little visible emotion, although he became animated on occasion as he answered questions.
Colin
Citizen news service
CP SKETCH BY GREG BANNING
Paul Bernardo is shown in a courtroom sketch during court proceedings in Napanee, Ont., on Oct. 5.
Ten members of this season’s UNBC men’s soccer team won’t be back in 2019, either because of graduation from the school or the completion of five years of playing eligibility. From left are Francesco
made their final home appearances on Sunday at Masich Place Stadium.
UNBC veterans get home send-off
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
Five soccer seasons have passed in the blink of an eye for UNBC Timberwolves forward Francesco Bartolillo.
From rookie apprentice to stalwart veteran, the 23-year-old from Calgary took time after playing the last home game of his U Sports career to reflect on how different it is to run with one of the top teams in the division after years of struggling to bring respectability to a T-wolves program still in its infancy the day he joined.
“When I first came we were kind of a group of misfits, guys who just found their way to UNBC through some means, and that’s not normally the standard path to get to university,” said Bartolillo, who passed Tofa Fakunle this season as the T-wolves’ all-time goal-scoring leader with 15. “We had this group of guys who were all hungry to show they could compete at this level and prove to the people who doubted them that we could be a playoff team and more.”
No doubt, Bartolillo and the T-wolves took their lumps in the first three years of his university career when UNBC was cannon fodder for most of its Canada West opponents. In his first year the T-wolves finished with a 3-9-0 record. The following year they went 1-10-1, followed in 2016 by a 4-10-2 season. Their big breakthrough came last year on the final day of the season when the T-wolves (5-5-6) claimed their first playoff berth.
Now, heading into the final weekend of the season, they’ve lost just three games all year, having won five and tied five, and are comfortably entrenched in third place in a tough Pacific Division, with a chance to
solidify their standing Friday and Saturday in Abbotsford in a two-game set against the Fraser Valley Cacades.
“Our strength derives from how good our group is, how good the people are, and that’s something very unique to anything I’ve been a part of and now to see us in my fifth year really dominate games and compete with the very best, it’s fantastic,” said Bartolillo. “We’ve come from a team that was always just wanting to compete to a team that goes into games now thinking that we are the favourite.”
The T-wolves got to within nine minutes of defeating the UBC Thunderbirds Sept. 29 in Vancouver. The T-birds came back to tie
it but only one other team in the conference this season has been able to do what the T-wolves did that day.
Sunday’s game ended in a 1-0 win for UNBC over the UBC Okanagan Heat and that was the Prince George farewell for two other five-year T-wolf veterans – defenders Conrad Rowlands and Gordon Hall.
“It feels like the time just flashed in front of me,” said the 22-year-old Rowlands. “It was nice to end with a win for our fans to set ourselves up for the playoffs and instill a little confidence in us going into our last weekend.
“At the end of the game I was thinking about my first time stepping onto the
pitch in Prince George and the difference between then and now. Huge strides have been made and the program is just getting better and better. My first year we were a young team, just hanging on by the skin of our teeth but now we have a sure style in how we play and method to how we do things.”
Under two different head coaches – Alan Alderson and the current Steve Simonson –Rowlands has played almost every position except goalie.
“I’ve had lots of emotions, lots of position changes and lots of overcoming adversity,” Rowlands said. “I’m just happy to be able to finish my career here at UNBC.
“We’re getting good recruits now, lots from the Victoria area, guys who are able to come to our squad and make a big impact.” Hall, 23, a two-time Canada West allstar, came up to UNBC in 2014 along with Rowlands, both having grown up as youth soccer teammates in Chilliwack.
“Honestly, I didn’t even know where Prince George was and came up here to see what it was like and I’ve loved it ever since,” said Hall. “It’s just amazing to be around the community and I’m just proud to be a Timberwolf.
“It took us awhile to get up and going but over the last couple of years we’ve finally been able to build a program where teams have to worry about what we’re doing. We’ve finally been able to grow something here and hopefully the word will get out.”
Seven other players are graduating UNBC this school year and don’t plan on returning for their final year of university eligibility, including forward Matt Jubinville; midfielders Josh McAvoy, Liam Stewart and Jesse Rake; defenders Emmanuel Drame, and Clay Kiiskila; and goalie Scott Brown.
Youth soccer bringing the game indoors
Ted CLARKE Citizen staff
tclarke@pgcitizen.ca
The kids of Brazil, Senegal and Tunisia don’t all play soccer on lush fields of natural grass or artificial turf. For some, a gym floor or even a gravel parking lot will suffice. They make do with what they have and the system works quite well. All three countries qualified for this year’s World Cup.
Terrol Russell wants our soccer kids to change the way they play the game to help speed their development and has a plan to get them off the grass and into the tight confines of a hardwood gymnasium. Now six months into his job as director of club operations for the Prince George Youth Soccer Association, Russell, in partnership with the P.G. Dome, is creating the first-ever youth indoor soccer league.
Beginning in November, kids in three age divisions will be playing in the youth/adult SuperSoccer League, a variation of futsal with no offsides which allows players to use the walls of the gym to make passes and create plays.
“We need to change the environment the players are in. This idea of playing on turf and grass all year round, if that’s the way to go and we’ve done such a good job, how come we were producing more
(home-grown) players for the national team in the ’80s than we are now?” asks Russell. “They’re all being produced out of other environments. Part of the issue is our athletes aren’t playing in diverse enough environments throughout the year. Right now, when we look at our (outdoor) results provincially they’re not at the level we’d like them to be and we also aren’t producing the level of player that we can be.” see ‘WE’RE CHALLENGING, page 10
Bartilillo, Matt Jubinville, Gordon Hall, Conrad Rowlands, Josh McAvoy, Jesse Rake, Liam Stewart, Scott Brown, Emmanuel Drame and Clay Kiiskila. All
CITIZEN FILE PHOTO
Prince George’s Matt Jubinville, in his final season with the Timberwolves, looks to make a play against University of Lethbridge Pronghorns defender Blake Pipke on Sept. 21 at Masich Place Stadium.
‘We’re challenging the brain and the body’
from page 9
“If Prince George and region are going to produce athletes that reach higher levels of the game we have no choice but to provide development year-round.”
Getting kids playing 5-on-5 futsal with live boards on a hard, flat playing surface will result in a faster game, with balls deflecting at all angles. Russell says the constant flow of the game will help kids develop better ball-handling skills and fitness benefits they wouldn’t so readily acquire if they were playing the indoor game on field turf on a surface where sideline boundaries are in effect.
