Clark announced Wednesday she will run in a by-election in Westside-Kelowna, and some people think the other parties should step aside and let her win by acclamation.

Such a grand gesture would save the taxpayers some money but, democratically speaking, it would be foolish.

According to Todd Stone, the decision of Liberal Ben Stewart to resign the seat he just handily won, in order to give Clark a safe shot at election, is the “honorable thing” to do.

Any of the Liberals elected May 14 would do the same thing, he said.

Well, not quite. Ralph Sultan, who won re-election in West Vancouver-Capilano by the biggest margin of any Liberal, was quoted by CBC shortly after election night that he would not voluntarily give up his seat for Clark. It will be interesting to see if Sultan’s name comes up on the list of cabinet ministers that will be announced Friday.

Westside-Kelowna is a strange choice for Clark. She’s from the Coast, after all.

According to Clark, though, Kelowna is her “natural political home.” Apparently, she’s had an epiphany after all these years. Clark, who lives in Vancouver-Fairview, lost in Vancouver-Point Grey. She is a Lower Mainlander through and through, but suddenly her political heart is in the Interior.

Oh, well, Adrian Dix has decided to put up a candidate and fight the good fight in the by-election, and the Liberals will, no doubt, complain about it. For Dix, though, it’s a no-brainer — he’ll get to fight the general election all over again, at least in miniature, and try to avoid the total screw-up he committed in May.

This being a democracy, the people should have a say, and she should have to earn her seat.

Clark will win, of course, because she’s the premier and because the Liberals won Westside-Kelowna by 28 points and nothing’s going to change that. Of course, that’s pretty much what the New Democrats thought about the general election they just blew.

In a column in The Daily News, Coun. Ken Christian laments the hard life of the councillor, filled with meetings, reading, public events and travel.

Coun. Ken Christian

He and other councillors across the country returned home this week from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention in Vancouver. Coquitlam mayor Richard Stewart and some of his councillors were criticized by fellow councillor Lou Sekora for spending $225 a night — funded by taxpayers — at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel instead of commuting by car as he did.

Stewart, naturally, used the old “networking” defence to justify the expenditures. Municipal politicians were slaving away on our behalf from 7 a.m. to midnight at the convention, he says.

Mayors and councillors always feel defensive about conventions like the FCM. I see in today’s Daily News a headline, “Councillors say FCM worth the expense.” The story quotes Kamloops delegates talking about all the informative sessions they attended and, of course, the networking.

Marg Spina met Justin Trudeau in a lineup, Arjun Singh talked to some guy while jogging, and the mayor of Sudbury told Peter Milobar what a great place her city is, mine and all.

Look, conventions can be valuable. They are also a lot of fun, with great meals, nice receptions, some fine entertainment, and interesting tours. Councillors doth protest way too much with their assurances of all the work they’re getting done.

Fact is, the FCM does have some informative sessions, but it’s not nearly as valuable as the annual UBCM conference, for example, and way more expensive because of travel costs. The venue is often on the other side of the country.

FCM attendance should be limited to three members of council each year — that way, each councillor will have a chance to attend one FCM conference during his or her three-year term. Even the TNRD puts limits on attendance.

Back to Ken Christian for a minute. It seems like rookie councillors come to the conclusion after a year in office that they didn’t realize how much work it was going to be.

Christian’s column comes on the heels of a charge led by Nancy Bepple and Nelly Dever to review the pay rates for Kamloops City council. In the column, he talks about having to spend two to six hours reading the agenda before each weekly meeting, and about public hearings that can last up to five hours.

Well, studying the homework will typically take two hours. More than that is unusual. Public hearings can take up to five hours — once in a blue moon.

As for public events, councillors attend what they can, so some attend more than others. It’s not always a lot of fun, but sometimes it is.

Nobody said it was easy but the point is, being on council is not drudgery. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s an experience like no other. So please, newbies, spare us the sad stories about how much work you do.

Mark Towhey (left) and Mayor Rob Ford. (canada.com)

The Kamloops connection to the controversy surrounding Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has a sense of humour, a distinguished background in the Canadian Armed Forces and a long career in crisis management.

