Tick bites
One of the area’s nastier biting bugs caused a spike in WorkSafe BC reportable incidents for the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) during the first two quarters of this year.
Statistics on first aid and WorkSafe incidents for SCRD employees was part of a July 27 report to the corporate and administrative services committee.
The increase from just five WorkSafe reports between Jan. 1 and June 31 of 2016 to 16 for the same period this year caught the eye of Halfmoon Bay alternate director Brian Smith.
Human resources manager Gerry Parker told Smith, “We haven’t noticed a trend in anything particular other than tick bites, believe it or not. We’ve had a quite a number of tick bites so we sent out information to staff on how to address those situations. That seems to be the one thing that’s recurring.”
shíshálh Nation business
Shíshálh director Keith Julius updated his fellow directors on a pair of developments tied to the business activities of the shíshálh Nation at the July 27 board meeting.
Following a unanimous decision at a community meeting the week before, Julius said, shíshálh Nation staff have begun investigating medical marijuana.
“We’ve had various companies come before us,” Julius said. “So we’ve gotten our staff to investigate the pros and cons of what that would be like.”
A company called Sechelt Organic Marijuana, a subsidiary of Veritas Pharma, recently got Health Canada approval for its growing facility in Porpoise Bay adjacent to Sechelt Indian Band lands.
Julius also said shíshálh has been meeting with Construction Aggregates (Lehigh) about the company’s lease on the aggregate mine located near the Tsain-ko Centre. That lease is up in 2028, and shíshálh is trying to decide whether to renew it.
– Sean Eckford