“It causes the athletes to find solutions to the different ways balls bounce off the wall and the players are moving consistently so we’re building new levels of fitness within the athletes,” Russell said. “We’re challenging the brain and the body. It’s quicker, so the brain has to think quicker and the body has to respond faster. They get more touches.”
Russell has already created a partnership with the Prince George Soccer Association men’s and women’s outdoor leagues beginning in the spring of 2019 which will create under-21 teams to ease the transition of youth players to adult soccer. He foresees a similar team for 18- to 21-year-olds coming out of the youth indoor league that will make the jump to the adult indoor league.
Membership in the PGYSA has hovered around the 1,600 mark the past two seasons, down considerably from the late-1990s when there were as many as 3,400 registered players.
P.G. Dome director Jon LaFontaine grew up playing soccer in Prince George and played for the Prince George Fury in 2009. Although the Fury lasted just one season in the Canadian Major
Indoor Soccer League, it holds the distinction as the first Prince George professional sports team in any league. He was a regular on the scene in the North Cariboo Senior Soccer League and also played in the B.C. Indoor Soccer League and he says there’s never been an indoor option for youth players wanting to play in a league through the cold-weather months. Ever since the Rotary Youth Fields were created in the early 1990s, which separated youth players from the adults, kids and adults have kept to themselves, working as separate entities. Until now.
“This is a good thing for the soccer community, where kids can start feeding into the adult system,” said LaFontaine. “Back in the day at old Rotary Stadium, you had kids who would play and then everyone would go to the bleachers after and watch the men’s games. That connection is not
This is a good thing for the
— Jon LaFontaine
there. We’ve got to try something different to build that back up.
“I’ve always supported PGYSA. I don’t like what’s happened with the soccer community. Everyone has these egos and the focus hasn’t been going to the kids, it’s been going to this group, that group.
There’s Epic, there’s Fusion, the Whitecaps, the Timberwolves have a group and there’s PGYSA and Northern United (Football
Club). There’s so much division over the last 10 years. You have six different groups fighting for these kids and Terrol has come in and identified that right away and wants to work to build the partnerships and I want to be a support piece for that.”
LaFontaine plays in the fourteam male adult indoor league which started at the P.G. Dome last year. It’s a separate entity from the B.C. Indoor Soccer League which plays at the Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre and operates men’s, women’s and co-ed leagues.
The youth division of the SuperSoccer League will consist of two age divisions – 12-15 and 14-17. – and it will share the two indoor pitches at the P.G. Dome, formerly known as the Roll-A-Dome. A grassroots indoor league for kids six to 11 is also being created and their games will be played at the
New-look Raptors roll past Cavaliers
Lori EWING Citizen news service
TORONTO — A new superstar, a new head coach, and a victory for the new-look Raptors to open what’s been one of the most-anticipated NBA regular seasons for Toronto in awhile.
Kawhi Leonard, Toronto’s prized offseason acquisition, had 24 points and 13 rebounds in his first real game as a Raptor, while Kyle Lowry had 27 points and eight assists, and Toronto beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 116-104 on Wednesday.
Fred VanVleet added 14 points, while Pascal Siakam finished with 13 on a night that marked Nick Nurse’s first game as Toronto’s head coach.
Kevin Love led the Cavs with 21 points, while Cedi Osman added 17. Canadian Tristan Thompson grabbed 13 rebounds.
Leonard was playing in his first regularseason action since Jan. 13 – the two-time defensive player of the year missed all but nine games because of a quadriceps injury in a bizarre season last year in San Antonio. The 27-year-old missed his first three shots before Lowry gave up an easy basket for a pass to the trailing Leonard four minutes into the game.
Jonas Valanciunas had six points to go with 12 boards, but it was his passing – including a beautiful behind-the-back bounce pass to OG Anunoby for a dunk – that delighted the crowd.
The Raptors took a 90-75 lead into the fourth quarter. Three straight baskets by Jordan Clarkson pulled the Cavs within nine points. VanVleet scored seven consecutive points to put the brakes on Cleveland’s run, and when Serge Ibaka drilled a threepointer with 7:29 to play, it put the Raptors
up by 12 in front of a capacity Scotiabank Arena crowd of 19,915 that included former Maple Leafs captain Doug Gilmour. The Cavs sliced the deficit to seven points with 3:08 to play. A Siakam block created a couple of free throws for Leonard at the other end – during which a handful of fans
PGYSA indoor soccer centre on Winnipeg Street.
The youth league will start Nov. 12 and each team will play one game and have one training session per week in three five-week blocks with breaks at Christmas, February and April. The more competitive players can opt in for more training sessions. Registration costs vary from $145 for grassroots players to $185 for the youth division. The league will have four teams in each age group, male and female. To try to build up rivalries and stimulate fan interest the SuperSoccer League will organize an indoor World Cup-style tournament to mark the end of the season. The adults will play their tournament in March and the kids will have theirs in April.
More information is on the league website at www.pgysa. bc.ca.
chanted “M-V-P!” – and the Raptors led by 10 with two-and-a-half minutes to play and never looked back.
The game was a bit of revenge for the Raptors after being ousted by Cleveland in three consecutive post-season runs. The second-round sweep last spring was the final straw for team president Masai Ujiri, who fired coach Dwane Casey and then unceremoniously jettisoned DeMar DeRozan and Jakob Poeltl to the Spurs for Leonard and Green.
The anticipation of a fresh start was palpable in the arena, and when Leonard was announced during the glitzy pre-game introductions, the crowd’s roar drowned out the public address. Green took centre-court for the traditional regular-season address, telling the crowd “I feel a warm welcome when I step in here.” If there was a negative on the night, it’s that the Raptors lost Anunoby early in the fourth quarter with an orbital contusion. Delon Wright (strained groin) didn’t dress. Neither team led by more than four points in a tight first quarter, and a layup by Green with five seconds on the clock sent the Raptors into the second with a 28-25 lead. The Raptors started to find a rhythm in the second, and a turnaround fadeaway jumper by Leonard capped a 20-7 run and gave Toronto a 13-point lead with 2:42 left in the quarter. The Raptors went into the halftime break up 60-47.
CP PHOTO
Toronto Raptors forward Kawhi Leonard heads for the basket, past Ante Zizic of the Cleveland Cavaliers, on Wednesday night in Toronto.
HANDOUT PHOTO
Players listen to words of wisdom from Terrol Russell, director of club operations for the Prince George Youth Soccer Association.
soccer community, where kids can start feeding into the adult system.