Mark Towhey was fired as Ford’s chief of staff Thursday after nine months on the job, telling media as he left city hall, “I am no longer the chief of staff. I did not resign.”

The reasons for the firing haven’t been made public, though some media are reporting that he was terminated after a disagreement with Ford arising out of the controversies the mayor has found himself in during the past week.

In the two days since his firing, Towhey has been getting praise from newspaper readers. He has not commented on the reasons for his firing, but he certainly has an impressive resume.

KamHigh lists Towhey as being a student there from 1980 to 1982, and he has referred to Kamloops as his “home town.”

A friend says that following high school, Towhey attended the University of Victoria, where he was elected to the alma mater society, then joined the Canadian Scottish as an infantry reserve officer and then the regular forces, serving in Germany, Africa and Golan as a UN peacekeeper, as well as several postings in Canada.

He left the forces and got an MBA at Western University’s Richard Ivey School of Business, then established a crisis management company, serving as consultant in Canada, the U.S., and internationally.

In 2010, he helped get Ford elected as mayor, and was appointed chief of staff last August. In a feature about Ford’s key staff in April 2011, when Towhey’s position was director of policy and strategic planning, the Globe and Mail described him as a “strategist” and wrote:

“An ever-present broker during council votes and debates, Mr. Towhey was a consultant specializing in crisis management for the likes of McCain Foods, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and the federal Department of Defence prior to joining the Ford campaign.

“He worked on two failed federal campaigns for Conservative Jon Capobianco in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, the riding currently held by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, and once blogged in favour of selling the TTC to the private sector. In the mayor’s office, Mr. Towhey is the architect of incorporating the election platform of Rob Ford, the candidate, into the agenda of Rob Ford, the mayor.”

Friday, the Toronto Star wrote: “Appointed as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s chief of staff last August and fired on Thursday, Towhey was arguably the most important — and some would say the smartest — person on the mayor’s team.

“Towhey was assigned to steer Ford in the right direction, find the right venues for Ford to appear at, identify media who could be sympathetic to him and plot strategy for the press secretary.”

Towhey’s sense of humour shows up in his tweeting from time to time. After a horde of television cameras and newspaper photographers recorded his departure from City Hall on Thursday afternoon as he got into his car and drove off, he tweeted, “Very happy now that I remembered to wash my car yesterday.”

Friday, in an apparent reference to a controversy over Ford sticking “Rob Ford Mayor” fridge magnets on cars in a parking lot of a church, and in the context of the past week’s uproar, Towhey tweeted, “This week in review: all in all gotta be pretty happy with the way we buried the magnet story.”

Today, he tweeted, “From my upcoming LearningAnnex wrksp ‘How 2 get 1,000 Twitter Followers in 1 day’ Step 1 Help elect a big city mayor Step 2 buy fridge magnets…”

One of those new followers is yours truly.

Todd Stone and Terry Lake in celebration mode Tuesday night. (Daily News photo)

“Unbelievable,” June Phillips said as we passed in the throng at Tuesday night’s Stone-Lake celebration in Hotel 540.

Surely, I said, the woman who ran Kevin Krueger’s constituency office for years must have been confident of a Liberal return to government. She confessed her surprise at the outcome, though she said Krueger was sure of it.

Her response was typical in that room. The Liberals crowding around, laughing and shouting, might have thought Todd Stone was going to win Kamloops-South Thompson. And they might have thought Terry Lake had a shot at holding onto Kamloops-North Thompson. But nobody expected an easy Liberal majority.

Once again, Kamloops is the bellwether. Does that mean we lead, or that we follow the pack? It doesn’t matter. The record is unblemished. We’re sending two more members of the governing party to represent us in Victoria.

Those who assume Lake will be back in cabinet have it right. He pulled one out of the fire, and that combined with his record as environment minister make it a sure thing.

But anyone thinking Stone will be there with him is mistaken. Despite his years of faithful service to the party, he’s too green. And Clark will have to spread cabinet jobs around geographically, so appointing both Kamloops MLAs to the executive council isn’t likely, at least right now.

