Friday - Oct. 4, 2024 - Plans made for Chilliwack high-rise

🌧 14C | Local forecast

Good morning!

Congratulations folks! We have made it halfway through the provincial election campaign. Next week, just before the Thanksgiving long weekend, people who want to cast their votes early will be able to visit advance voting polls. (You can find out where exactly those are in our election hubs; we have the links to those in our main story today.)

We’re working on a few election stories we hope will be helpful. We’re waiting on all the candidates to respond to a questionnaire, and we’ll share their answers on the ALR, transit, and more around Thanksgiving. We have also asked the region’s mayors what they want to see out of the provincial election, and are closely watching attendance at all-candidates meetings.

If you are hosting an upcoming all-candidates meeting, give us a shout and we can spread the word! We won't be able to get to all the meetings, but if you have audio or video of the event, we can facilitate sharing it with a larger audience.

– Grace

NEWS

Who is running in the provincial election?

Three BC Green candidates who had hoped to run in the Fraser Valley won't be standing for election this fall. But many local voters will have one or more independent candidates to consider at the ballot box.

The BC Greens had previously indicated they were planning to run Aaron Bayes in the Abbotsford-Mission riding, Parker Johnson in Abbotsford South, and Molly McKay (the party’s executive director) in the Chilliwack-Cultus Lake riding. But with the deadline for candidates to submit their required paperwork having passed, none will feature on ballots come Oct. 19.

The lack of Green candidates in the three ridings could give a boost to the NDP’s hopes. But at least in Abbotsford-Mission, the Greens didn’t yank their candidates to help defeat the BC Conservatives. Rather, Bayes’ campaign manager said they were unable to get enough signatures from locals.

Additional independent candidates also emerged throughout the Fraser Valley as the deadline for nominations passed. They include one-time BC Conservative candidate Shelly Jan, in Langley-Abbotsford; James Davison, the founder of an anti-vaccine group, in Abbotsford West; parental rights activist Amandeep Singh in Abbotsford South; and Carlos Suarez Rubio, who had originally aspired to represent the Conservatives, in Langley-Walnut Grove.

The most-crowded ballot will be in the new riding of Langley-Abbotsford, where six candidates are competing for a shot at the MLA seat. There is no incumbent in the Langley-Abbotsford riding, which was created when the Electoral Boundaries Commission readjusted boundaries in Langley to reflect growth in the community. Former Liberal MP John Aldag, who is now running with the BC NDP, will run against BC Conservative Harman Banghu, and BC Green candidate Melissa Snazell. Also in the race are BC Libertarian leader Alex Joehl and two independents—Karen Long, who had previously been slated to run for BC United, and Shelly Jan.

The race in Langley-Abbotsford has already become heated, with the BC NDP asking Conservative leader John Rustad to drop Banghu because he espoused “anti-democratic” beliefs that the American 2020 elections was stolen from Donald Trump.

In contrast to Langley-Abbotsford, two local ridings will have head-to-head battles between just two candidates—a rarity in Canadian provincial or federal races. In Abbotsford-Mission, NDP incumbent and Minister of Agriculture Pam Alexis will battle BC Conservative Reann Gasper for votes. In Chilliwack-Cultus Lake, Stó:lō filmmaker and administrator Á’a:líya Warbus is campaigning to unseat NDP incumbent Kelli Paddon.

• The full candidate lists—and links to the newly launched party platforms—can be found on our election hub.

Need to Know

👉 A man shot and killed in Langley last month had been sent back to prison for hanging out with gangsters [Vancouver Sun]

🗳 One suspect is in custody after an assault in Chilliwack Wednesday night [Fraser Valley Today]

🪂 A 104-year-old Langley senior jumped off a mountain for a paragliding session on his birthday last month [Langley Advance Times]

🚂 An award-winning film dives into the history of the Hells Gate railway blast in 1913 that blocked the river for returning salmon [Hope Standard] / We wrote about the famine-causing Hells Gate blast and slide as part of our look at the history of the Fraser Valley’s trains in the FVC History Edition [FVC]

👩‍⚖️ A judge will decide if a protest encampment at Abbotsford City Hall will need to move [Abbotsford News]

🎒 Backpacks stolen from the Mission Leisure Centre were later found in the possession of a ‘prolific’ property-crime offender [Mission Record]

📽 The Twilight Drive-In showed its final film on Monday, after 19 years in Aldergrove [Twilight Drive-In/Facebook]

🎉 Discover what post-secondary opportunities await you. Register for KPU’s Open House on Oct 5 to explore 140+ programs and be entered to win free tuition!*

*Sponsored Listing

🗳 Election 2024

The BC Election campaign continues until election day on Saturday, Oct. 19. Advance voting begins Thursday, Oct. 10. Find everything you need to know by visiting one of our local election hubs:

Chilliwack, Hope, and the Eastern Valley | Abbotsford and Mission | Langley

The latest

👉 Each party's spending—or budget-cutting—promises [CBC]

👉 The three party leaders will participate in a TV debate on Tuesday, Oct. 8 [Global] / You can listen and watch this week’s CKNW debate here [Global]

👉 The NDP has promised in its platform to extend the West Coast Express to Chilliwack [NDP] But as we have previously reported, doing so would be incredibly complicated [FVC]

SPONSORED BY BC EGG

Local supporting local

BC’s egg farmers are proud to produce healthy, delicious eggs but did you know they also support communities across the province with donations of fresh eggs? Some of the organizations receiving monthly donations of fresh eggs include Food Banks BC, Canuck Place in Abbotsford, and Sheway in Vancouver. Click here to learn more.

The Agenda

Plans made for downtown Chilliwack high-rise

A developer has tentatively applied to build a high-rise building next to downtown Chilliwack's largest hotel–but the entire project site has also been listed for sale.

A newly posted property listing says that the owner of a 0.6-acre Young Road property currently used as parking for the Coast Hotel has provided the city with a "preliminary submission" that would see a mixed-use high rise built on the site. Renderings of the concept suggest a tower with up to 15 storeys, with the bottom three or four housing offices.

The listing suggests the building would have 99 residential units and more than 4,000 square feet of commercial space on its ground floor. Zoning for the area allows for buildings up to 18 storeys tall. The building would be, by far, the largest built in central Chilliwack for decades.

But the current owner of the land does not appear to want to actually develop the building themselves. Instead, the property has been listed for sale for $5.5 million. The assessed value last year was $2 million. It is not uncommon for landholders to acquire property, complete the paperwork and city hall requirements necessary to allow for more intense land uses, then flip the site for a profit to a company that specializes in building, not navigating municipal bureaucracy.

🗓 Things to do

Heritage tours: Heritage Chilliwack is hosting a series of guided tours of historic homes on Saturday, Oct. 5. Tickets should be purchased in advance and guidebooks can be picked up at the Royal Hotel on the day. Details online.

Country fame: The BC Country Music Association hosts is 2024 Hall of Fame inductee concert at the Clarke Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 5. Celebrate 12 local musicians as they are inducted into the hall of fame. Tickets and details online.

That’s it!

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