Two goals for Ovechkin in Capitals’ win
Citizen news service
WASHINGTON — It takes something special for a shot by Alex Ovechkin to surprise a goaltender. That’s exactly what happened to Henrik Lundqvist on Wednesday night when Ovechkin scored the first of two power-play goals to help the Washington Capitals beat the New York Rangers 4-3 in overtime.
John Carlson essentially bounced a pass to Ovechkin in such an awkward position that Lundqvist didn’t expect him to get it on net and again was beaten.
“I should know with that guy he can shoot from anywhere,” Lundqvist said. “He received a pass and then, boom, he shot it, and before you know it it’s coming at you and I wasn’t able to recover. I learned my lesson there. I’ve played so many times against him I should know to be ready at all times.”
Ovechkin’s two goals on Lundqvist gave him 24 in his career, the most he has scored against any goaltender in the NHL. He has six goals in six games to start the season and tied Hall of Famer Dino Ciccarelli for ninth on the all-time list for power-play goals with 232.
Asked how he keeps scoring from his usual spot in the faceoff circle, Ovechkin said, “It’s all about luck.”
Luck wasn’t on Ovechkin’s side when he hit the post with 3:30 remaining in regulation, but defenceman Matt Niskanen put the puck past a lunging Lundqvist 2:18 into overtime to end Washington’s two-game losing streak. Niskanen credited do-it-all playmaker Evgeny Kuznetsov for setting up the winner.
“Nice to score,” Niskanen said. “I didn’t do much. Kuzy did a lot of nice work there. I just had to put it in.”
Prince George’s Brett Connolly picked up an assist on Ovechkin’s first goal.
Carlson scored the Capitals’ other goal in regulation, and goaltender Braden Holtby stopped 29 of the 32 shots he faced in arguably his sharpest performance so far this season. Holtby’s most important save came with time running out in the second period when he denied Kevin Hayes on a short-handed breakaway.
Mika Zibanejad, Jimmy Vesey and Chris Kreider scored for New York, which picked up a point in the second half of a back-to-back after beating Colorado in a shootout Tuesday.
Flames burn Bruins
CALGARY (CP) — Michael Frolik scored a pair of goals for the Calgary Flames in a 5-2 win over the visiting Boston Bruins on Wednesday.
The veteran winger had been a healthy scratch in Calgary’s previous game, a 3-2 overtime win over the host Colorado Avalanche on Saturday.
Johnny Gaudreau collected his 100th NHL career goal and rookie defenceman Juusu Valimaki scored his first for the Flames (4-2-0). Matthew Tkachuk scored on an empty net.
Mikael Backlund and Michael Stone each contributed a pair of assists to Calgary’s second straight home win to open the season. Flames goaltender Mike Smith stopped 24 of 26 shots for the victory.
Patrice Bergeron countered for the Bruins (4-20) with a goal and an assist. Brad Marchand also scored.
Bruins netminder Tuukka Rask turned away 24 shots in the loss.
The Bruins trailed 4-2 heading into the final period. Marchand was lightly defended when he scored at 13:45 of the second. He took a pass from the far boards from Bergeron and wired the puck by Smith.
Frolik nearly completed a hat trick on a shorthanded breakaway, but backhanded the puck over Boston’s net.
The Flames are home to the Nashville Predators on Friday. The Bruins are in Edmonton tonight.
Kershaw dominant for Dodgers
Beth HARRIS Citizen news service
LOS ANGELES — Clayton Kershaw
bounced back from one of his worst post-season starts with one of his best, pitching the Los Angeles Dodgers past the Milwaukee Brewers 5-2 Wednesday to move one win from a return trip to the World Series.
The Dodgers took a 3-2 lead in the NL Championship Series, boosted by Max Muncy’s go-ahead single in the sixth inning. Kershaw held the lead, scoring an insurance run in the seventh and then exiting.
“To go back to Milwaukee up 3-2 as opposed to being down 3-2 is huge for us,” Kershaw said. “It’s been a battle every single game we’ve played them so far and we don’t expect anything different when we go back.”
Game 6 is Friday night in Milwaukee.
The Brewers will start left-hander Wade Miley, who walked Cody Bellinger to open Game 5 before getting pulled in an interesting piece of strategy by manager Craig Counsell. Lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu will go for the Dodgers.
“We’re in a good spot, man,” Counsell said. “We’re going back home, to me, in a position of strength.”
The Dodgers haven’t been in back-toback World Series since losing to the Yankees in 1977 and ’78. They were beaten by Houston in Game 7 last year.
The teams reconvened less than 15 hours after the Dodgers eked out a 2-1 victory Tuesday night on Cody Bellinger’s RBI single with two outs in a 13-inning game that lasted over five hours.
Kershaw was well-rested and masterful in allowing one run and three hits over seven. He struck out nine, all on breaking pitches, and walked two.
Kershaw recovered from the shortest post-season start of his career. He lasted just three innings in losing the NLCS opener while giving up five runs – four earned – at Miller Park.
Machado fined for kicking Aguilar
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dodgers star
Manny Machado has been fined by Major League Baseball for kicking Milwaukee first baseman Jesus Aguilar in the NL Championship Series. MLB fined Machado an undisclosed amount Wednesday, a day after the base-running incident caused the benches to clear at Dodger Stadium and prompted Brewers MVP candidate Christian Yelich to call Machado a “dirty player.”
“I don’t think we’re too concerned about any other teams’ comments about our players,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Wednesday before
“I don’t know if it was that much better, just a little bit better execution maybe,” Kershaw said of his repertoire.
The three-time NL Cy Young Award winner pitched in and out of trouble in the third, when the Brewers loaded the bases and scored their lone run. Kershaw struck out Jesus Aguilar to end the third, the first of 13 consecutive batters that the left-hander retired.
Curtis Granderson hit an RBI double in the ninth. Kenley Jansen, the Dodgers’ third pitcher of the ninth, came in for the last two outs and the save.
Brewers star Christian Yelich, who nearly won the NL Triple Crown this season, was hitless in four at-bats. He is 3 for 20 without an RBI in the NLCS.
The Dodgers’ offence broke loose with five runs over the fifth, sixth and seventh innings that had the sellout crowd of 54,502 on its feet whipping blue towels and cheering loudly.
The team that hit a franchise and NLleading 235 home runs in the regular season did it playing small ball instead,
Game 5. “I know speaking for Manny, he’s preparing to help us win. It’s really not at the forefront of our mind.”
Machado was running to first on a grounder in the 10th inning of Game 4, and Aguilar left his right foot partly across the base for a moment after catching the ball. Already out, Machado brought his left foot forward and kicked Aguilar in the back of the leg. “He’s a player that has a history of those types of incidents,” Yelich said. “One time is an accident. Repeated over and over and over again, you’re just a dirty player. It’s a dirty play by a dirty player.”
