PUBLIC GETS MORE TIME TO COMMENT ON AJAX ANDREA KLASSEN STAFF REPORTER andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
The public will get another 30 days to comment on the studies and reports the proponents of the Ajax mine must prepare for their environmental review, but a company spokesman said KGHM Ajax isn’t expecting the extra input from Kamloopsians to delay its application to the provincial and federal governments. KGHM Ajax external-affairs manager Yves Lacasse told KTW his company is supportive of the new comment period.
“But, I don’t really anticipate it will result in our submission changing at this point.” The provincial Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) announced on Tuesday, Sept. 30, it will take public comment on the mine’s draft application information requirements and environmental impact statement guidelines for 30 days, starting in early November. Calls for more comment have come from both the City of Kamloops and various groups opposed to the mine since Ajax released a new configuration for the project this past spring.
KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK THURSDAY
See KAPA, page A10
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OCTOBER 2, 2014 | Volume 27 No. 117
PROVINCE PLEDGES ECIG CONTROLS JEFF NAGEL BLACK PRESS jnagel@blackpress.ca
Health Minister Terry Lake said the province is prepared to regulate electronic cigarettes so their sale is governed by the same provincial restrictions as tobacco smoking. He was responding to a resolution adopted at lasy week’s Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, urging government action. The growing trend of “vaping” with e-cigarettes instead of smoking has raised questions over product safety and concerns that years of anti-smoking gains could unravel if nicotine addiction rebounds. Lake said he would prefer the federal government regulate the battery-powered vaporizers instead, but added the province will act within a year if Ottawa does not. The goal, he said, would be to ensure e-cigarettes face most of the same bans or restrictions that apply on regular ones under B.C.’s Tobacco Control Act, particularly the ban on sale of tobacco to minors and the rules on advertising and display. Lake wouldn’t yet say if the provincial ban on smoking in public buildings and workplaces, or within three metres of their doors and open windows, would also apply to vaping, but he noted cities can also pass their own bylaws to restrict use of e-cigarettes. Provincial law also bans smoking
on all school grounds and in vehicles carrying youth under 16. The issue is so new that Kamloops Mayor Peter Milobar told KTW he has not given the idea any thought and, therefore, could not comment. Kamloops Coun. Marg Spina, however, wants e-cigarettes regulated like tobacco cigarettes. “My biggest concern with e-cigarettes is youth,” she said. “I know lots of young people use them when they’ve never smoked anything else.” Fellow Coun. Arjun Singh said that, while he is interested in “making smoking a hard thing to do,” he realizes smokers and vapers need to be allowed somewhere — though he doesn’t think either should be permitted in offices. The City of Vancouver is considering extending its smoking bylaw to e-cigarettes and adding the word “vapourizing” to its no-smoking signs. Lake is expected to continue to press for a national solution this week at a conference of provincial health ministers and federal officials. The B.C. Healthy Living Alliance argues the use of e-cigarettes to defy public smoking bans undermines a key deterrent to tobacco use, arguing the jury is out as to whether e-cigarettes are effective and safe smoking cessation aids, noting they are regulated as consumer products and have not undergone the approval process required for a medication.
COLLISION ON COLUMBIA
DAVE EAGLES/KTW
An motocyclist is tended to by emergency-response crews after his bike and a car collided on Columbia Street in Sahali, near the A&W restaurant, on Tuesday, Sept. 30, at 10 a.m. The motorcyclist was taken to Royal Inland Hospital with what are believed to have been non-life-threatening injuries.
Questions remain a year after crash
N
obody knows why Lorne Perrault, a conscientious, intelligent and quiet 16-year-old flying-school student, left the area of Kamloops Lake and travelled twice as far, in nautical miles, as he was supposed to on his solo training flight. And, chances are, nobody
will ever know why the teenager flew away from Kamloops and toward Cache Creek last summer, ultimately crashing the TylAir-owned Cessna 172 and dying at the scene. “Everybody can speculate as to why he was there,” TylAir owner Tyler Gertzen said on Tuesday, Sept. 30, the day the Transportation Board of Canada
released its report into the Aug. 6, 2013 crash. ““The Lorne that I know was the Lorne who would have gone where he was directed to go,” Gertzen said “It was uncharacteristic. “He would have been your straight-A student, a responsible student, a rule follower. It adds to the mystery.”
Read the story on page A6. Read the TSB report online at kamloopsthisweek.com
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