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Cariboo Local Affairs · Cariboo Signals

• 0:00
  Casey: Hey there, welcome in. Today on Cariboo Signals we've got a Williams Lake mayor's race rematch, with Surinderpal Rathor facing Walt Cobb again, plus council hopefuls including Nelson, Boehm, and Ruth Lloyd, a former Tribune reporter, now running. We'll also hit a Conservative candidate fined over donations in Prince George-North Cariboo, and the question of which local numbers actually measure what they claim. That and more, coming right up.
• 0:38
  Casey: Welcome to Cariboo Signals, an AI-generated review of the latest tech news and ideas that impact our rural communities. I'm Casey. It's Saturday, October 10th, 2026. Today's theme is Cariboo Local Affairs, the decisions and ballots in Williams Lake, Quesnel, and 100 Mile House. Reaching you from the heart of the Cariboo, the homeland of the Secwépemc, Tŝilhqot'in, and Dakelh nations.
• 1:01
  Riley: And I'm Riley. Williams Lake and the Cariboo Regional District vote on October 17th, and British Columbia votes provincially on October 24th. Quick weather check: out at Horsefly Lake this morning it's clear and around 2 degrees, with a high of 11 and a low of 1 today. Expect light drizzle and a 29 percent chance of precipitation. Across the Cariboo, 100 Mile House is around 0 under overcast, Williams Lake around 1 and partly cloudy, Quesnel around 3 and partly cloudy, and Hanceville around 3 under overcast.
• 1:35
  Casey: Starting with the news close to home.
• 1:39
  Riley: Most of today's news lands close to home, so we start with cancer screening. BC Cancer has opened screening mammogram appointments in Williams Lake, according to My Cariboo Now. Local appointments matter when the nearest alternative is a long drive.
• 1:54
  Casey: Booked how far out? The post doesn't say.
• 1:58
  Casey: Next, a Vernon lawyer. The Law Society of BC has again found Leonard Hil Marriott committed professional misconduct. The decision, published September 24th, says he misappropriated $116,000 from an elderly client with dementia, according to the Williams Lake Tribune. Vernon is in the Okanagan, south and east of the Cariboo, but the Law Society's decisions are public documents anyone here can read.
• 2:22
  Riley: Public documents only help if someone reads them before the second complaint.
• 2:28
  Riley: Williams Lake's Salvation Army served a community Thanksgiving meal on Friday, October 9th. The Tribune quotes Tamara Robinson, who hoped everyone who stopped by would leave with a full belly and a happy heart. The turnout was the point of the day.
• 2:44
  Casey: A cannabis store is moving into the former Warehouse One, the Jean Store site, at Prosperity Ridge Shopping Centre in Williams Lake. The Tribune reports the move has been approved. A former clothing store turned cannabis shop is a small-city land-use story, and the approval is the part that goes on the record.
• 3:03
  Riley: The Cariboo's year-over-year unemployment rate dropped sharply last month, according to My Cariboo Now. A hefty drop is good news, and it's a measured number, the kind we'll come back to in a minute.
• 3:14
  Casey: Hold that thought.
• 3:16
  Riley: Moving to technology. We covered Amazon's NDA shift on Saturday, October 3rd. The new piece is that Amazon says it will stop using non-disclosure agreements with local governments on data center deals, following Microsoft earlier this year.
• 3:31
  Casey: Stopping the NDAs changes what a council can say in public. It doesn't change what the company has to disclose.
• 3:38
  Riley: Business Insider runs two charts on homeownership. Americans earning the median income can buy less house than they could before, as mortgage rates climb. The figures are American, so they don't map directly to Cariboo prices.
• 3:52
  Casey: Those charts are American. Nobody here should read them as a Williams Lake forecast.
• 3:58
  Riley: Vox, reproducing a Guardian report, says the world's largest penguin colony has declined by two-thirds since 2011, most likely because of the climate crisis. The snippet we read doesn't give the study's details.
• 4:12
  Casey: Two-thirds since 2011. That's a number that hides a lot of birds.