Some have questioned Machado’s sportsmanship since he tossed his bat toward third base during an incident against the Oakland Athletics in 2014.
driving in all but one of its runs on singles.
Tied 1-1, Muncy grounded a 1-2 pitch from Brandon Woodruff into left field, scoring Justin Turner, who led off with a single. Yasiel Puig singled to centre with two outs, bringing home Manny Machado after he was hit by a pitch from Corbin Burnes.
Los Angeles extended the lead to 5-1 in the seventh on Turner’s RBI single that scored Kershaw, who walked, and pinchhitter Brian Dozier’s RBI groundout. Kershaw has struggled in the post-season during his career, with his numbers never matching his excellence during the regular season. But his outing Wednesday nearly matched what he did in Game 2 of the NL Division Series against Atlanta. Kershaw allowed two hits over eight shutout innings, struck out three and walked none in the best post-season outing of his career.
Also on Wednesday, in Game 4 of the ALCS, Boston was leading Houston 8-6 in the top of the ninth inning at The Citizen’s press deadline.
AP PHOTO
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw gestures after an out during the seventh inning of Game 5 of the
National League Championship Series on Wednesday in Los Angeles. The Dodgers downed the Milwaukee Brewers 5-2 and are one win away from advancing to the World Series for the second consecutive year.
This could be year of Jackson’s redemption
Emily YAHR The Washington Post
On Wednesday, MTV announced that Janet Jackson will receive the Global Icon Award at the upcoming Europe Music Awards, airing live from Bilbao, Spain, on Nov. 4. “Janet is without question one of the world’s biggest stars. Her incredible artistry has opened doors for countless others while leaving an indelible impact on pop culture – well over three decades and counting,” Viacom’s global head of music and talent, Bruce Gillmer, said in the release.
Jackson will perform a medley of her greatest hits, including her new single, Made For Now, a collaboration with Daddy Yankee. If this all seems familiar, it’s because Jackson was recently given a nearly identical prize. In May, Jackson became the first black woman to receive the Icon Award from the Billboard Music Awards. She also performed a medley, with Nasty, If and Throb, and presenter Bruno Mars ticked off her long list of accomplishments: the first woman in history to have five consecutive No. 1 albums, the biggestselling debut tour in history, and many more.
As the audience chanted her name, she delivered a powerful speech: “It’s a moment when at long last women have made it clear that we will no longer be controlled, manipulated or abused,” she said. “I stand with those women and with those men equally outraged by discrimination who support us in heart and mind.”
Jackson was also named as a nominee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; this year’s inductees will be announced in December. This would be the ultimate prize, as her fans have been lobbying for her place in the Hall of Fame for years. It’s telling – if not a satisfying coincidence – that Jackson is being honoured the same year that Justin Timberlake returned to the Super Bowl stage, 14 years after
Film festival rescinds Bryant invite
the infamous “wardrobe malfunction” that torpedoed Jackson’s career. (MTV, of course, produced the halftime show that year.) Timberlake remained unscathed while Jackson found herself shunned by the entertainment industry. During the Super Bowl in February, #JanetJacksonAppreciationDay was trending on Twitter. At the beginning of the halftime show, Timberlake sang Rock Your Body and stopped as he was about
to get to the lyric, “Bet I’ll have you naked by the end of this song,” which was what he was singing when he ripped off Jackson’s top. This time, he yelled “Hold up, stop!” and moved on to the next hit. That sly reference probably wasn’t a great idea, as even Timberlake admitted that Jackson was unfairly blamed. Many on social media were not amused. This is also the third time that Jackson has been shortlisted for
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kobe Bryant was dropped Wednesday from the jury of an animated film festival after calls for the former NBA star’s ouster over a 2003 rape allegation.
Eric Beckman the CEO of GKIDS, the company that organizes the Animation Is Film Festival, announced the move.
An online petition had been circulating demanding Bryant be dropped.
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
On Super Bowl Sunday, Questlove jumped on the #JanetJacksonAppreciationDay hashtag to make a plea for the pop star’s inclusion.
“As a voting member of the @ RockHall its criminal that @JanetJackson has NOT been inducted yet,” he wrote on Instagram, noting her game-changing, five-timesplatinum album Control in 1996.
“Not to take away from her peers in the RRHOF that made marks in
Bryant won an Academy Award in March for his part in making the animated short, Dear Basketball and has founded an animation company, Granity Studios.
He released a statement saying he was honoured to be invited and disappointed to be excluded. “This decision further motivates me and my commitment to building a studio that focuses on diversity and inclusion in storytelling for the
the 80s. But half of them can NOT claim they changed music.”
Earlier this month, a group of fans started a Change.org petition for Jackson’s classic albums to be reissued. Jackson also went on tour this year and released new music, after a nearly three-year hiatus. Although her fans would argue it’s much-delayed and muchdeserved reckoning, 2018 may be the year of Jackson’s official redemption.
animation industry,” Bryant’s statement said. In 2003, Bryant was charged with raping a 19-year-old hotel employee.
The Lakers star said he believed it was a consensual sexual encounter. The case was dropped after Bryant’s accuser refused to testify. She later filed a civil suit against him, which was settled out of court with Bryant admitting no guilt.
‘I ain’t dead’ Roseanne Barr reacts to her character’s fate after premiere of The Conners
Bethonie BUTLER Citizen news service
Roseanne Conner may be dead, but Roseanne Barr wants you to know she’s still here.
The comedian, who was fired from ABC’s Roseanne revival following a racist Twitter rant, returned to the social media platform Tuesday night after the premiere of The Conners, the spin-off ABC ordered after canceling her namesake sitcom.
The debut episode revealed that Roseanne, the Conner family matriarch, had died of an opioid overdose.
“I AIN’T DEAD,” Barr tweeted, adding a variation of a four-letter word.
Roseanne’s fate should not have come as a surprise to Barr, who told conservative vlogger Brandon Straka last month that her character would die exactly that way. The revelation made sense – before its cancellation in May, Roseanne had revealed the character was struggling with an addiction to prescription medication.
Barr had previously said she would be in Israel during the premiere, and didn’t plan to weigh in on the spin-off. But she appeared to change her mind Tuesday night because she didn’t just stop at her tweet. Barr released a statement with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, her longtime friend and spiritual adviser, criticizing ABC’s decision to kill off her character.
