The Chilliwack
Progress Tuesday
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Y O U R C O M M U N I T Y N E W S PA P E R • F O U N D E D I N 1 8 9 1 • W W W. T H E P R O G R E S S . C O M • T U E S D AY, F E B R U A R Y 2 8 , 2 0 1 2
Cultus Lakers vie for byelection attention Homeowners hope to change ‘undemocratic’ representation Jennifer Feinberg The Progress Chilliwack byelection candidates will be asked to help Cultus Lake residents alleviate “dysfunction” and update the Cultus Lake Park Act to reflect the realities of 2012. Cultus Lake resident Gary Lister and his wife, Sue, are collecting signatures for a petition to present ChilliwackHope byelection candidates, who will be vying for the MLA seat vacated recently by Barry Penner. They were knocking on doors both days over the weekend and have already amassed more than 100 signatures. “Most people at the lake don’t understand why the majority of commissioners are elected from Chilliwack,” he said. “They don’t think it’s fair.” Almost everyone they approached wanted to sign, except for a renter who would soon be moving, said Sue Lister. “I think if more people were aware of the situation, they would want things changed,” she said. Their petition seeks to correct the “undemocratic” election rules imposed on Lakers whereby the majority of the Cultus Lake Park Board commissioners, five of them, are elected by Chilliwack residents, while only two are elected by Cultus Lake residents. “The Board needs to be elected by the people they govern like every other local government in British Columbia,” writes Gary Lister in the preamble, calling it a “fundamental principle of our democracy.” For Chilliwack residents, he described it as tantamount to having the majority of their city councillors Continued: CULTUS/ p14
About 200 teachers and supporters lined Luckakuck Way on Monday afternoon in an effort to raise awareness for their fight for public education. Teachers were also rallying outside various schools throughout the district. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Teachers take protest to the streets Katie Bartel The Progress Chilliwack teachers took to the streets Monday to raise awareness around their fight for public education. For three hours, from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., approximately 200 teachers rallied along Vedder Road and Luckakuck with signs explaining the union’s side and hopes for supportive honks. They weren’t the only ones. After months of job action and ongoing clashes with the provincial government, teachers across the province imposed a day of action. “We need to do something now to make more public aware-
ness of the fact we’re still in this fight,” said Chilliwack Teachers’ Association president Katharin Midzain. “People need to know that public education is at a very critical point of dismantling.” Monday’s day of action came on the heels of the B.C. Education Ministry announcing last Thursday it would be setting in motion legislation to end the strike. Minister of Education George Abbott made the announcement following a report by the government’s fact-finder, Trevor Hughes, who concluded it “very unlikely” the BC Teachers’ Federation would reach a voluntary agreement with the BC School Employers’
Association. The report sited 78 face-toface bargaining sessions, and of more than 1,000 issues on the table, only nine were agreed upon. If legislation is drawn up, a netzero contract would be imposed on the union. Finance Minister Kevin Falcon spoke on the issue following a Chilliwack Rotary meeting Friday. He said the teachers’ union has been told, “Look, you’re coming off a 16 per cent wage increase, you’ve got very generous benefits that most in the private sector would love to have, and we’re just asking them to do what every other public sector
union has signed onto, which is a zero increase, no net increase, over two years. We think that is very reasonable.” “The fact of the matter is we’ve spent one year and over 75 face-to-face meetings trying to get to some basis to have an agreement,” said Falcon. “Unfortunately, we’ve made absolutely no progress and therefore we’re left with no alternative really but to now consider the legislative option.” In 2005, when the government issued back-to-work legislation, teachers responded with a province-wide strike lasting 10 school days.
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