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AIDS benefit The 8th annual Heart & Soul! AIDS benefit dinner and dance will feature a drag queen show and will be hosted by CBC’s Fred Lee.
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If coaching Team B.C. at the Canada Winter Games wasn’t enough already, Russ Weber also agreed to guide a talented Seafair Bantam team this season.
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Cummins joins B.C. Tories Federal conservatives kick start provincial counterpart BY NELSON BENNETT
nbennett@richmond-news.com
BYLAW
No more doggy in the window Richmond could be first city in Canada to ban the sale of dogs at pet stores BY ALAN CAMPBELL
acampbell@richmond-news.com
More than 100 people — mostly animal lovers — a dozen staff, a TV camera crew, one mayor, eight councillors and a dog crammed into a city hall meeting room Monday evening. There were a few random souls in the house representing the local pet supply industry, but the writing was on the wall early for Richmond’s pet stores, as a full 15 minutes before a contentious vote on banning the sale of $
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dogs in storefronts, people sporting “don’t shop, adopt” badges fought for spaces in the city hall parking lot. In the end, after an emotional, three-hour debate, loaded heavily by the pro-ban team, the City of Richmond became the first Canadian municipality to draft a bylaw to ban the sale of dogs in storefronts. City staff will now come back to council next week with the draft, which, if adopted as expected, is hoped to spur the rest of the province into follow-
ing suit. A jubilant Lori Chortyk, of the BC SPCA, said after the meeting that the decision was a “huge step forward for B.C and Canada.” “We are absolutely delighted that Richmond has shown leadership on this,” said Chortyk, herself a Richmond resident. “We deal with so many puppy mills and as long as there’s an avenue to sell their puppies through stores, then the mills remain in business. “Richmond will be the first in
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Canada, but others are looking at it, and Richmond’s decision will be very significant. I’m so proud of my city.” Before council made its decision, it heard a plethora of impassioned pleas from the BC SPCA, the Richmond Animal Protection Society (RAPS), animal advocates and even a woman who claimed she was pressured into buying sick puppies from a local store at a time when she was particularly vulnerable due to the recent death of her son. see PJ’s page 4
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A tale of two readers ... Natalia Mints and her granddaughter, Mia Shkolnik, 9, enjoy a beautiful fall day with some reading at Minoru Gate Square.
John Cummins, the maverick MP for Delta-Richmond East, has joined several other high-profile conservative politicians in an effort to breathe new life into the B.C. Conservative Party. Cummins recently joined former Conservative MP Randy White, former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford, former Social Credit premier Rita Johnston and former Reform-Canadian Alliance MP Reed Elley on a special “tactical advisory group” struck to prepare the party for the 2013 provincial election. Cummins, White and Elley were all originally elected under the banner of the Reform Party. Allan Warnke, a Richmond political science instructor who teaches at Vancouver Island University, says attracting such highprofile names will give the party credibility. “John Cummins actually makes it serious,” Warnke said. While people like Peckford and White are former politicians with nothing to lose, he said Cummins, as a sitting MP, will be assuming more work and risk. “That’s really quite a commitment and that signals something.” “It’s a tremendous asset for us to have somebody with his integrity,” B.C. Conservative Party president Wayne McGrath said of Cummins joining the party. “I’ve admired him for the way he stood up for the people who vote for him.” The B.C. Conservative Party has no formal link with the federal Conservative Party to which Cummins belongs. And while it has been around for decades, the B.C. Conservative Party has languished in obscurity. Cummins said he decided to join the party because he believes it can give B.C. see Cummins page 4