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Long weekend booze banned from Banff park

KELOWNA, B.C. — One of three men charged with stealing debit card numbers by switching PIN pads at businesses in the B.C. Interior has pleaded guilty.

Mahmoud Alieh, of Montreal, was charged with fraudulently taking a point-of-sale terminal after Kelowna RCMP arrested him and two other men suspected of running the scam last month.

Officers say they found small elec-tronic devices that allegedly allowed the group to collect personal identifi-cation numbers and credit card infor-mation from a distance.

Police allege at least two suspects would enter a business just before closing and distract staff, while one replaced a PIN pad with a decoy.

Once back in a nearby motel, it’s alleged they installed wireless-communications technology into the PIN pad, returning the next day to reinstall it.

Alieh is to be sentenced Tuesday, while two men that allegedly worked with him remain charged with more of the same offence in Kelowna, Vernon and Penticton.

THE CANADIAN PRESS

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B.C. debit card fraudster pleads guilty

BANFF, Alta. — Banff National Park is banning alcohol in its camp-grounds on long weekends.

Parks Canada staff say they’ve had too many complaints from campers about intoxicated people ruining their experience in the park.

Wardens say ever since Alberta parks banned alcohol, people have been coming to Banff to drink and party at campgrounds.

Starting this May long weekend, campers will be greeted by wardens and RCMP.

They won’t let anyone into camp-sites with alcohol.

If campers are caught with booze, fines range from a few hundred dol-lars to a few thousand dollars with jail time.

Wardens say they want to prevent incidents before they happen.

“By the time the enforcement level gets involved it’s too late, they’re too drunk,” said Banff Park Warden Sharon Woods.

“If we can get to them before that happens, if we can deal with them at a preventative level at first, and prevent the situation from escalating, then that’s better for everyone.”

THE CANADIAN PRESS

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David Bell Photo

Mayor Bruce Lantz hit the streets Monday for a lunchtime walk with residents to recognize Move for Health Day. See A5 for full story.

GET UP AND GO

David BellSTAFF WRITER

Detailed plans for a new state of the art fire hall were released to mayor and council at last night’s Committee of the Whole meeting.

The proposed project will cost an estimated $10.4 million plus the cost of land at about $600,000 and will employ a series of best practices that will make it significantly more effi-cient than the fire hall it will replace.

“The project has taken a giant leap forward and working with all mem-bers of the committee to make sure that necessary elements have been addressed, from the fire depart-ments needs, to the City’s needs, to I.T. needs. They really are wrapped up in this package,” said consultant Kim Johnston of Vancouver-based Johnston Davidson Architecture and Planning Inc.

Johnston, along with engineer Asif Hussain, walked council through the features of the new fire hall, which would be built on the corner of 93rd Avenue and 93rd Street.

The City purchased the land for about $1.2 million approximately two years ago. The new fire hall would leave 1.66 acres available for future development west of the proposed building.

The project will employ a bioswale – a landscape feature that removes debris from runoff water – instead of piped civil drainage, low flow fix-tures, a water collection system for washing vehicles and irrigation, and a high efficiency building envelope among other features.

Wood will be used to finish the building, to support regional indus-tries, the report states.

“The landscaping here looks to use drought tolerant, regional, low main-tenance planting,” Johnston said.

A post disaster feature of the struc-ture caught the interest of council, as it could be used to house a backup server for the City and act in support of disaster preparedness.

A four level training facility will also function to wash and dry fire hoses.

“Every space that you see here has been designed by the whole team to act in a multi functional way. We are looking at materials of masonry, con-crete and zinc panels, all of which have great sustainable properties as well as being durable,” Johnston said.

The estimated annual energy costs would be $41,610 for the 2,600-square

metre building, versus $21,000 for the current building, which is about one third of the size, Johnson said.

The second floor will house locker rooms, washrooms and dorm areas not only for the current crew, but also for emergency responders and for future expansion, she added.

“When there is an emergency situa-tion and responders must come from outside, they are now able to have quarters within the hall for the off time when they need to recover.”

More information is available at www.fortstjohn.ca, under Open Committee of the Whole May 10, New Fire Hall Presentation.

Plans for new fire hall revealed

David BellSTAFF WRITER

A subtle but significant difference between how a policy is worded and how it will be applied for the first time, was revealed at last night’s city council meeting

A presentation on the new Fort St. John fire hall was the catalyst.

Last November, council unani-mously passed a motion adopting council policy 119/09, the LEED Certification Policy, that states under policy requirements:

“All newly constructed munici-pal buildings with a footprint great-er than 100-square metres must be designed, delivered and certified by the Canadian Green Building Council (CaGBC) as being LEED – Canada ‘Certified’ at a minimum.”