• 4:18
  Riley: The Tyee reports that as Fortis expands its facility along the Fraser, local air pollution is expected to worsen, with emissions projected to exceed standards. The snippet doesn't say how much.
• 4:29
  Casey: Expected to worsen. Keep that word in mind when the measurements come in.
• 4:35
  Riley: ScienceDaily reports researchers found stress on the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults at some of the highest levels in a 1,000-year simulation. The study is a model, and it's about future risk rather than any present event.
• 4:49
  Casey: A thousand years of simulation and a single fault. The model is doing most of the talking.
• 4:56
  Riley: NYT Business reports U.S. solar manufacturers say they are close to perfecting a more efficient panel, betting it can rebuild domestic supply chains against cheaper Chinese imports. Those are the manufacturers' claims until the panels are tested in the field.
• 5:12
  Casey: Close to perfect has a way of staying close.
• 5:15
  Riley: ScienceAlert reports that the solar system may be destroyed about 100 times faster than previously thought. That's a long-range estimate, and nobody is planning a council budget around it.
• 5:27
  Casey: Good. One less line item.
• 5:29
  Riley: Nautilus reports the James Webb Space Telescope has found a star field hiding brown dwarfs that never ignite. They are failed stars, too small to start fusion.
• 5:39
  Casey: Let's move to the local ballot.
• 5:42
  Riley: The Salvation Army in Williams Lake served a Thanksgiving meal on Friday, and the Tribune said the crowd left with full bellies. Food banks and community meals like this run on donations and volunteer hours. If you can spare something this week, drop a bag of groceries or a few dollars at your local Salvation Army.
• 6:02
  Casey: Those donations matter most in the quiet weeks after a holiday, when the crowd is gone and the cupboards are still empty.
• 6:10
  Riley: Start with the count the city reports most often: ballots cast. Early voting is open this week, and the city will tally every ballot it receives. So what was that count supposed to measure, and which of our local numbers has drifted furthest from the life it claims to track?
• 6:26
  Casey: Ballots cast. Not people who read the candidate list and decided to stay home.
• 6:31
  Riley: Which is the whole point of counting. A city can't measure interest directly, so it counts ballots and calls the trend engagement.
• 6:40
  Casey: And then the count becomes the goal. Early voting was built to make the day easier. Now it's the scorecard.
• 6:46
  Riley: Then the city should say the scorecard is ballots. It's a real number, and a clean one.
• 6:52
  Casey: Clean doesn't mean it measures participation. Nobody asks why the people who didn't vote stayed home.
• 6:58
  Riley: Nobody can ask the people who skipped. You work with what you can count.
• 7:02
  Riley: Steve Forseth in Area D and Maureen LeBourdais in Area F were elected by acclamation, per the Tribune's September 15th report. Voters in those areas get no ballot for those seats.
• 7:14
  Casey: Acclamation measures the absence of a second filed name. Count the nominations, and you're done. Nobody checks whether residents knew who was sitting on the board.
• 7:23
  Riley: Under the rules, that's representation. A seat with a filed name is filled.
• 7:28
  Casey: The rules measure a filing deadline. The record says the board is complete. What it doesn't say is whether anyone in Area F could name the director without looking it up.
• 7:38
  Riley: That's a question for the Regional District to answer with its own data. It doesn't mean the seat is empty.
• 7:44
  Casey: It means the seat counts as full on paper, and nobody has measured the other part.
• 7:49
  Riley: Then measure it. The Regional District could publish how many public comments it received and how many changed a decision. That's a number with a meaning attached.
• 7:59
  Casey: A good number. Who keeps it? Right now the count that exists is the count of nominations.
• 8:05
  Riley: Now the mayor's race, which is a rematch. Surinderpal Rathor holds the seat now. He was elected mayor in 2022, and the city's staff directory names him as the city's first Indo-Canadian mayor. He faces Walt Cobb again. Rathor won that 2022 race with 34.1 percent in preliminary results, ahead of Jason Ryll, Walt Cobb, and Kerry Cook.
• 8:27
  Casey: The Tribune has also reported a complaint about a conflict of interest involving Rathor as a councillor. Council chose to speak with him rather than open an investigation, and he said there was no conflict. The show has not established when that matter arose or how it ended. Put that in the record, then ask what handling a complaint looks like on a council with no integrity commissioner.
