PENINSULA
NEWS REVIEW
Viking Air inks deal in China
Running the Tour
A BODY SHOP? 6722 Bertram Place (at Keating Cross Rd.)
Aircraft manufacturer looks to sell 50 aircraft in five years in China, page 7
Alain Dubé of Brentwood Bay plans to take on a 43-day Tour de France foot race, page 17
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Friday, June 19,
2015
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Reknowned Bikram Yoga teacher and role model Emmy Cleaves, left, helps yoga practitioners from Vancouver Island and further afield with their positions during an instructional session at Bikram Yoga Sidney. Cleaves and her husband Robert were in town as part of a weekend seminar and fundraising effort for the Wilderness Conservancy Fund. For more, see page 3.
Amalgamation question stalled at provincial level Tim Collins News contributor
After a long and sometimes heated debate as to whether to even place a question regarding municipal amalgamation on the November 15 municipal election ballots, it now seems that the process to even study the issue has hit another delay. The District of North Saanich, along with Sidney, Central Saan-
ich, Colwood, Victoria, Esquimalt and Metchosin, have all written to Coralee Oakes, the Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development requesting a meeting to discuss where the process needs to go from here. “We sent a letter over 8 months ago in which we requested funding for a study to review the question, with each area to develop its own terms of reference for such a study,” said Alice Finall, Mayor
“We’ve received no reply and are now sending out a second request.” – Alice Finall
of North Saanich. “We’ve received no reply and are now sending out a second request. But really, we’ve heard nothing back.” Finall was not a supporter of placing the issue on the ballot last
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fall, but finally agreed to support a unanimous motion to do so at the October council meeting. At the time, Finall was quoted as saying that while it was not against her principles to ask the question, she did not anticipate that it would result in a positive vote favoring a review of the amalgamation concept. In fact, the question met with an overwhelmingly positive vote. Yet, according to John Vickers,
the Vice Chair of the group known as Amalgamation Yes, despite the 75% level of support for the review of amalgamation by the 80,000 people who voted on the question, the provincial government is dragging its feet on the next steps, not just in North Saanich but in all the municipalities where the vote took place. PleAse see: Citizens and communities, page 6