“While we wish the very best for the cast and production crew of The Conners, all of whom are deeply dedicated to their craft and were Roseanne’s cherished colleagues, we regret that ABC chose to cancel Roseanne by killing off the Roseanne Conner character,” Barr and Boteach said in the statement, which Barr linked to on Twitter. “That it was done through an opioid overdose lent an unnecessary grim and morbid dimension to an otherwise happy family show.”
The statement zeroed in on ABC’s decision to cancel Roseanne in the first place, which Barr and Boteach called “an opportunity squandered due in equal parts to fear, hubris, and a refusal to forgive.” Barr has said she begged ABC not to cancel the show.
up the other characters in a way where they could move on. There was a lot of chatter in the ether about how we should explain Roseanne’s absence: Should she have a sudden heart attack, a mental breakdown or go off into the sunset on a boat with her son Jerry Garcia? But back in the writers room, we firmly decided against anything cowardly or far-fetched, anything that would make the fierce matriarch of the Conners seem pathetic or debased.”
We knew we had to explain Roseanne’s disappearance from the show definitively but also set up the other characters in a way where they could move on.
Bruce Helford, showrunner of both the revival and the spin-off, defended the show’s decision to have Roseanne die of an opioid overdose in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter:
“We knew we had to explain Roseanne’s disappearance from the show definitively but also set
— Bruce Helford
The ratings for the first episode of The Conners appear solid, at least according to early reports. And while fan reactions have been mixed – Barr’s staunchest supporters say the spin-off is what’s dead to them – the premiere got generally favorable reviews. Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever wrote, “Tuesday’s episode provided hints of the topically relevant family comedy that producers had set out to make all along.”
BARR
PHOTO BY THE WASHINGTON POST
Janet Jackson performs at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., in 2017.
MONEY IN BRIEF
Currencies
OTTAWA (CP) — These are in-
dicative wholesale rates for foreign currency provided by the Bank of Canada on Wednesday.
Quotations in Canadian funds.
Federal gov’t to ban asbestos
Mia RABSON Citizen news service
OTTAWA — Canada’s new asbestos ban will not prevent companies in Quebec from sifting through the waste left over from decades of mining asbestos to look for magnesium.
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is set to announce the new regulations today in Ottawa after cabinet gave the nod of approval to them at the end of September.
The regulations, which will take effect at the end of the year, bar the import, sale or use of processed asbestos fibres and products containing them, as well as consumer products that have more than trace amounts of asbestos.
They also forbid the manufacture of products using processed asbestos fibres.
The regulations however do not apply to residues left from mining asbestos, which in Canada include about 800 million tonnes of residue near mines in the Quebec towns of Thetford Mines and Asbestos. Asbestos mines were the main economic driver in both regions for decades until concerns about health impacts of asbestos collapsed the market. The last mine in Canada, in Thetford Mines, stopped operating in 2011.
As much as 40 per cent of the leftover rock still contains asbestos.
The markets today
TORONTO (CP) — Canadian investors had few reasons for revelry on the first day of cannabis legalization Wednesday as some of the industry’s biggest names saw their stock prices fall.
Shares in Canopy Growth Corp., Aurora Cannabis Inc., HEXO Corp. and Tilray Inc. fell between about two and 6.5 per cent while the North American Marijuana Index was off by 2.4 per cent on the day. Investor celebrations were sparse on Day 1 of legalization, said Michael Currie, vice-president and investment adviser at TD Wealth.
“Not as much as the consumers,” he said.
The main exception was Aphria Inc., which gained 71 cents, or 3.8 per cent, to $19.40, on rumours of approval of the company’s application for a U.S. listing.
Currie said trading of cannabis shares is sticking to the motto of “buy on rumour, sell on news.” Although pot stocks have been volatile, they have enjoyed large gains over the past few years on anticipation of a boom.
The start of sales means companies will have to report revenues and profitability.
“It’s no longer speculative and hopes. We’re going to see some hard numbers coming out in the next quarter and people are saying, ‘I’ve had a nice run, why take the risk, I’m going to take my money off the table here.”’
Currie said he doesn’t think it’s a coincidence the sector’s decline is happening on opening day.
“Until we see the first round of earnings reports, things should probably stick in this range.”
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 49.84 points at 15,529.90, after reaching a low of 15,452.67 on 305 million shares traded.
It was led by financials and telecom services. The health care sector lost 2.5 per cent, followed by technology and the important energy, industrials and materials sectors.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 91.74 points to 25,706.68. The S&P 500 index was down 0.71 points at 2,809.21, while the Nasdaq composite lost 2.79 points to 7,642.70. The down day across North American markets followed the biggest trading day in more than six months.
Much of Dow’s declines were attributable to IBM Corp, which lost 7.6 per cent after failing to meet analysts expectations.
Earlier this year the Quebec government helped finance Alliance Magnesium with a $17.5-million loan and a $13.4-million equity interest. The company has developed a technology to extract magnesium from asbestos tailings and hopes to sell the magnesium to auto parts makers and aerospace manufacturers who can use it in place of aluminum to make cars and planes lighter.
Joel Fournier, president of Alliance Magnesium, said the process his company uses destroys the asbestos fibre left in the rock by dousing it in acid. The processing then leaves behind magnesium and amorphous silica. He said the workers wear appropriate protection to keep them from inhaling asbestos fibres, but added the firm’s research has shown very few fibres end up airborne.
“I’m always saying we are not part of the problem, we didn’t create the problem, we are part of the solution,” he said. “Essentially we are doing remediation.”
Fournier says magnesium helps reduce
Meet
hocolate Rosebuds.
CThat was my reward for being a good boy when grocery shopping with my mom and dad. But when we returned home and I was finally allowed to open my treat, the bully kid at the end of the street would invariably drop by and hold out his closed fist, promising that this time he really had brought me a candy to trade – one that I couldn’t see until I gave him some of mine.
Over and over he convinced me and each time he brought an increasingly larger crowd for me to share with.
Several of these bogus trades, and having parents who believed I should resolve such matters on my own, resulted in me challenging half a dozen neighbour boys all at once. I was terrified, especially of the smirking big kid who always smelled of garlic sausage. I couldn’t possibly fight them all, but I could throw rocks better than most.
Oddly enough, rather than tears or bloodshed, this all resulted in several boys covered in mud, and me winning the respect and friendship of a bunch of neighbourhood clowns ever after.
Speaking of neighbourhood scraps among would-be friends, after more than a year of sometimes rancorous discussions, negotiators from the U.S. and Canada arrived at an 11th hour tentative agreement for Canada to join Mexico in an updated NAFTA deal.
USMCA is largely and phonetically-challenging NAFTA under a different name, with a few twists, but nothing approaching the superlatives emanating from the bully at the end of the street.
