Burnaby Now April 4 2012

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Putting the focus on fitness

Help out Hats Off Day in the Heights

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BUDGET FALLOUT

Volunteer program cancelled Local non-profit groups lose help as federal budget eliminates Katimavik Jennifer Moreau staff reporter

Several Burnaby non-profit groups will be left without extra help, now that the federal government is eliminating a national youth volunteer program. The federal government effectively announced the end of the Katimavik program with the release of the latest budget on March 29. “It’s a tremendous loss,” said Tom Riessner, director of operations for ReStore, a building supplies shop whose proceeds help fund Habitat for Humanity. “It’s a great loss to kids, … but also to the greater community.” Katimavik sends groups of 11 volunteers, aged 17 to 21, to work full-time for six months in several communities across Canada. The program has been around for 35 years, and more than 300,000 young Canadians have participated. Riessner said ReStore has partnered with the program for about six years. Youth volunteers help in the shop and with Habitat for Humanity’s building projects. Riessner usually gets two volunteers per six-month shift to help in his Burnaby store. “Katimavik has suffered the death of a thousand cuts,” Riessner said. “We have to try to find additional volunteers to cover 80 hours of volunteer labour, per week. That leaves a huge hole for us.” Riessner said the program’s loss would affect a lot of other non-profits that are stretched thin. Other Burnaby groups that get Katimavik Page 8

Jason Lang/burnaby now

Adornment: Farhana Mehndi decorates Sara Kandel’s hand with henna at a new community market, where immigrant and

refugee women can sell things while picking up business skills. The market runs the last Saturday of each month in the gym at Edmonds Community School. For more photos, go to www.burnabynow.com.

Mayor questions focus on fares Janaya Fuller-Evans staff reporter

The provincial government plans to ensure transit fines are enforced, Transportation Minister Blair Lekstrom told reporters last week after TransLink announced that millions of dollars is lost annually to unpaid fines. But TransLink’s inability to enforce fare evasion fines is not a new issue, according to Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan. Bringing fare evasion up now is an attempt by Lekstrom to justify the faregate project, he added in a phone interview last

Wednesday. “The provincial government has always used fare evasion as a political football,” he said. “They pretended interest in it so they could stir up public sentiment and get support for their big capital expenditures,” he added, “so everybody would be happy when they handed over a contract to a company that was lobbied for by (former premier Gordon Campbell’s deputy minister and adviser) Ken Dobell.” Dobell was a registered lobbyist for Cubic Transportation Systems, which received the contract to build the elec-

tronic fare card and faregate system from TransLink in December 2010. Faregate construction began last summer and is expected to be completed by 2013. “That is where the rubber hits the road, really,” Corrigan said. “How interested were they in fare evasion, except for the political mileage they could make out of it.” And after spending an estimated $170 million on the faregate project, it is unlikely the system will be an effective deterrent,

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