• 8:49
  Riley: Which is a structural question, and it doesn't cancel the budget. The incumbent's measure of the term is the budget, and the budget lines are the thing voters can check.
• 9:00
  Casey: The budget isn't the only measure to look at, though. A complaint resolved by a conversation is a different kind of record.
• 9:07
  Riley: Walt Cobb's record runs a long way back. He was a councillor starting in 1980, then mayor from 1990 to 1996. He lost the 1996 mayoral race, sat as the BC Liberal MLA for Cariboo South from 2001 to 2005, and came third in the 2022 mayoral race with 24.2 percent. The Williams Lake First Nation called on him to resign after he shared a Facebook post about residential schools. A CBC report carries that, and the show has not established how it was resolved.
• 9:41
  Casey: The most recent result counts for the most. Cobb's 2022 loss is the newest data on his name, and the earlier terms are history.
• 9:49
  Riley: Then the record doesn't settle the race. Cobb's last election was a loss, and this is the same race he's running in again.
• 9:56
  Casey: And the residential school post belongs in the record too, with its date and the nation's response. Leaving it out makes the race look cleaner than the sources do.
• 10:06
  Riley: It's in the record. The question for voters is what Cobb says he'd do differently from 1996.
• 10:12
  Casey: Nobody has answered that yet in the sources we read.
• 10:15
  Riley: Now the council field, which is fourteen names after Jared Wardlaw-Gimbel withdrew before the September 18th deadline. Sheila Boehm, Michael Moses, and Scott Nelson hold seats now. Boehm's background is the one we covered on Saturday, October 3rd. Moses is a first-term councillor seeking a second term. Nelson is seeking a third consecutive term.
• 10:38
  Casey: Nelson is also the defendant in a civil suit. A complaint filed against him and his wife, Twila Smigelsky, alleges forged documents and misappropriated funds. Coast Mountain News and Victoria News reported it on August 27th, 2025. Nelson denies the allegations. These are claims in a civil suit, not findings, and the case's status hasn't been established.
• 10:59
  Riley: Allegations stay allegations until a court rules otherwise. The record should show the suit exists, and it also shows Nelson is seeking another term.
• 11:09
  Casey: Both go in the record. Neither makes the other true.
• 11:12
  Riley: The challengers include Ryll, who was a councillor and finished second in the 2022 mayoral race with 28.1 percent. Paul French is a former councillor who served before 2022, and he was a past president of the Williams Lake and District Chamber of Commerce, per the Tribune. Ruth Lloyd is a former Tribune journalist who joined the paper in 2021. Whitney Spearing is named by third-party directory sites as the Williams Lake First Nation's director of natural resources. Billie Sheridan announced her run in June and is a public relations officer and the organizer of the Williams Lake Pride march. Rafiullah Sahibzada announced in August. The Tribune also names Greg Jeannotte, Charlene Hays, Cianna O'Connor, Nathan Wiebe, and Kayla Zaruk as political newcomers in the council race.
• 12:03
  Casey: Ruth Lloyd covered this council as a reporter. That matters in both directions. A former reporter now running is a conflict the public needs to see disclosed, and it's also someone who knows which records are hard to find.
• 12:15
  Riley: Which is the best argument for asking every candidate the same questions in writing.
• 12:20
  Casey: Fine as a method. The show has not established the records of several of these names. For the rest, the record is a filing and a newcomer label.
• 12:28
  Riley: Fourteen names is a real field. Most of them have no council record in these sources, and that's a measurement problem with a fix. A candidate list can carry a one-line history for each name.
• 12:40
  Casey: A one-line history is what a voter would need. The other problem is that fourteen names isn't fourteen options. Some of those seats may only have one honest choice in practice.
• 12:50
  Riley: Then the fix is the same. Make the records visible before October 17th.
• 12:55
  Casey: Agreed on the fix. Not on the number.
