Scandinavians look to city hall for help

Council Briefs by Dan Hilborn
Published Sept. 16, 2006


The directors of the Scandinavian Cultural Centre are asking for city council's support, and a tax break, to help continue their good work in the community.

Hakan Telenius, representing the board of the community centre society, told city council that the 10-year-old cultural centre is now a vibrant hub of activity featuring classes, festivals and lectures for people from all backgrounds.

"Today, all the local Scandinavian groups use the place as their centre," said Telenius, who was joined by about a dozen supporters at the Sept. 11 city council meeting.

He said the centre was founded by four different long-term care homes with roots in the Scandinavian communities, and has received more than a million dollars in donations since its formation.

"We are heavily used like a public community centre, and we help to save substantial taxpayer dollars," Telenius said.

The centre hosts activities that cater to immigrants from all the Scandinavian countries, who make up about 10 per cent of Burnaby's total population. In addition, the centre cooperates with its neighbours by sharing parking facilities with the Ismaili mosque next door and by renting its sports fields to a popular soccer school.

The society operates on a total annual budget of about $200,000, Telenius said, and the property tax bill is the largest single expenditure, accounting for about 10 per cent of total.

If approved, the tax exemption would allow the centre to establish a building repair fund and "ensure our long-term viability," Telenius said.

He also offered to work with the city to establish other programs at the site such as a heritage centre and a sports hall of fame, and said the centre already has a growing collection of memorabilia from the many Scandinavian players who have worn the Vancouver Canucks' uniform.

Activities at the centre include language classes, dance lessons, theatrical performances, festivals, choirs, and lectures on historic and cultural topics, he added.

"All we want to do is make sure we stay here for another 10 years," Telenius said.

Coun. Gary Begin warned the society that applying for a tax exemption and government grant could become a double-edged sword. "You've made it a community facility and I wish you well in maintaining your independence," Begin said.

Mayor Derek Corrigan offered a tone of cautious optimism as he passed the recommendation forward to a council committee.

The mayor said city council has always been receptive to cultural centre such as the new Portuguese and Taiwanese centres being built in the city, adding that the Scandinavian community centre could take heart in the fact that his own great-grandmothers were B.C. pioneers who were born in Norway and Sweden.

But Corrigan also said there are "legislative and precedent problems" with the idea of a tax exemption. "These problems will require creative solutions, but that's one of the things that Scandinavians are famous for," he said.

The Scandinavian community centre society is the second non- profit agency to request a property tax exemption from city council this year. In June, officials with the North Burnaby Legion announced that they were preparing a request for a tax exemption on all three Royal Canadian Legion properties in the city, including branches #83 and #148 plus the TB Vets headquarters.

SUPPORTING FALUN GONG

Burnaby city council is calling on Ottawa to investigate allegations that the government of mainland China is torturing and "harvesting organs" from the practitioners of Falun Gong.

But council was reluctant to condemn the practice outright because the city simply doesn't have the resources to investigate the claims themselves, Mayor Derek Corrigan said.

"The difficulty I have with this is that we are not the national government, and we do not have the resources to research it," Corrigan said after hearing a presentation from local Falun Gong practitioners Sue Zhang and Ryan Moffat. "If this is true, we should bring down the weight of the world on this travesty."

In his Sept. 11 presentation, Moffat said Falun Gong is an ancient form of Chinese meditation that focuses on the virtues of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. There are currently about 100 million practitioners of the art in more than 60 countries, which is greater than the total number of Chinese communist party members, Moffat said.

Among his allegations are claims that Falun Gong practitioners have received repeated electrical shocks of 30,000 volts in an attempt to make them renounce the practice, and that millions of practitioners have been sent to labour camps where their vital organs are harvested for profit.

Moffat also said that some Chinese hospitals are advertising organ transplants on the Internet, with a wait time of only one week.