For Immediate release October 22, 2008

News Flash 11:30pm - Then Do About Face As Protest Mounts Public Hearing To Continue Thursday and beyond?

Vancouver, B.C.- In a stunning about face in Mission tonight, Mayor and Council held an emergency council meeting just prior to day 2 of the packed public hearing at the Best Western Hotel in an attempt to derail public input regarding the controversial GENSTAR development.

The GENSTAR development would result in the doubling of Missions population, increased taxes for Mission residents, is heavily criticized by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the Provincial Ministry of Environment, and a majority of Mission residents. Part of the new negative reaction to GENSTAR resulted from their recent request to back out of some of their financial commitments associated with the development, leaving Mission residents on the hook for certain development infrastructure costs spanning the next 20 years.

In an unheard of move, Mayor and Council decided tonights meeting would be the final opportunity for the public to speak about this project, despite the large number of people still wanting to offer input. After the first night of public hearings that witnessed a record attendance of 318 people, there were at least 47 citizens who had signed up to speak but were not able to because of time constraints. The citizens not able to speak on day one of the hearing were told to return the following evening to have their input recorded. But with hundreds of new attendees on day 2 wanting to speak, many citizens simply gave up due to the long wait. Due to the large turnout, citizens must wait and average of 4 hours to have their say.

The action by Mayor and Council to terminate the meeting tonight, on day 2 of the hearing process, and keep citizens at the meeting until dawn if necessary for the right to speak is grossly undemocratic.

Based on evidence of past public hearings in Mission on this issue, where hundreds presented submissions over many days, this action to terminate the hearing will result in many not being able to present their views.

Andy Miller, Staff Scientist at the Wilderness Committee commented en-route to the meeting “if Mayor and Council want us to show up with sleeping bags, thats exactly what well do. In fact we are bringing a whole truck load of sleeping bags to keep people as comfortable as possible.”

At 11:30 pm – in yet another about face by Mission Mayor and Council, they caved in to repeated cries for democracy from the crowd, still numbering over 100. Mayor James Atebe announced that the public hearing process would soon end for the night and would continue each night from 6:30 until 10 pm until such time as all the concerns of Mission residents had been heard.

For further information contact Andy Miller at 604-992-3099 or Nick Cuff at 604-716-4756