• 12:58
  Riley: Area E is the one contested Regional District seat on the ballot. Melynda Neufeld has been director since 2022 and vice-chair of the CRD board since November 2023, per the Tribune. Before her 2022 win, she lost an Area E by-election to Angie Delainey, according to My Cariboo Now, though the date isn't in what we read. Her challenger is Mary Forbes. Love Northern BC lists Forbes as an SFU archaeology graduate, and the show has not established any prior election result for her.
• 13:29
  Casey: Neufeld's record has a loss in it, and a win after. That's the kind of record a voter can read. Forbes has no election history in the sources. That's a gap, not a verdict.
• 13:39
  Riley: A sitting director against a first-time name. That's the contest on the Regional District ballot.
• 13:46
  Casey: The most honest contest on the ballot, and it only gets measured if the forums get recorded.
• 13:51
  Riley: On the school board, Michael Franklin is the incumbent trustee seeking re-election in Zone 6, and he's the only candidate filed for that zone. The show has not established his prior trustee terms or any controversy. The trustee's job gets measured in test scores and attendance, and nobody's shown us those numbers this week.
• 14:12
  Casey: Attendance is a count of kids in the room, not what they learned there. That's the drift in the question.
• 14:18
  Riley: Attendance is a proxy, and a useful one. If you can't get kids to school, you can't teach them.
• 14:24
  Casey: Sure. And when attendance becomes the number that gets reported, the board starts optimizing for attendance. That's the drift.
• 14:31
  Riley: Then the question is which other school measure the board can publish next to it.
• 14:36
  Casey: A good question. The sources don't answer it.
• 14:39
  Riley: Now the provincial race, which runs on a separate ballot. In Cariboo-Chilcotin, Lorne Doerkson is the Conservative MLA, first elected in 2020 and re-elected in 2024, per Elections BC. The Globe and Mail reports he is now the interim Conservative leader and Opposition leader. The NDP candidate is Kathryn Askew, a retired school teacher from Canim Lake, per the 100 Mile Free Press. The Green candidate is Douglas Gook, per CFJC Today. My Cariboo Now reports the B.C. Conservatives have proposed income tax cuts, while the NDP and Greens put out their own election promises the same day.
• 15:17
  Casey: A tax cut counts who gets relief. It doesn't count rent, or whether a seasonal job lasts past March.
• 15:23
  Riley: Which is the point. A tax cut is a number you can write into law and check the next year.
• 15:29
  Casey: You can check whether the number moved. You can't check whether the life behind it got better, and the threshold tells you nothing about that.
• 15:37
  Riley: In Prince George-North Cariboo, which includes Quesnel, Sheldon Clare is the Conservative incumbent. He won in 2024 with 56.82 percent of the vote. In 2026 he launched a leadership bid and suspended it on February 27th, after the leadership forms were found to include signatures from people who were not current party members, according to CFJC Today. Elections BC then issued a notice dated March 30th, a $1,500 administrative penalty for accepting anonymous contributions above the limit in his 2024 campaign. The Prince George Citizen puts the amount over the limit at $4,007.75. My Cariboo Now ran a story on October 8th headlined "Conservative candidate Sheldon Clare clears the air on the past 48 hours," but the page wasn't readable for us, so the show has not read it. The NDP candidate is Denice Bardua, and the Greens have Randy Thompson, who finished fourth in 2024.
• 16:38
  Casey: The fine is administrative, and the number that gets printed is $1,500. The Prince George Citizen's figure is over $4,000. Those are two different measures of the same donations, and the smaller one is the one on the official notice.
• 16:53
  Riley: Elections BC enforced the rule and issued a penalty. The enforcement system did what it's supposed to do.
• 17:00
  Casey: The process worked on the penalty. The leadership signatures never became a finding in the sources we have, and the fine measures what the regulator chose to charge, not what was given.
• 17:10
  Riley: It's still a finding. The donation limit was broken and a penalty followed.
• 17:15
  Casey: It was broken, and the penalty followed. I'd like to know what the penalty is measuring, and the sources don't tell us that either.
• 17:22
  Riley: Then the point stands. Enforcement is measurable, and here it was measured.
