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Police treating disappearance as homicide
Citizen staff
Premier Christy Clark speaks at the opening of the Association for Mineral Exploration BC's mineral roundup in Vancouver on Monday.
Clark puts up $10M more for mine safety, permitting
Geordon OMAND The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — A mining disaster and increased pressure to speed up the mine-review process in British Columbia has prompted Premier Christy Clark to promise more funding.
Clark told a crowd at Roundup 2015, the annual mineral exploration conference in Vancouver, that her government would hike the budget this year for B.C.’s Ministry of Mines and Energy by nearly $10 million in an effort to improve safety and efficiency.
“We’re increasing resources so that we have more boots on the ground, performing more inspections,” said Clark on Monday.
“[We’re] making sure, in light of what’s happened at Mt. Polley, that we all recognize our greater responsibility to ... ensure that mining is done safely and mining is done in a way that maintains public confidence and public trust.”
In August 2014, the tailings dam at the Mt. Polley gold and copper mine near Williams Lake, B.C., burst, releasing millions of tonnes of effluent into nearby salmon-bearing lakes and streams and prompting a temporary water ban for hundreds of area residents.
Cleanup of the massive spill and remediation of the mine, owned by the Imperial Metals Corp., are expected to take years and cost millions.
B.C.’s chief inspector of mines approved
m [We're] making sure, in light of what's happened at Mt. Polley, that we all recognize our greater responsibility to ... ensure that mining is done safely...
— Christy Clark
repair work for the tailings pond just last month. It’s unclear when the mine could start operating again.
Besides boosting resources to employ more inspections staff, the additional funding announced by the province will go towards the creation of a major mines permitting office designed to fast-track the mine review process.
“Its role is to improve co-ordination across government so that the ministries aren’t tripping over one other and putting each other’s deadlines at risk,” said Clark.
The increase puts the overall spending authority for the province’s mines and mineral resources division at just over $20 million.
At the same time, the province committed to extend an industry tax credit until 2020 that allows new mines and major expansions to deduct 133 per cent of their capital costs.
The premier said the province is more than halfway to its goal of opening 15 new and expanded mines by 2015 and the new funding will further improve the permit process.
She also forecasted balancing the province’s books for the third straight year when the budget is released next month.
On the same day as the government announcement, a First Nations group called on the province to divide up some of the resources with First Nations.
“If this year’s [mining conference] focuses on how to hold on to control of the industry rather than sharing it, then we will remain on a path of confrontation and B.C. will be in no position to capitalize when the markets rebound,” said Bev Sellars, chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation and chair of the First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining group.
In the speech to conference attendees, Clark referenced the government’s past failures and the need for better engagement and collaboration with the province’s aboriginal groups.
“For 100 years we have done a great job of developing resource wealth in our province. We have not done a great job of sharing those resources from government with First Nations,” she said.
“Government needs to find a way to share resources better with First Nations and share decision-making better.”
RCMP advise caution after rash of pedestrian deaths
Charelle EVELYN Citizen staff cevelyn@pgcitizen.ca
Saturday night’s fatal collision on Spruce Street brings the number of pedestrians who have recently died after being struck by vehicles to five.
Since early October, four incidents have resulted in the deaths of five people, which to RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Craig Douglass, seems like more than in recent memory.
On Sunday, a 75-year-old man was struck near his parked vehicle in the 1700 block of Spruce Street. A 79-year-old woman was killed in mid-December on Winnipeg Street nearly two months after a 50-year-old woman and 49-year-old man died after being struck by a commercial tractor trailer while crossing Nicholson Street near the College of New Caledonia. Prior to that, a 36-year-old man was killed after getting hit while crossing First Avenue near Dominion Street on Oct. 5, 2014.
There doesn’t appear to be anything that has changed to indicate why this is happening, said Douglass.
“Our traffic services section is in talks with ICBC and other partners and we’re looking
at trying to determine how this is happening and what, if anything, we can be doing more of to prevent it aside from educating both drivers and pedestrians,” Douglass said. “Certainly, in this community, as in all communities that I’ve been to, there’s a combination of pedestrians crossing where they shouldn’t be and drivers not stopping for pedestrians where they should be.”
