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A brave new leap for Galloway’s
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Chouhan will pay money back for trip Jennifer Moreau staff reporter
Burnaby-Edmonds MLA Raj Chouhan is refunding taxpayers more than $2,000 for airfare for a trip he took with his wife to South Africa last August. While Chouhan insists he followed the rules and was allowed to book an airline ticket for his wife to accompany him, he decided to repay the $2,200 because he didn’t want to be the centre of negative publicity. “I don’t want any distraction. I checked many times that what I did was correct and that I didn’t need to pay,” he said. “But the story was going on and on, and I don’t want to be that story. … Mainly, I didn’t want any distraction so I paid.” Controversy around the trip surfaced with media reports focused on Liberal MLA Linda Reid. Reid has spent $120,000 in renovations and expenses, and $5,500 for her husband to fly business class with her to South Africa. Reid is the House speaker, and Chouhan is the deputy speaker, and while they were not on the same flight, both travelled to South Africa last fall for the annual Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference. The purpose of the five-day event is for representatives from Commonwealth countries to gather and discuss global issues, Chouhan said. According to Chouhan, travel rules stipulate two options for MLAs taking flights longer than four hours: travel solo in business class, or take a spouse and travel in economy – although those rules are now under review, he says. Chouhan says he booked the cheapest flight he could find. “I was sitting in the last row of the plane, I couldn’t move my feet,” he said. “That was very uncomfortable. … I could not justify flying business class. It was a 22-hour flight.”
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For a video on bed bugs, scan with Layar Larry Wright/burnaby now
Going buggy: Amber Robinson’s family is being bitten by bedbugs in a Burnaby apartment building that has a chronic
infestation. Residents of the Albert Street building have filed a complaint with the Residential Tenancy Branch, and a hearing is scheduled for April.
‘They feast on us all the time’ Jennifer Moreau staff reporter
Residents of a Burnaby apartment building have taken their property manager to the Residential Tenancy Branch in an attempt to deal with a chronic bedbug infestation. The rental building at 4105 Albert St. has been infested for years with the blood-sucking parasites, and the NOW spoke with several upset tenants who want action. Amber Robinson has been living in the building since 2011 and is raising four
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kids on a fixed income. Roughly a year ago, she saw small insects in her suite and noticed bites. “(I) saw them crawling around everywhere, (I was) waking up in the middle of the night and they would be all over me and my toddler, my baby was seven months old,” Robinson said. “They just enjoy us, they feast on us all the time. It’s tiring, it’s tormenting, it’s very traumatic.” Throughout one of her pregnancies, Robinson had to sleep on the floor in her living room because of the bedbugs. “It just became mental for me. I had to
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throw out all my furniture, all my beds,” she said. “It’s been treated once, and that was traumatic on its own, because I was a single mother, I was pregnant, I had nowhere to stay overnight, and you can’t stay in a chemical sprayed (suite).” According to Robinson, the insects move throughout the building when pest control treats suites. “They are just travelling through the walls, and the manger will finally spray someone’s apartment, and they just move into the next apartment,” she said. “They Bedbugs 11
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