• 17:26
  Riley: Back to the local ballot. What did each number start out measuring? Early voting was supposed to make it easier to vote. Acclamation was supposed to fill seats nobody else contested. The forum was supposed to be where candidates explain themselves. The budget was supposed to show what the council does with the money. Each one has a job, and a second job the public quietly gave it.
• 17:50
  Casey: The one I'd watch is the forum. Everyone in the CRD portion of the South Cariboo Chamber's forum agreed more communication and public consultation is needed. That's where the drift shows. Agreement counts as success in the minutes, and nobody counts what changed afterward.
• 18:06
  Riley: Which brings it back to the comment count. A forum can be attended and still not change a decision.
• 18:13
  Casey: Yes. A council can be re-elected because it held forums, even if the forums never changed a thing.
• 18:19
  Riley: A forum is supposed to be a conversation, and a conversation can change an outcome. If it doesn't, the candidates should say so, and the next council should publish it.
• 18:29
  Casey: Publish it, sure. Who checks it in year three, when the forum record is a PDF nobody opens?
• 18:34
  Riley: The Tribune, the Observer, and the Free Press, if they keep the coverage up. The record only lasts if somebody keeps reading it.
• 18:42
  Casey: That's the part I'd doubt. Local papers have thin staff. The number you need to track is the one that disappears when the reporter does.
• 18:50
  Riley: That's the argument for keeping the number in the public record. Thin staff is a reason to build the record into the process, not to abandon it.
• 18:59
  Casey: I'm not saying abandon it. I'm saying the measurement dies first, and the decision follows.
• 19:04
  Riley: The last item is the closest to ordinary life. The Tribune reported on October 9th that riders in Quesnel, Williams Lake, and Bella Coola can take BC Transit free on October 17th, election day. Ridership counts rides. The election counts ballots. Neither one counts why people came.
• 19:22
  Casey: Ridership up is what the city will report. It doesn't tell you whether a rider was headed to a polling place or to the hospital.
• 19:29
  Riley: Which is why you'd want the polling data and the ride data together. Cross those two and the link becomes visible.
• 19:37
  Casey: Cross-referencing voters with bus tickets is a privacy question before it's a data question.
• 19:42
  Riley: It's not the first thing I'd do. But a transit count is a clean place to start, because it's small and specific.
• 19:49
  Casey: Small and specific is not the same as meaningful. Hold that.
• 19:53
  Riley: In Quesnel, the Observer's Meet the Candidates series profiles Tony Goulet, who is seeking re-election as a city councillor. The sources we read don't include his full record, so the story there is simply that he's running.
• 20:07
  Casey: And a Quesnel record the show hasn't established yet.
• 20:11
  Riley: The number I'd want is a list in three parts. First, a Regional District comment log for each board decision, showing which decisions changed after public input. Second, a city count of forums attended and questions asked from the floor. Third, a school board count of how many attendance figures lined up with a teacher's plan. Those three lists would move the question from proxy toward what the number was meant to be.
• 20:37
  Casey: The first one is possible. Regional boards generally publish minutes, so a comment log is a small step. The second only works if the city explains how it counted. The third is the hardest, because it asks a school board to measure its own plans against an attendance spreadsheet.
• 20:53
  Riley: And the Regional District could start the first one next month without a new budget line.
• 20:58
  Casey: It could. It just won't, unless someone asks.
• 21:01
  Riley: Then ask. Email the board, email the candidates, put it on the forum agenda. That's the test.
• 21:07
  Casey: I'll ask the question, and I still think the measurement drifts before anyone notices. We may not agree on whether the proxy is useful. We probably agree that nobody has asked which number is supposed to be the goal.
• 21:20
  Riley: Ballots, comments, and minutes are three different things. Pick one, and say what it's for.
• 21:25
  Casey: I'd pick the one nobody thought to count. I haven't found it yet.
• 21:28
  Casey: If you have a correction, a story tip, or a candidate record you'd like on the air, send it to feedback at cariboo signals dot c-a.
• 21:36
  Riley: Pick one number this week and ask what it's for. Have a good Saturday.
• 21:40
  Casey: Take the number with you, and check what it's counting.