I borrowed heavily from an RBC Economics analysis in the following.
It’s not quite over yet:
1. The three federal governments still need to vote on it, which may prove difficult in the U.S. if the Democrats gain control of the House after the midterm elections.
2. Complexities are often known to arise during this ratification period, such as when Trump and Trudeau both scoffed at the TPP as newly-elected party-poopers-in-chief, with a
emissions from cars by making them lighter –therefore requiring less energy to power them – and amorphous silica helps reduce emissions in the use of cement.
However, Kathleen Ruff, an expert on asbestos, says it is disappointing Ottawa is allowing an exemption from the ban for mining residues.
“Everyone is in favour of jobs and helping communities, everyone is glad for new enterprises but it shouldn’t be at the cost of human health,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be unsafe.”
Gilles Mercier, whose father died of asbestosrelated lung cancer in 2017 after a career installing asbestos-laden heating systems and roofing tiles, said Wednesday the federal regulations are a “good start” but that they don’t go far enough to protect potential workers who could be exposed to asbestos fibres from the tailings.
view to putting their own personal stamps on negotiations.
3. Several details still need to be ironed out, and could still be deal-breakers. RBC is still budgeting for potential scenarios in which the negotiations do not go as smoothly as hoped, including the possibility that the original NAFTA pact remains in place.
Key elements of the deal
• Autos: To avoid tariffs, and as previously agreed to between the U.S. and Mexico, 75 per cent of auto production must come from North America (up from 62.5 per cent), with 45 per cent of labour being paid at least $16 per hour. Canada also agreed to a maximum quota on auto and parts exports. With the limits over 40 per cent higher than current levels, the quotas don’t present any current constraints.
• Blanket tariffs: The existing tariffs on steel and aluminum will remain in effect for Mexico and Canada, a detail that is of particular concern for Canada since we are the largest single exporter of these items to the U.S. Side negotiations are currently ongoing on this.
• China: Revealing the level of animosity between the U.S. and China, the new agreement limits the ability of Canada and Mexico to negotiate free trade with China by requiring a country to give notice if it enters into trade talks with a non-market economy. This protects the negotiating power of the U.S. by limiting China’s ability to bypass U.S. tariffs by transporting goods through either country.
• Dairy sector: Canada grants the U.S. access to 3.6 per cent of the Canadian dairy market, a slightly larger chunk than the 3.2 per cent allocated to Pacific CPTPP countries and to Europe in the CETA trade deal.
• Trade dispute mechanisms: Canada man-
The regulations do bar use of asbestos tailings to manufacture products that contain asbestos or for use in construction or landscaping unless authorized by the province where it would occur.
Mercier says that is just not good enough because workers will risk being exposed to asbestos, and stirring up the tailings also poses a risk to the people whose homes, schools and businesses are nearby.
“It’s a good start but for Quebec, I’m not confident the province will take its responsibility seriously,” said Mercier.
In particular, Mercier is livid that Quebec’s standard for workplace exposure to asbestos fibres is 10 times higher than the rest of Canada. Quebec allows workers to be exposed to up to one fibre of asbestos per millilitre of air. Elsewhere in Canada it is one-tenth of one fibre per millilitre, and in some countries including France and the Netherlands it is 0.01 of a fibre.
aged to protect the trade-dispute mechanism that it holds near and dear, representing its biggest win in the negotiations.
• Sunset clause: Although details around the sunset clause are still blurry, it appears to be similar to what Mexico originally negotiated. This means the USMCA is subject to an official review by all parties after six years (notably, after U.S. President Donald Trump will have left office) but is guaranteed to exist for 16 years. This is a marked improvement from the original U.S. proposal for a five-year review after which the deal could be terminated. Who wins?
All three countries win as they avoid destruction of one of the world’s most successful trading arrangements.
• Trump wins by technically “killing NAFTA,” if only in name. He can now turn all of his trade aggressions towards China.
• Canada wins in that it did not concede as much as originally feared. Key dispute mechanisms remain in place, the auto sector quota is well above current export levels, the sunset clause is weaker than originally envisioned and a smaller portion of the dairy sector was opened than feared.
• Mexico comes off slightly less well given its auto sector will have to pay substantially higher wages. That said, the country will enjoy largely unrestricted access to the U.S. market, ensuring its large trade surplus will most likely continue.
• Unfortunately, these positives primarily stem from the agreement exceeding its low expectations, rather than actually improving current trade relations.
The deal appears slightly worse for future economic growth compared to NAFTA, but markets are breathing a sigh of relief.
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.
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”
MARK RYAN
Francesco Spertini holds a chunk of chrysotile asbestos with his bare hands at the now closed Jeffrey mine in Asbestos, Que., in an Aug. 10, 2016, file photo.
Warring staffers?
Some strategies for restoring the peace
Joyce M. ROSENBERG Citizen news service
When staffers at a small business can’t get along, many owners find that telling them “cut it out” doesn’t necessarily work.
Owners need to get involved when there’s ongoing conflict that disrupts the workplace and threatens productivity. Ideally, an owner encourages staffers to resolve their differences, and if they can’t on their own, find ways to help restore peace.
Here are things a business owner should do:
• Take complaints seriously. If staffers vent their frustration about each other, an owner should keep an open mind.
“If you’re the mediator and you’re on a predetermined side, you’re not going to work it,” says Craig Vanderburg, chief operating officer with Trion Solutions, a human resources consultancy based in Troy, Mich. And if the problem results from an uneven work load or because one staffer seems to be getting favoured
If staffers vent their frustration about each other, an owner should keep an open mind.
treatment, the boss needs to ensure that everyone is treated equitably.
• If it’s a personality clash, staffers must resolve their issues like adults. An owner can validate staffers’ feelings, but at the end of the day, they need to find a way to work together.
“Appeal to them as individuals, but hold them accountable for the relationship,” says Rick Gibbs, a consultant with Insperity, an HR provider based in Houston.
• Get ready to mediate philosophical disagreements. When staffers are at continuing loggerheads over goals, or the ways goals should be accomplished, the boss may need to help them remember that the company and not their egos is what matters “They may need to have a facilitator to explain to them why it’s important for them to get in alignment,”
Tesla makes move to open factory in Shanghai
BEIJING (AP) — Electric auto brand Tesla Inc. said it signed an agreement Wednesday to secure land in Shanghai for its first factory outside the United States, pushing ahead with development despite mounting U.S.-Chinese trade tensions.
Tesla, based on Palo Alto, Calif., announced plans for the Shanghai factory in July after the Chinese government said it would end restrictions on full foreign ownership of electric vehicle makers to speed up industry development. Those plans have gone ahead despite tariff hikes by Washington and Beijing on
U.S. housing starts down for September
Citizen news service
Vanderburg says.