But within two years, he’ll probably be rewarded with a cabinet portfolio anyway.

After all, how can a bellwether be denied?

This is the place.

It’s not easy being a voter. It’s even harder when there’s no obvious choice, no leader who instills confidence, no single candidate who makes you think “I want this person to represent me,” no party whose policies clearly or even mostly match my own values.

I wasn’t excited about going to the polls today. I voted without conviction. I felt none of the thrill of many former elections when I voted for something. I’d rather vote for something or someone because then you feel you’re part of something.

Sometimes I vote for the candidate, sometimes the party. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Today, my X went beside the candidate for the party I thought likely to do the least damage. That’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?

I know, I know, it’s important to vote and you should just do it. Maybe I have voter’s fatigue.

Tonight, there will be much celebrating at the election-night parties of the candidates who win, and brave faces at those who don’t. And there will be much talk of “moving forward.” But I don’t think there’s much reason to be proud of politics in B.C. right now.

There’s no rule that says a candidate must live in the riding in which he or she runs. In fact, the rules expressly state that as long as you’ve been a resident anywhere in the province for long enough, you can run anywhere you want.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. In municipal elections, it’s the same thing, but there’s a good reason for it. In small municipalities or regional districts, there often isn’t a big enough population to guarantee good representation. In some regional rural areas, a few dozen votes can get you elected, so the chances of there not being any candidates who actually live in the area are pretty good.

Even in bigger municipalities, there sometimes are just not enough people to make for a good roster. An added factor is that communities like Kamloops often have outlying bedroom communities outside city boundaries, the residents of which commute into town every day and who have a direct stake in civic decisions.

But the boundaries of provincial ridings are drawn, in part, based on population, so every riding surely could generate a candidate for most of the major parties. If no one from within the riding filed nomination papers by deadline, a secondary nomination process could kick into place that allows external candidates to run.

People who don’t live in a riding get on the ballot either because their party doesn’t do a rigorous enough job of recruiting, or because they’re able to defeat resident-candidates in the membership-signup progress.

So, once again in this election, my choices are dominated by candidates who don’t live within the same electoral-district boundaries that I do. It shouldn’t be that way.

Coun. Nelly Dever (left) speaks in favour of getting a report on what other City councils are paid, as fellow councillors Nancy Bepple, Pat Wallace and Marg Spina listen.

Yesterday’s discussion in Kamloops City council chambers on Coun. Nancy Bepple’s notice of motion directing staff to report on what their counterparts in other cities get paid was fascinating.

It began with Bepple reciting her previous job experience with major employers. It was a little strange. Mind you, it was Bepple who recently raised the idea of putting parking meters in back alleys.

It got better as the discussion went along. Coun. Nelly Dever had some good sound bites such as, “It’s a band-aid nobody wants to pull off,” and “Suck it up and just do it.” Her analysis of the issue of pay raises was that it is council’s duty to deal with it, yet it’s politically sensitive so nobody wants to touch it.

Thus, the Nike-like “just do it” thing. Which kind of characterizes giving yourself a raise (or, at least, talking about it) as an act of courage. We should be grateful.

Anyway, Coun. Tina Lange echoed the oft-used rationale that council members need to be paid more so that good people will be attracted to run. Two years ago, when Thompson-Nicola Regional District directors voted themselves $5,000 raises, she used a similar argument.

“I value my skills and time and assets,” she said then. “We can’t depend on people who are independently wealthy or retired.”

Yesterday, Tuesday, she asked, almost plaintively, “Am I the best we can get?”

Now that’s a new angle on an old issue. So council members need to approve a raise so that the next council will be better than the current one?

In answer to her question, though, I can’t answer whether Coun. Lange is the best available from the community gene pool of councillors and potential councillors. I can say she’s not the worst. In fact, she’s a good councillor, and always reliable for a good quote. She’s just not in the right place on this issue.

There’s a belief by some councillors that they somehow shoulder more burden than councillors of the past. I’d like to know how.

Do they have more meetings to attend? Nope.

More public hearings? Nope.