A City Beat newsletter summar-izing that council meeting further states:

“Council has adopted the LEED Certification Policy for municipal buildings and this policy will be used when designing all new City build-ings. The new fire hall will be the first capital project that will incor-porate this certification.”

According to CaGBC, LEED or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is “a third-party certification program and an internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.”

It is one of many systems that measure degrees of environmental sustainability in construction.

See LEED on A3•

City’s LEED building policy

language and ‘intent’

differ

David Bell Photo

Consultants Asif Hussain and Kim Johnston gave council their first look at a new proposed fire hall for Fort St. John. The $10.4 million structure will employ several best practices, allowing it to operate more efficiently than the existing building.

LOCALALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS, FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. PG. A3TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2010

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25268

Cont. from A1• In discussions leading to the passing of

the policy at the time, city manager Dianne Hunter described how LEED certification could work.

“The cost to build LEED when you look at the life cycle of a building, it should not cost you anything,” she said.

“The payback for those LEED certified initiatives in the building should have a benefit in the life of the building that pay for themselves. Are there upfront costs? Absolutely. How much they are going to cost depends on what the initiative is...as well as whether it is LEED silver, gold or platinum. But just to get the certificate, to have the ability to say that your building is a LEED building, that is a different process and a dif-ferent cost and the magnitude of costs for the fire hall – which we estimate to be about a $7 to $8 million building – is about $85,000.”

She explained that part of the certification process starts at the beginning.

“It is throughout the construction of the building itself that the LEED certifica-tion will be acquired. You have to have an independent agency come in to your building to make the assessment, to make sure that it is LEED certifiable.”

Horacio Galanti, city director of planning and engineering, said at that meeting:

“For now we need to be careful and go through the LEED certification list and try to achieve at least a minimum of 29 points, the minimum that we need to have in order later on to achieve certification on this building. We can’t do this when the building is built, we have to work at the current design stage.”

Last night as consultants Kimberly Johnston and Asif Hussain introduced com-prehensive design plans for the new fire hall, the intent of the building policy became clearer.

Johnston explained that the proposed fire hall would be similar to LEED certification.

“From a sustainable perspective, the team has been working very hard using a LEED checklist as our guideline, but not necessarily going for certification. We have engaged an energy modelling which will bring some of those issues forward, but right now the pro-

ject is what we would call a LEED shadow project.”

She said they are aiming for silver, but cur-rent potential points would put the project in the gold category, should it be certified.

“Currently the project is not slated to go for certification, just to shadow the intent of LEED.”

Hunter referred to the policy passed in November.

“You had passed a policy a few months back that you would like to see all our new facilities to be LEED certifiable, that is not to say that we will go through the certifica-tion stage – that is a decision of council – but you wanted to ensure that it showed best practices in this regard.”

Mayor Bruce Lantz said that the project would fit the policy.

“That is our policy, to be LEED certifiable, not necessarily to certify everything.”

Hunter said that it was her understanding that building trends in other jurisdictions show that roughly 75 per cent of the time LEED principles were followed versus 25 per cent going through the certifying process.

“People are familiar with LEED and it is not quite as important to demonstrate with every building that it can be LEED certified, it is more to accept the principles in going forward. A lot of people have decided to use that as the basis, but not get certified.”

When asked to clarify the wording of the policy relative to the intent, Hunter responded “I don’t think there is a discon-nect. I think the intent of the policy was to ensure all new facilities are built to a very high standard and right now the benchmark standard is the LEED.”

She said the decision remained with coun-cil, whether or not to seek certification.

“At the end of the day the building is going to be same building and it is going to contain those criteria within the LEED program that designates silver, gold or platinum. The deci-

sion has not been made by council whether they want to go for the certificate paper or if they want to live by the intent of what LEED is all about. I believe the intention when we drafted the policy was that we would go for LEED certified or certifiable projects.”

Galanti added, “That is correct. The inten-tion is to... do the right thing. Getting LEED is a plaque that you can polish, it is a cer-tificate. What is really worth it is to have a building that is built using the system to demonstrate to people that you have built that building using green technology...That is the spirit of the policy. If you get the cer-tificate, great, however, in some cases it will cost a lot of money.”

Lantz said the policy’s intent was to have the City’s buildings be certifiable.

“Those of us who work with words know that sometimes words can be taken out of context and I just want to make it really clear that the context that we viewed when we were making this decision was to have them certifiable so that we could, on a case by case basis, decide if we wanted to go after the nice little plaque at a cost of up to $86,000 which the taxpayers would be paying or did we want to just meet that standard and know that, as Horacio said, we have done the right thing.”