• Try team building. There are a variety of team building exercises, many of them fun, that can help staffers work together better. They can be found in an online search or from an HR provider. Something as simple as team sports can help some staffers learn about and appreciate each other.
• Get some professional help. Some HR pros use personality tests to help employees understand themselves and each other – for example, what characteristics in a co-worker are likely to push their buttons. An HR consultant can also help an owner determine whether there are management problems contributing to the animosity.
• When hiring, get information and set expectations. Owners and hiring managers need to remember that the skill sets they’re looking for in a new employee include the ability to work well with others. Personality tests can help owners screen out candidates who are likely to be a bad fit. And make it clear to prospective staffers that they’re expected to be team players, and that bad behaviour won’t be tolerated.
billions of dollars of each other’s goods in a dispute over Chinese technology policy.
U.S. imports targeted by Beijing’s penalties include electric cars.
China is the biggest global electric vehicle market and Tesla’s second-largest after the United States.
Tesla joins global automakers including General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG and Nissan Motor Corp. that are pouring billions of dollars into manufacturing electric vehicles in China.
Local production would eliminate risks from tariffs and other import controls.
WASHINGTON — U.S. home construction fell 5.3 per cent in September, a sign that recent hurricanes and rising mortgage rates may be weighing on the market.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that housing starts slipped last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2 million, down from 1.27 million in August. So far this year, starts have increased 6.4 per cent. But the pace of homebuilding has downshifted since May. September ground-breakings were also likely hurt by Hurricane Florence striking North Carolina – and ground-breakings could possibly be depressed in October after Hurricane Michael hit the Florida panhandle.
“Starts are stagnating as the housing market slows, though September’s numbers were suppressed by the hurricane affecting the Carolinas,” said Tendayi Kapfidze, chief economist at Lending Tree, an online loan broker.
Home buyers are facing new cost pressures that could be dampening demand.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac says that the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped to 4.9 per cent last week, the highest level since 2011. The combination of higher borrowing costs and rising home values has made home ownership less affordable.
“It may be tempting to draw national conclusions from these storm-related dips and rallies, but the regional blips can’t obscure the year-long malaise in the national single-family home construction market: starts have been hit or miss, sales flat and permits trending downward for months,” said Aaron Terrazas, a senior economist at the real estate firm Zillow.
After the Commerce Department released the report, shares in home builders and building materials retailers dropped in Wednesday morning trading. Shares for the building companies Lennar, PulteGroup and D.R. Horton were each down by more than two per cent, while shares in Home Depot and Lowe’s slumped more than three per cent.
WORKLIFE IN BRIEF
Ebay sues Amazon
NEW YORK (AP) — Ebay filed a lawsuit against Amazon Wednesday, saying the online retail giant used eBay’s messaging system to steal its sellers. In the lawsuit, eBay said Amazon representatives signed up for eBay accounts and messaged sellers to get them to sell their goods on Amazon.com, which eBay said violated its user agreement. According to the complaint, Amazon representatives spelled out their email addresses and asked eBay sellers to talk on the phone in order to evade detection.
Ebay called it an “orchestrated, co-ordinated, worldwide campaign” to “illegally lure eBay sellers to sell on Amazon.”
Seattle-based Amazon declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Both eBay and Amazon rely on independent sellers to boost their revenue, but it’s become a big part of Amazon’s growth: last year, for the first time, more than half the items sold on Amazon were from third-party sellers.
Ebay said it wants Amazon to stop misusing its messaging platform and to pay it an unspecified amount.
MEG rejects Husky takeover bid
CALGARY (CP) — MEG Energy Corp. says its board is unanimously recommending that shareholders reject Husky Energy Inc.’s $3.3-billion hostile takeover offer made on Oct. 2. In a news release, the Calgary-based oilsands company says the offer “significantly undervalues” its shares and is not in the best interests of the company.
Husky is offering a combination of cash or shares worth $11 for each MEG share.
PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES
There are steps business owners or managers can take when their staff members are feuding or not getting along.
Lorraine passed away on October 12, 2018 at the age of 79 years. She was born in Hillcrest, Alberta on August 2, 1939 to Henry and Nellie Likuski and grew up on the family farm, “Fir Grove”. Her education started in a one room school house close to home with her high school years in Pincher Creek and Fort McLeod. She had the highest diploma grade in Alberta for English 12. We suspect this led to her insistence on her children’s use of proper grammar. After finishing secretarial school in Calgary, she went on to complete a degree in Education (‘61) at the University of Alberta and taught for several years. She married Hans Ulrich “Ole” Stever on July 13, 1963, and moved to Prince George in 1965 with their young daughter. Five more children followed and Mom was kept busy with our academics, sports and music lessons and the family cabinetry business. Left behind to mourn are Ole, her husband of 55 years, her children Karin (Bruce), Peter (Tammy), Chris (Joyce), Henry (Kelly), Diana and Suzy (Keith), her cherished grandchildren and one beloved great granddaughter, her three brothers Henry (Gayle), Robert (Sita) and Ronald (Joan) and her long-time dear friend Harriet Schroeter. At her request, there will be no funeral; a celebration of her life will be held at Fir Grove next summer.
Nothing loved is ever lost, but is forever in our hearts.
Helen Yvonne Vardy April 3, 1934October 10, 2018
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Helen surrounded by her family on October 10, 2018 at the age of 84. She is predeceased by her husband Lorne, her sons Johnny and David, and her daughter Heather. She will be lovingly remembered by her son Ken (Nancy), son in law Paul (LaVerne), grandchildren Bev (Dwayne), Jamie, Michael, Tanya (Steve), Todd and many great grandchildren. A celebration of Helen’s life will be held on Friday October 19, 2018 at 11:00am at the Fort George Baptist Church (1600 Johnson Street) with a Tea to follow. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Bibles for Missions in Helen’s name.
JUNE CATHERINE GRINDE
October 6, 1926October 12, 2018
Passed away peacefully in hospital and is predeceased by her husband Lawrence in 2012, two brothers and four sisters. She is survived by her daughters; Sharon (Leonard) Couiyk, Sheila Matte, and Carol (Dale) Wood. June will be remembered by her grandchildren; Clinton (Devon), Lawrence, Aaron, Sara, Christen (Tristen) and Dean (Jennifer), great grandchildren; Shine, Caileb, Skyler, Everley, Kassidy, Kyle, Keirsten, Kalia, Avery, Greyson, Adrianna and Rylan. She is also survived by her brothers; Harry, John and Jim, A funeral service for June will be held on Monday October 22, 2018 at 1:00 pm at Assman’s Funeral Chapel. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Rotary Hospice House or your choice of charity.