More public events? Nope.

More hours per week? Nope.

Has governance changed dramatically? Nope.

Do they need more skills than they used to? Nope.

I would challenge anyone on this council, other than the mayor, to log his or her time over a period of six months or even six weeks and show 30 hours a week, or even 20.

At any rate, they’re going ahead with putting staff to the trouble of coming up with a report they already know will show that several other City councils make more money. Four members of council — Ken Christian, Marg Spina, Pat Wallace and Mayor Peter Milobar — voted against it.

Bepple, Lange, Dever, Donovan Cavers and Arjun Singh voted for it.

Norm Thompson with scale model of Ajax project.

The community relations co-ordinator for the Ajax mine project will leave the job for a new position with the Tk’emlups Indian Band.

Norm Thompson was hired by KGHM Ajax a year ago after the departure of John Froese from the same position. He will wrap up his duties with Ajax and start with the Band at the end of next week as general manager for economic development reporting to Chief Shane Gottfriedson.

Thompson said his exact responsibilities are still being sorted out and “it sounds like a lot of fun stuff” will be coming up with respect to the TIB’s marketing and economic development.

He views the change as “a new challenge and new opportunity,” he said.

Thompson feels KGHM is heading in the right direction in working through the process for its proposed open-pit mine south of Kamloops. “I’m quite happy where Ajax is at the moment.”

He said his move is not connected to changes in the company’s public-information structure that included the hiring in February of former Kamloops RCMP detachment superintendent Yves Lacasse as the mine project’s manager of external affairs.

Ajax officials at press conference releasing letter. (Kamloops Daily News photo)

For all the questions it left unanswered, the KGHM International letter to mayor and council, released just before the weekend, answered, in a sense, the biggest and most troublesome question of all. And the answer is, strangely but almost predictably, that it cannot be answered.

It confirms that the ultimate impact of Ajax is a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

The 18-page letter, written in response to a query from the City of Kamloops almost two years ago, is full of non-answers on a wide range of issues. Page after page, point by point, it begins with phrases like “We are currently completing…,” “We are conducting…,” “We are currently generating…,” “We are working on…,” and “We are still quantifying….”

It comes as part of a promise by the project’s external affairs manager Yves Lacasse that KGHM will be more open and transparent about progress on its plans to build an open-pit copper mine straddling the south boundary of Kamloops.

In fairness, though the letter is long overdue, it at least attempts to provide a status update.

It begins by explaining that the company didn’t intend to mislead anyone by stating the mine would be 10 km. away. What it meant, the letter says, is that it would be 10 km. “driving distance” from the city.

Why, one must ask, did it take close to two years to clarify something so simple? There are many other questions with respect to environmental impacts, for example, that remain unanswered. But the company is working on them.

One major issue, the fate of Jacko Lake, is answered succinctly and without much reassurance.

“What will be the quality of Jacko Lake as a fishing lake if a 450m deep open-pit is located immediately adjacent?” asked the City’s letter, submitted by environmental services supervisor Jen Fretz in July 2011.

Indeed, Jacko Lake has been the subject of much concern ever since it became evident that KGHM proposes its giant hole in the ground immediately next to it.

The answer provided by KGHM is this: “Reports completed for the historic Afton Mine indicate that no complaints were received from Jacko Lake users during operation. Our socio-economic research will address impacts to fishing and other recreational opportunities and we are considering building a berm to block noise, sight, and dust from impacting lake users.”

There isn’t anything at all new in that. The maps and scale models have long shown that the pit will be virtually on the edge of the lake, and that a berm is supposed to protect it. The larger question is, will the pit, many times deeper than the lake, and the effect of the blasting, fracture the lake bottom and cause Jacko to drain?

But here is the one Really Big question, and the answer without an answer.

The City’s letter: “What will be the impact (positive and negative) on the quality of life for Kamloops residents as a result of mining operations?”

Lacasse’s answer: “This is a subjective question and the impact will certainly vary from resident to resident. We know that the economic impact will be positive and any negative environmental impacts will be mitigated as thoroughly as possible. This is a very difficult question to quantify and may require additional research once the mine is in operation.”

