Monday - Oct. 21, 2024 - Many Aldergrove residents lack food security: survey

Author

Grace Kennedy
October 21, 2024

🌦 High 11C | Current flood warnings

Good morning!

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by caffeine, election night pizza, and two tired reporters. Thank you to everyone for sticking with us as we navigated the provincial election together.

Shout out to Tyler for his great election night livestream—something we tested out as a perk for our Insider members, since we couldn’t have covered the election the way we did without their financial support. (If you want to join their ranks, you can do so here.)

Now that we are settling back into our regularly scheduled programming, why not take a minute to respond to our Ghost Story Perspectives call out? We have a couple of spooky stories in there already, but would love to see more. (If you have haunting photos to go with those stories, just reply to this email.)

– Grace

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

BC Conservatives go nine-for-nine in the Fraser Valley

The NDP has been wiped off the Fraser Valley electoral map, even as the party still hopes to cling to power by a razor-thin margin.

With most votes now counted, the NDP have been elected or lead in 46 ridings, the BC Conservatives have the edge in 45, and the Greens have won two. But as of Sunday evening, with some ballots still left to be counted, 11 seats were still too close to call. (Of those, the NDP lead in six ridings and the Conservatives are ahead in five.)

Forty-seven seats are the bare minimum needed to form government, and NDP leader David Eby has suggested he would look to work with the Green Party—as the party did in 2017, when the NDP came to power with 41 seats and the Greens three. But even if the two Green MLAs acquiesce, and the parties end up with a combined 47 or 48 seats, such a government would still be precariously balanced. A non-voting speaker will also need to be selected from the MLAs, potentially leading to legislative deadlocks.

The tightness of the race will also lead to automatic recounts in several ridings. Those will take place next week. You can read CBC’s breakdown of what comes next here.

In the Fraser Valley, however, there’s little doubt about who will represent local voters in Victoria.

Need to Know

👉 Victorious Langley Conservative candidate Jody Toor refused interviews after winning Saturday [Langley Advance Times]

🌊 Ousted NDP cabinet minister Pam Alexis said the election results reflected a global ‘changing tide’ [Mission Record]

🚓 An Abbotsford police officer may face charges for using excessive force during an arrest [Fraser Valley Today]

⛔ A Langley road was closed after heavy rains created a sinkhole [Richmond News]

🍎 Volunteers are needed to help harvest produce for the Salvation Army in Chilliwack [Chilliwack Progress]

⚖ A 17-year-old driver who sent a woman to hospital after a crash in Mission is facing two charges [Fraser Valley Today]

SPONSORED BY CITY OF ABBOTSFORD

Quality of Life Survey

The City of Abbotsford has a role in supporting and providing services, programs and amenities that help to provide a robust quality of life for residents. In order to collect important feedback, we are conducting our bi-annual Quality of Life survey here.

The Agenda

Access to adequate amounts of food has been an issue for more than a third of Aldergrove residents, a local survey says. 📷 Sydney Rae/Unsplash

More than a third of Aldergrove residents faced food insecurity: survey

Many Aldergrove residents are not able to access adequate food, a survey from the Township of Langley has found.

Last year, the township began Aldergrove’s Food System Project to determine what issues local residents were facing with food security. Aldergrove, as a whole, is isolated from many of the township’s social services and local providers struggle to deliver their programs in the area. The project included a survey to find out exactly how Aldergrove residents were struggling with food.

That survey has found that 36% of respondents had experienced food insecurity in their lifetimes, and 28% had someone close to them who had been unable to access adequate food. About one-quarter of respondents said they did not have any personal experience with food insecurity; two-thirds of all respondents said they had donated either money or food to food banks.

The survey also found that some of the main challenges with accessing food banks were long wait times (23% of respondents) and not enough variety in the food options (22% of respondents). Others also said there was not enough food (20%) and the food was of poor quality (18%). These issues are not unique to Aldergrove, as the Current has reported in the past.

As a result of the survey, the Langley’s Seniors Advisory Committee also recommended establishing a community food security coordinator and creating a township-wide food system study. Council will discuss the recommendations during today’s meeting.

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🤝 Now hiring

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🗓 Things to do

Mom movement: UFV in Chilliwack is offering a free postpartum movement workshop on Tuesday, Oct. 22 starting at 11:30am. Learn how to incorporate movement into your lifestyle and participate in guided rehabilitation exercises. For more information and to RSVP, email Megan Filitrault ([email protected]).

Nude art: The Chilliwack Visual Artists Association hosts Baring, Daring, Sharing, a new exhibition celebrating live model artwork, from Wednesday, Oct. 23 to Saturday, Nov. 23. The opening reception takes place on Thursday, Oct. 24 at 5pm. Details online.

Diwali celebration: The Clarke Theatre hosts the Mission Punj-Aab Cultural Club and SUMR Productions for a celebration of Diwali on Thursday, Oct. 24. The free community event goes from 5pm to 9pm. Details online.

Have an event to tell us about? Fill out this form to have it highlighted here.

Catch up

Omelettes, sauce and minks: What happens to BC's millions of extra eggs?

From last week: BC's egg farmers hope a proposed new processing facility in Abbotsford will allow them to cut down waste and expand what can be made with the province's 'surplus' eggs.

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