On Monday, Coun. Jillian Merrick noted on social media that the fatalities signalled that it was “time to rally city hall to properly fund pedestrian infrastructure.”
During the Jan. 5 meeting, Merrick was named as city council’s liaison to the accessibility committee, which has long been lobbying council for more funding for sidewalks.
The city’s capital plan for this year features $250,000 for sidewalk rehabilitation, budgeted out of the general infrastructure reinvestment fund. Early estimates reported to council in January indicated that an annual investment of closer to $1.4 million would be necessary to bring sidewalk infrastructure to where it needs to be.
Last year, the city was able to beef up its investment with more than $760,000 in
extra Capital Works Fund money to accelerate the repair schedule on sidewalks and ramps.
Merrick said she would be looking to have a change made to boost the sidewalk repair budget in the 2015 budget before it passes final reading.
“The challenge really is it has to come out of somewhere. There’s no other money to be had, so if we’re fully funding our sidewalk infrastructure what other budget are we taking it from? And [roads] seems like an obvious one because it’s all related to transportation,” she said. “Everyone is a pedestrian at some point and everyone relies on sidewalks at some point so for me they’re universally beneficial. They don’t just benefit a certain group and they’re totally essential to the basic transportation network.”
Regardless of what the investigations into these collisions turn up, caution while out on the roads should be paramount, said Douglass.
“Any one of these incidences certainly could have been prevented, I’m relatively confident, by exercising caution on both sides of the steering wheel,” he said.
The disappearance of Jordan Taylor McLeod is now being treated as a homicide, Prince George RCMP said Monday.
McLeod was reported missing on Jan. 19 and RCMP suspect he was involved in a shots fired incident on Upper Fraser Road, near Highway 16 east of the city, on Jan. 16.
He was last seen on that day in Prince George and Vanderhoof, which he is believed to often frequent.
After a call for the public’s help, a grey 2013 Chrysler 200 police said is part of the investigation was recovered by Vanderhoof RCMP last week.
The investigation has grown to cover three communities and involve more than 100 officers, RCMP said Monday. They’re also continuing to ask for the public’s help.
“Officers are asking anyone that has the occasion to travel on rural roads including forest service roads, to report anything suspicious that you may have noticed in the last two weeks,” RCMP said.
Police remain on the lookout for a car McLeod had been driving, a burgundy 2006 Chevrolet Malibu with a ‘Quality Assured Collision and Glass’ decal on both doors and bearing B.C. licence plate 163 RNA.
Anyone who sees the car is asked to call 911 immediately and to refrain from approaching the vehicle.
—see Making It Right on page 3
MCLEOD
Sex assault trial begins for former fire chief
Mark NIELSEN Citizen staff mnielsen@pgcitizen.ca
One of the three women accusing a now former chief of the Fort St. James Volunteer Fire Department of sexually assaulting them testified Monday that matters came to a head when he pulled on her ponytail while making sexually suggestive comments.
A drunken Robert Harold Bennett,
50, followed that up by trying to grab her breasts while behind her during the alleged July 18, 2013 incident, Kirsten Rudolph-Smith, 46, testified as a trial before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett began at the Prince George courthouse.
Rudolph-Smith, who glared at Bennett on a few occasions while on the witness stand, said she was able to grab his wrists and fend him off before two fellow firefighters got up and “peeled him off me at that point.”
Rudolph-Smith filed a complaint with the Fort St. James RCMP the next day and, acting on a tip from the fire department’s office assistant, got in touch with the two other women over the next few days and weeks to press charges against Bennett.
Rudolph-Smith became a member of the fire department in October 2000 and had risen to the level of lieutenant by the time she retired from the volunteer position in November 2014. She said she knew what she was getting into when she joined the fire department.
“The tone at the fire hall was not the same as you would find at a church picnic but we had a very testosterone-rich environment and that was something I expected,” Rudolph-Smith said.
— see BENNETT, page 3
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