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Program’s tight squeeze
Chuckers win gold
MacNeill secondary’s Incentive program could be in jeopardy without a commitment from the Richmond School District.
Richmond City Baseball’s Bantam A Chuckers started their summer season with a win in the 2010 All Star Summer Kick Off Tournament.
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Dormant accounts hold $1.7 million Cash is just waiting to be claimed by owners BY ALAN CAMPBELL
acampbell@richmond-news.com
FOOD
Food inspectors open a can of worms BY NELSON BENNETT
nbennett@richmond-news.com
When the Canadian Food Inspection Agency cracked down on an organic food store in West Vancouver a couple of weeks ago for not having bilingual labelling, it may have opened a can of worms in Richmond, where Asian grocers sell many products with neither French nor English. The Home Grow-in Grocer in West Vancouver — which specializes in natural, locally grown food — was subjected to an inspection June 17 that resulted in the store owner pulling $20,000 worth of products
Many Asian stores in Richmond are flouting labelling laws from store shelves. There was no issue with the safety of the food — the issue was its absence of labelling in French. “It certainly sent a chill through the local food communications system,” says Arzeena Hamir, coordinator of the Richmond Food Security Society, which is trying to promote locally grown produce. “It just goes against everything we’re trying to accomplish in the Lower Mainland.” Ken Randa, manufactured foods specialist with the CFIA,
told the News that the inspection at the Home Grow-In was prompted by concerns over yogurt made in Abbotsford. “There was a history of non-compliance with this yogurt product and the store was indicated as the only place in Vancouver that carried it,” Randa said. While at the store, inspectors noticed other products that also violated Canada’s food labelling requirements. The store’s owner told the Province newspaper she ended up removing $20,000 worth or products from the
shelves. Randa insists that the CFIA inspectors did not tell the store owner she had to remove the other products — just the yogurt. He said the inspectors would simply have educated the store owner as to the language labelling requirements and then contact the distributor to have it corrected. “It was made very clear to her that we did not remove or detain any of these products, because there was no food safety issue with them — it was see CFIA page 8
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Pulling together ... Department of Fisheries and Oceans staff, law enforcement officers, military personnel and First Nations people row together through Scotch Pond on a canoe trip to enhance the relationship between their groups.
Thousands of bank accounts in Richmond holding a total of $1.7 million are lying dormant and waiting to be claimed by relatives. After ten years of inactivity, bank accounts are required to be turned over to the Bank of Canada for safekeeping for another 40 or 100 years, depending on how much is in the account. It’s unclear just how many accounts have been turned over from Richmond residents over the decades. But a simple search of three popular Asian surnames — Chan, Lee and Wong — into the database holding the Richmond account details threw up more than 200 results. There are 98 Chans in the system from Richmond, with an account belonging to Ben Sze Chan holding more than $46,000. The account holder’s last known address was 9131 Maple Place and the account was last used on Dec. 8, 1997. An account in the name of Feng-Hua Lee, of Lancing Road, was among the 56 Lees in the database. Lee has a tidy little $9,500 sitting waiting to be claimed in a file that was last activated on New Year’s Eve, 1999. While Kwok Lam Wong, last address Pearl Court, was one of 66 Wongs in the system and has $4,370 unclaimed after last using the account on February 1997. If you can prove any of the accounts on the database are yours or you’re an heir to the account holder, you are encouraged to get in touch with the Bank of Canada to claim the cash. An astonishing 1.1 million dormant bank accounts have been transferred to the Bank of Canada over the years. In B.C. alone, there are nearly 60,000 unclaimed bank accounts containing a combined total of $48 million. Go online to vancouversun.com/unclaimedbalances/ and you can search a database of all 60,000 unclaimed B.C. accounts. — With files from Vancouver Sun.