He said that not everyone agrees that the LEED system is the best, as there are many systems.

“I just want to be clear that council’s intent was what it was and I think if you look back at the minutes of those meetings that address this you will see that, that is what it is. How it gets put down on paper is no differ-ent than what happens when newspapers are printed.”

David Bell Photo

Mayor Bruce Lantz explains that the intent of the City’s LEED Certification Policy was to design and construct buildings “to be LEED certifiable, not necessarily to certify every-thing.”

Jennifer GreenCANWEST NEWS SERVICE

OTTAWA — Peace a t the Canadian War Museum? What next? Love beads in the gift shop?

As the museum marks its fifth anni-versary, it is assembling an exhibit on the history of the peace movement in Canada, “one of the most complex exhibitions (we have) ever done,” dir-ector general Mark O’Neill says.

Protest signs, diaries of peace activ-ists and a pair of shoes from a man walking the world in support of peace are among the artifacts likely to be on display. And, yes, that famous 1969 photograph of John and Yoko’s Montreal love-in might be featured, too. “It’s in the draft package, but I’m not sure we have the rights to the pic-ture,” historian Dean Oliver says.

The exhibit “isn’t conceived as the flip side of warfare’s story that is told elsewhere (in the museum),” he says. Canadians have seen many paths to peace, many of them diametrically opposed.

In the First and Second World Wars, people fought, believing it was the only way to re-establish peace. They sneered at those who cham-pioned appeasement, Oliver says, but that is overly simplistic.

“It’s facile... to accuse them of being wrong... that they didn’t read the tea leaves of history.”

Nuclear armament – and mutually assured destruction – looked like a practical way to avoid open conflict during the Cold War. Proliferation made the option less palatable.

The whole idea of the peace dis-play, to run from December 2010 to April 2011, is to expose visitors to “things they thought they knew well,” Oliver says.

O’Neill says: “No matter who you are as a visitor, this should speak to you. If you are a peace activist, if you are a member of the armed forces... there must be something in this exhibition that speaks to you about this whole notion of peace: what is it, how do we define it, how have we participated in it, how do we get to

it.”War historian Jack Granatstein,

former head of the museum, is all for the idea. “It covers the history of the peace movement in Canada, what power it had... where it was right and where it was wrong.”

Some veterans have argued the museum, which houses 500,000 war artifacts and 13,000 artworks, should be a place of commemora-tion. Peace activ-is t s be l ieve i t should take a dis-approving tone toward war.

O’Neill says the museum must speak to all Canadians, communicat ing three principles: “War is devastating. War has affected our lives in Canada today. And we must remember.”

Canadian War Museum gives peace a chance

>>CANADA

Max HarroldCANWESTNEWSSERVICE

MONTREAL — Rescue workers have been given the go-ahead to go back on to unstable ground to search for a family of four missing since Monday night when a huge sinkhole opened up and the family’s home sank into it in St. Jude, about 77 kilometres northeast of Montreal near St. Hyacinthe.

“The rescue workers are fire-fighters trained in the rescue of people in very tight spaces,” explained McInnis. Search-and-rescue dogs are being used to enter the home, which is precar-iously tilted on an angle and part-ly covered by grey earth.

The sinkhole on Rang Salvail,

not far from the Salvail River, was created about 9 p.m. Monday and may have been caused by a land-slide, media reports said Tuesday morning. TV pictures from the scene showed only a roof sticking up out of the hole. Aerial photos showed several buildings partially covered by earth.

Other landslides during the night forced residents of five nearby homes outside as a pre-caution, said Yvan Leroux, an official with Quebec Civil Security.

The hole is estimated to be 500 metres by one kilometre and about 10 metres deep.

The missing reportedly include a couple in their 40s and two chil-dren, ages nine and 11. “I know (the family) well,” said Yves

Bellefeuille, mayor of St. Jude, on a TV news channel. “They are a long-standing family from St. Jude.”

St. Jude has 1,200 residents, he said. “This is awful,” Bellefeuille said. “Everyone around here is very worried.”

Firefighter Francis Gregoire said rescue workers went up to the house Monday night. “It was completely lopsided. We tried the father’s cellphone and he didn’t answer. We could hear the phone ringing somewhere in the house.”

Jocelyn Demers, another res-cue worker, said two teams of four firefighters went inside some of the buildings Monday night. They searched for nearly an hour and found no signs of the missing people, he said.

Rescue teams allowed to try to reach family in Montreal-area sinkhole

LEED certificate may not be worth the cost, in some cases