As of Friday, there were eight candidates for the six city councillor positions and two for mayor, guaranteeing there will be elections for city hall. There will likely be more contenders, last election there were 12 for council, four for mayor.
The school board scene isn’t so rosy. Again as of Friday, there are three official candidates, one each for Zones 4, 5 and 7, Nobody yet for the other four zones including Williams Lake. No incumbent trustees had signed in but some are running for CRD or WL council.
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Sulphuric acid spills on a busy commuter route in Trail shouldn’t be of much concern to Cariboo residents except that ICBC is expected to pick up the tab for repairing the damages to the 3,000 motor vehicles that unwittingly drove through them. Repairs could be costly.
The separate spills, one 220 litres, the other 70 litres, covered about 16 kilometres of a highway said to be used by up to 20,000 vehicles a day.
It seems Teck Resources Ltd. sold the corrosive acid to International Raw Materials Ltd. who was moving the stuff by truck when the spills occurred.
Teck has apologized. The question is, should whoever was responsible for the two spills have some responsibility for the damages, or should ICBC pay the whole shot? It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
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Prime Minister Trudeau says there would be no Trans Mountain pipeline expansion if a private proponent was doing it. Maybe that’s because the pp’s know something he doesn’t, plus Mr. T isn’t as directly accountable to his shareholders (us) as the private corporations are.
The newly-formed Trans Mountain Corporation, which will be responsible for the pipeline, has seven directors, three each from Alberta and Ontario, only one from B.C.
Diana French is a freelance columnist for the Tribune. She is a former Tribune editor, retired teacher, historian and book author.