Forever in Our Hearts Rest in Peace
Herb Eckert
September 24, 1925October 11, 2018
The family of Herb Eckert is sad to announce that Herb peacefully passed away in his sleep at the age of 93.
Herb was born in Morden, Manitoba, one of 12 children to parents Gottlieb and Mathilde. Herb is survived by his daughter Charlotte (Guy) and son Ken (Jan), grandsons Grant (Christine), Chase (Chris) and Blair, great grandchildren Casey, Jacob and Luke. Herb is predeceased by his wife Irene, son Larry and daughter Marilyn. Herb was born with the Eckert family stubborn streak. This determination lead to a successful life. Herb’s greatest loves were his family, logging, farming and a good game of crib. Herb’s family would like to thank the nurses, care aides and staff at Jubilee Lodge. Your loving care and kindness made his final days comfortable. Thank you Dr. McGlynn and Dr. MacEoin. A special mention to Fil (his right hand), Alice and Gayleen. Your constant care and concern will always be remembered. There will ba a casual celebration of Herb’s life Saturday, October 20 at the Coast Inn of the North, McGregor Room from 1:003:00pm. Please stop in for a coffee and share a story.
HUMES,LaurenceGeorge February15,1946-October13,2018 LauriepassedawaypeacefullyatHospiceHousewith familybyhisside.HeissurvivedbywifeBonnie, sonsKyleandKelly(Ramona),grandchildren,and brothersDave(Heather)andJim(Ruby).Lauriewas amemberofOperatingEngineersLocal115since 1965.SpecialthankstoKellyandRamonaandthe wonderfulstaffatthePrinceGeorgeHospiceHouse. Noservicebyrequest.
St. Onge, Marlene Ellen
Born in Ocean Falls, BC on August 8, 1954 and passed away at the Prince George Hospice House on September 12th, 2018 with her sister Simonne by her side following a very short battle with cancer. Marlene was predeceased by her parents Robert and Elaine St. Onge and her daughter Andrea Young. She is survived by her sisters Nicole (Rob) Ireland of Mission, Simonne (David) Young of Prince George and Diane (Wayne) Maskwa of Saskatoon. She had one grandson, Dawsen Young from Prince George as well as many nieces and nephews. A small family gathering will be arranged at a later date to remember Marlene.
June (Mabel) Barlow
With great sadness our beloved daughter Shelly McKinley, born July 1, 1966 passed away on October 11, 2018. She was born in Sussex, NB, brought up in Prince George. She leaves behind her parents Florence and Murice McKinley, her brother Aron McKinley and nieces Breanna Holditch and Riley Williams, aunt and uncle Joan & Wayne Hartman. Also her beloved pets Peanut and Precious. She loved to go fishing, boot scooting with friends and so many other things. She did volunteering with different organizations in PG.
Born July 30,1925 passed away peacefully October 13, 2018. Predeceased by Earl Barlow (husband), James and Hazel Parsons (parents), Ernie Parsons (brother), and Harland Viberg (son in law). Survived by her daughter Sherrie Viberg (Dean), grandchildren Diana (Darren), Darren (Fiona), Carla (Shawn), and 7 great grandchildren. June worked as an executive assistant, for CIBC, Canadian Fishing Company, PG Regional Hospital, Panko Poultry and Surrey Memorial Hospital. She enjoyed antiques, refinishing furniture, decorating and politics. Thank you to Dr Dan York and all the staff at Gateway for their excellent care of June in the last 4 years. No Service by request.
Arthur John Tourand (Art) Born February 3, 1941October 12, 2018 It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Art who fought a courageous battle with Cancer, Art passed away peacefully with family by his side. Art was born in Meadow Lake, Sask to John Edward Tourand and Blanch Cheze. Art worked as a Millwright/Welder at Clear Lake Sawmill until his retirement in 2007. Predeceased by his wife Hazel of 43 years in 2000. Survived by his wife Jane (Gates) Tourand, Children Peter (Beth), Ralph (Brenda), Wanda (Arnold), Bev (Frank), Jim (Angie), LeahAnne (Rick,) Margarette (Steve), Patricia (Brad), step children Louise (Larry), Al, 12 grandchildren, 9 great grandchildren, brothers Peter (Frances), Laurence (Sue). We would like to give special thanks to Doctor Burg/Wooldridge and Staff, Palliative Care Team, the Cancer Clinic and a special thanks to the Nurses at UHNBC on the IMU floor for taking care of Art during his final days. Service to be held on Saturday October 20th, 2018 at 1:00pm at Assmans Funeral Chapel. In lieu of flowers please donate to the PG Cancer Society.
A gathering will be held at Handy Circle, 490 Quebec St, PG from 12:00-3:00pm, November 5, 2018. This will be a very informal get together. Shelly was NOT very fond of formal do’s.
Ronald Ryan de Wit August 2, 1965October 16, 2018
He is survived by his children Amanda, Alisha and Nicholas, his siblings Cathy Furgason (Don Miller), Wilfred de Wit, Hilda Bird (Gordon), Ken de Wit (GeriLee), and his sister-in-law Virginia. Ron was predeceased in death by his parents George and Tina de Wit, his brother Ed, and his sister Lisa. Ron enjoyed the simple things, such as coffee at Tim Hortons, fishing, garage sales and thrift store shopping. He was devoted to serving the community, working at St. Vincent de Paul and most recently at Active Support Against Poverty. He was fondly remembered as the “Shelter Dad”. Ron was diagnosed with cancer only two months ago. He received excellent care by everyone at the Hospice House where he spent his final days. Donations can be made to the Prince George Hospice Society. His memorial service will be held on Friday, October 19, 2018 from 4:00pm - 6:00pm at the Prince George and District Senior Citizens Activity Centre, 425 Brunswick Street, Prince George, BC.
Mary Alice Lorraine (Likuski) Stever
Julia Audrey Serup
With heavy hearts, we announce the passing of our beloved Mother and Grandmother. Julia was born in Southampton, England to Hamish and Audrey Reid.
physiotherapist, she immigrated alone to
ExperiencedSkidderoperatorneededimmediately; Skidderexperienceandacurrentclass5driver’s licenseisrequired.Thiscamppositionoffersa competitivewageandbenefitpackage.
8540ordropofresumeatFrostLakeLoggingLtd office-#32-556NorthNechakoRoad,PrinceGeorge www.frostlake.ca
