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Tories defend Saxton ‘smear’ Jane Seyd
jseyd@nsnews.com
THE Conservative government is rejecting calls for North Vancouver MP Andrew Saxton to step aside as parliamentary secretary for the Treasury Board after Saxton’s name appeared in a federal court document connected with an offshore tax probe. Saxton was recently named in an affidavit filed by a Canada Revenue Agency investigator as authorizing the transfer of US$200,000 to a Swiss bank account for a Victoria couple when he was the Vancouver head of Credit Suisse Canada in 1994. The Swiss bank account was used by the couple as part of a scheme to evade paying taxes in Canada. The transaction is part of a larger investigation by Revenue Canada into whether other See Tax page 5
Booting up
NEWS photo Cindy Goodman
DORIAN Buhler and Ian Gordon from West Vancouver Firehall #1 encourage the public to give generously to the firefighters annual Boot Drive for Muscular Dystrophy. Firefighters will be collecting on Saturday, Nov. 13 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at both Park Royal Shopping Centre’s north mall and Caulfeild Village. Cheques accepted as well as cash!
NVSD surplus property worth $100M Niamh Scallan
nscallan@nsnews.com
IT might not be a gold mine, but land values in North Vancouver mean that the North Vancouver school district is sitting on a resource worth upwards of $100-million. Members of the school district’s finance and facilities standing committee were told at a meeting Tuesday evening that a total of 12 surplus properties — mostly because of declining student enrolment — represent an opportunity to plan for the future. “We have a lot of land and we need to think about how it can be
Board asked to consider creating educational endowment fund
best used for the good of the school district and our community,” said secretary treasurer Irene Young, calling on committee members to consider a “strategic surplus land plan.” According to Young, declining enrolment as well as the district’s direction toward “fewer, newer schools” resulted in the closure and combining of more schools in recent years, including the consolidation of Ridgeway Annex into Ridgeway and Balmoral into Carson Graham.
Some North Vancouver school sites are leased to daycares and independent schools, but others — like Fromme and Plymouth elementary schools — are sitting vacant. And according to Young, empty properties cost the district up to $20,000 each year. “The school district has no money to upgrade or maintain these facilities, so this is a huge problem,” she said. Young’s presentation about the need for a surplus land plan highlighted numerous options for the vacant sites, including reusing the sites for district programs and services, providing shortterm and long-term leases under ministry approval to independent schools, or selling the sites — which would also be subject to the See Affordable page 5