Phillips voices concerns over land-use bylaw at public hearing

Nikki Jamieson
Vauxhall Advance
njamieson@tabertimes.com

While no one showed up for the public hearing concerning the Land Use Bylaw, No. 900-16, during the regular council meeting on Feb. 1, there was still plenty of discussion about the bylaw.

While the public presented no concerns to council or administration, Vauxhall councillor Richard Phillips did make comments about unit conversion.

“It’s nit-picky silliness on my part, but it just seems so funny when you’re talking about it was, you know, 20 feet but we’ll go 6.1 metres, that’s almost correct but not quit, but six metres would be good enough,” he said.

“It used to be that two feet was good enough, we don’t need to say, ‘Well, it’s got to be, you know, 0.61 (metres)’, you could probably say 0.6 metres would be close enough.

“As much as I love imperial and all – because it’s great to catch a 22-inch fish – we could get with the times with the units and the bylaws I think.”

Phillips continued to say that his comment wasn’t enough to table the public hearing, and postpone the second and final readings.

The public hearing was closed, and the second and final reading commenced, with no amendments.

The Imperial system was commonly used by the British Empire before the metric system took over in popularity in the early 20th century.

In Canada, it wasn’t until the 1970s, did the metric system begun to be used more over the Imperial system. The Liberal federal government of Pierre Trudeau first began implementing metrication in Canada in 1970 with a government agency dedicated to implementing the project, the Metric Commission, being established in 1971, making most product labelling metric by the mid-1970s. In 1972, the provinces agreed to make all road signs metric by 1977.

However, today imperial measurements can be found on many products, and it is still used to note road layouts.

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