It is, indeed, subjective and hard to quantify. Yet the impact on the quality of life in Kamloops, on the vision of what this community wants itself to be, is the most important question of all.

And yet, it can’t possibly be answered until after the mine is in operation. Then, the answer will be all around us.

ACC president Kim Sigurdson at public forum. (Daily News file photo)

UPDATE: There’s been some back and forth on this blog during the past couple of hours that deserves to be reported.

Terry Lake responded by tweeting that he “did not say I set it up but pressured proponent to have public forum based on ICE fund rules.”

He then also tweeted that his reference was to the Ministry of Small Business and Innovation, and further that he had met with then-minister Iian Black, rather than Ministry of Environment. He didn’t say this during the forum but I appreciate the clarification, though the debate was in the context of environment matters.

I noted in a return tweet that the Kamloops Daily News live forum blog quoted him as saying during the debate that “I got the ministry to force the proponent to have a public meeting.” That’s in agreement with my own memory of the comment.

So the ministry involved is clarified. Fact remains, it was through the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce that a forum was held.

Original blog follows:

In the heat of an election campaign, history has a way of being re-written. I suppose candidates can be forgiven once in awhile for exaggerating or making an honest mistake.

In this campaign, there’s been a fair amount of it as the NDP and Liberals battle to convince us who deserves to form the next government.

A small example of that occurred at last Thursday’s KDN-CBC-sponsored candidates’ forum at the Kamloops Convention Centre.

The environment was a major topic at the forum, maybe in part because the environment minister in the last Liberal administration, Terry Lake, was on the stage.

In this context, the issue of the Aboriginal Cogeneration Corp. gasification plant was raised. Those who were around in 2009 and 2010 know that this became a major cause célèbre with local environmentalists who claimed the plant would, as Ruth Madsen put it, “pollute our children and many generations to come and destroy our wonderful city.”

The ACC plan met all the requirements of the Environment Ministry for a discharge permit, got a clean bill of health from the IHA, and was also approved for a development grant from the provincial Innovative Clean Energy fund to help it get established. But it hit the fan as public fears were whipped up about the impact of the project, and MLAs Lake and Kevin Krueger suddenly had a big problem on their hands.

At last Thursday’s forum, Lake told the crowd he had gotten the Environment Ministry to force ACC to hold a public forum on the project, leaving the impression the problem was thus solved.

That’s not how it happened, and Lake is mistaken in his description of how the forum came about. I know this, because I was involved.

Lake and Krueger were in a tough spot and couldn’t overtly criticize ministry staff or tell them to reverse their approval. Instead, they began suggesting that the ICE funding — even though the fund was supposed to be free of political influence — might be withdrawn based on what they said was inadequate consultation.

For months ACC president Kim Sigurdson had refused any meaningful public consultation because he had, technically, met the requirements of his environmental permits and simply wanted to get on with it.

I supported the science of the project, which was meant to solve a major environmental problem with the disposal of used railway ties but, like many others, I felt Sigurdson needed to consult with Kamloops residents.

Early in 2010, I proposed to Sigurdson that he come back to Kamloops and face the music at a public forum. He was concerned about whether such a forum would be conducted in a fair manner by a neutral party. I suggested that the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce might be interested and that the chamber would be a credible, neutral host as it hadn’t taken a position on the proposal.

I then talked with chamber president Leslie Bruchu and she agreed to pitch it to the chamber board, of which I was a director. With the board in agreement, I contacted the local Environment Ministry office, which agreed to send a representative to sit on the panel.

It was the chamber that arranged for the venue, the panel, the moderator (Murray Young of TRU) and the format. Neither Terry Lake nor Kevin Krueger had anything to do with initiating it or setting it up, and the Ministry was a willing participant, not an overseer.

A few days after the packed forum, which was more like a town hall meeting, Sigurdson and his shareholders decided not to proceed with the project.

So, while Lake and Krueger were certainly players, and put some pressure on Sigurdson via the ICE grant, Lake’s statement that the Environment Ministry ordered up a public forum misses the mark.