T.O. mayor pipes up on crack
EDITORIAL 6, CANADA 13
www.pgcitizen.ca
PRINCE
GEORGE
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2013
Clark adds detail to fifth condition
Peter JAMES Citizen staff pjames@pgcitizen.ca
The provincial government won’t begin to negotiate directly with oil pipeline proponents surrounding possible economic benefits until other safety and social conditions are met.
During a news conference in Vancouver on Tuesday, Premier Christy Clark and her Alberta counterpart Alison Redford announced that they’d reached a framework to proceed with future discussions about new pipelines, like Northern Gateway, to ship Alberta oilsands products through B.C. for west coast export. Red-ford said her province will support B.C. in its attempt to get its five conditions met, while Clark said B.C. will join the Redford-led national energy strategy.
Part of the deal is that to satisfy its fifth condition surrounding appropriate economic benefits, B.C. will negotiate directly with industry rather than the government of Alberta.
But those talks won’t happen for any particular project until the four other conditions have been satisfied.
“I always said from the very beginning there are a whole host of different possibilities [for economic benefits],” Clark said. “For example, people have talked about a refinery in British Columbia, that could be 3,000 jobs and lot of potential tax revenue for the people of the province.”
Another option would include some sort of toll or tax on oil transported through B.C. or put on export ships. Both premiers were clear that any revenue would not come from Alberta’s oil royalty revenue.
Northern Gateway is seeking to build a pipeline from northern Alberta to Kitimat and is awaiting an environmental assessment report expected next month.
— see PREMIER, page 3
Gateway not only player
Northern Gateway likely won't be the only party at the table when, or if, it comes time for the oil industry and the province to open negotiations about possible economic benefits of a pipeline across northern B.C. In order to meet the province's fifth condition for new pipeline projects, Premier Christy Clark announced Thursday that it will be up to industry to shoulder the load. But pipeline companies like Northern Gateway are just part of the equation when determining if B.C. is getting its fair economic share of new energy infrastructure, which could also include oilsands producers, oil customers or shipping companies.
— see 'WE STILL, page 3
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Citizen makes wheel difference
Christine HINZMANN Citizen staff chinzmann@pgcitizen.ca
Prince George Sports Hall of Fame member Boyd Bayne, best known in Prince George for his coaching in boxing, is mobile again after a nasty Halloween trick.
His truck was stolen on Oct. 31 but when it was recovered the next day, his wheelchair remained missing.
Thanks to a story in the Seniors’ section of the Citizen, Bayne called first thing Tuesday morning to report it was found.
“I got my wheelchair back because of you,” said Bayne during the happy call to The Citizen office.
“Thank you so very, very much. This is just great. Without you and The Citizen I would probably have never got my wheelchair back.”
Bayne said he got a call from the local RCMP that told him his wheelchair was found at the College Heights transfer station.
Bayne was told someone took it from the transfer station because it looked like it was too good for the dump.
As soon as that person read about Bayne’s plight in the newspaper, he called police to say he had the wheelchair.
An RCMP officer retrieved the wheelchair and promptly returned it to Bayne.
City judge mourned
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
A prominent member of the legal community in Prince George and northern B.C. died Monday following a long bout with cancer.
Darrell O’Byrne had been a provincial court judge based in Prince George since August 2005 and prior to that was a practising lawyer in northwest B.C. for 25 years.
“He was a very hard working judge that really understood the people of the north,” colleague Michael Brecknell, a provincial court associate chief judge, said Tuesday.
“He lived up here for a great many years representing all sorts of different people in just about every town in northern B.C. and certainly as a judge he sat everywhere in the north.”
During his time in Prince George, O’Byrne heard hundreds of cases covering a wide range of allegations - from drunk driving to drug dealing to serious assaults. He had a knack for cutting to the chase, according to local lawyer and Prince George Bar Association president Garth Wright.
“One of the things I always admired about Darrell was he was very good at coming quickly to the point,” Wright said. “He could focus in on what’s the key issue or set of issues in this proceeding and say ‘let’s deal with that,’
He lived up here for a great many years representing all sorts of different people in just about every town in northern B.C. and certainly as a judge he sat everywhere in the north.
— Michael Brecknell
and that’s important in a courtroom, particularly provincial court.”
O’Byrne’s notable decisions included sentencing Timothy Shawn Preddy to nine years in prison for the confinement and torture of two women in Valemount. That decision was given in Port Coquitlam after Preddy was deemed too high a security risk to be transported back to Prince George following his escape from the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre.
O’Byrne also once commented that a photo of a crack-addicted thief holding a seven-inch hunting knife against the throat of a taxi driver was the “most frightening thing I have ever seen” before sentencing Donald George Witso to four years in jail.
And in issuing a 14-month jail term to man who ran an extensive marijuana grow operation near Hixon, he dismissed any consideration of a conditional sentence in favour of deterring others from committing the same crime.
“You play the game, you pay the
price,” O’Byrne told Phuc Van Vo during sentencing.
During the two years he was an administrative judge for the Cariboo region, O’Byrne was known to not have much time for bureaucracies and lived by the maxim that it was better to make a decision and ask for foregiveness after the fact than to seek permission beforehand.
“He was very much a person who, if something needed to be done, he’d get on with doing it as opposed to spending a lot of time in meetings talking about doing it,” said a colleague who asked not to be identified.
After graduating from law school at the University of British Columbia, O’Byrne was called to the bar in 1980. Following articles and a brief stint in private practice, he moved to Terrace where he worked at the Crown Counsel office for about two years.
In 1983, he became partner in Halfyard, O’Byrne and Wright where he continued in that firm until 1992.
— see O’BYRNE, page 3
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