Tuesday - Dec. 17, 2024 - Chilliwack to keep school gym

🌧 High 4C

Good morning!

To read many of our stories, you need to be a newsletter subscriber. And if you’re like me, every now and then, you get logged out of our website and it’s a pain to get the link sent to your email and all that. You may have missed it, but the screen that will ask you for your email now also allows you to create and then use a password as an alternate way to log in. This log-in method was broken when it first appeared on our site, but I just tried it and it now seems fixed. So go ahead and use it; just don’t blame me when you realize you have yet another password to set.

Speaking of which—cue Seinfeld voice—how about these password systems these days? It’s not that you need a password for every site, but that many of the sites have very specific parameters for your passwords. I came across one the other day that required TWO capitals. Some will demand certain special characters. Other sites prohibit those same characters. It’s exhausting—and that’s before you get to the fact that you may have to not only remember your own password but those of your other household members who are also continually getting locked out of their various accounts.

– Tyler

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope (We have had to temporarily change our forecast links to the Weather Network due to a technical error.)

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

NEWS

Chaos in Ottawa, new MP in Langley

The federal Liberals lost their last toe hold in the Fraser Valley Monday, but the failure to hold John Aldag’s old seat is the least of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s problems.

Monday ended with Conservative Tamara Jensen easily reclaiming the seat she had once held. With two-thirds of votes counted at 10pm last night, Jensen had garnered nearly 60% of ballots. The Liberal candidate, Madison Fleischer, meanwhile, was on track to win just 18% of the vote—less than half the share Aldag won in 2021 en route to his victory.

You can find the full results here.

The need for a by-election was triggered by Aldag’s resignation in the spring so he could run for the BC NDP in this year’s provincial election. With polls suggesting the party would lose the seat, the Liberals had put off calling a vote for as long as possible. Having called the election for Dec. 16, the Liberals also engineered the release of a much-anticipated fall budget update for the same day.

But Monday morning brought far bigger problems for Trudeau than another by-election suggesting his party was in trouble. Hours before Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland was set to deliver the Fall Economic Statement, she resigned from cabinet with a letter in which she admitted to being at odds with Trudeau about the direction of fiscal policy and the need to avoid “costly political gimmicks”—an allusion to the two-month GST “holiday” the Liberals announced and a promise of a $250 rebate for working Canadians.

The resignation triggered calls for Trudeau’s departure by dozens of members of his own party, panicked meetings, and speculation about the end of Trudeau’s time as prime minister. You can find the Canadian Press play-by-play of the drama in Ottawa here. Trudeau addressed his caucus in a meeting before departing. Afterwards, some MPs said they supported their leader, others said a change of leadership was needed, and Health Minister Mark Holland refused to answer entirely.

After Freeland’s departure, Dominic LeBlanc was hastily appointed finance minister Monday. LeBlanc is also the Public Safety Minister. Over the weekend, Trudeau’s housing minister, Sean Fraser, also resigned.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has also called for Trudeau to go, though it’s unclear whether or when his party would remove its confidence from the government to trigger an election. Trudeau has thus far refused immediate calls to resign

Related

Need to Know

👟 A Chilliwack dentist says he was mugged while running on Rotary Trail [Fraser Valley Today]

🚔 Sq’éwqel (Seabird Island) First Nation was put into lockdown as police sought an armed person Monday [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]

🏎 An impaired Langley man called 9-1-1 for help after driving his Porsche into rocks near Mission [Mission Record]

🚧 The widening of 208 Street has been delayed by new electrical work [Langley Advance Times]

🚨 Chilliwack had one of the country’s worst murder rates in 2023 [Chilliwack Progress]

💰 Langley’s Masonic hall may be sold to pay down a developer’s mounting debt [Aldergrove Star]

👉 Thieves broke into a Chilliwack store that offers discounted food for seniors [Fraser Valley Today]

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The Agenda

Yarrow school asks to keep old gym it had promised to demolish

A Yarrow private school wants to keep a gymnasium it previously promised to demolish.

The operators of John Calvin Christian School had committed to demolishing its gymnasium when it applied for, and received, permission from the Agricultural Land Commission to build a new gym. The school, which dates to the 1950s, predates the Agricultural Land Reserve. But although the land’s current use is grandfathered in, the school still requires the ALC to sign off on new non-farm uses.

In 2022, the ALC green-lighted a proposed expansion that would replace its old gym with a larger gymnasium and a second-storey classroom. The old gym required earthquake-proofing and other improvements, the school told the ALC. The new 1,150-square-metre non-farm-use area would be partly balanced out by the 430-square-metre gym being removed and not replaced.

Now, however, the cost to demolish the old gym has forced the school to reconsider its plans. The school’s operators now say renovating the current structure is “fiscally responsible” and have applied to the ALC for permission to keep it. Chilliwack city staff have recommended the municipality endorse the application and forward it to the ALC. Although the city has policies that contemplate the return of farm uses to grandfathered parcels like that of the school, staff wrote that it is unlikely the land will ever be returned to farm uses and that the area needs more school capacity.

If council agrees and forwards the application to the ALC, that body will make a decision at a later date.

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