- Scott Etches
Scott Etches, born December 16th, 1960, was elected to serve on City Council in
Mission, British Columbia from 2005 to 2008. Mr. Etches was elected with Terry Gidda, Paul Horn, John Pearson, Jenny Stevens, and Heather Stewart. Under their leadership the Council of the day has undertaken a crime reduction through social development initiative. The first year in office saw a 13.57% [http://mission.rcmp.ca/digitalAssets/10003_2006_Year_End_Crime_Statistics.pdf (RCMP Mission Crime Stats 2006)] drop in the Mission crime rate while the second year in office(2007) saw an overall further crime reduction in Mission of 11.58% [http://mission.rcmp.ca/digitalAssets/10001_2007_Year_End_Crime_Statistics.pdf (RCMP Mission Crime Stats 2007)] .
Scott Etches also ran in 2004 as an independent candidate for Federal office and gained [http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes2004/riding/276/ 1.66% of the vote] . Immediately after the 2004 election Mr. Etches got embroiled in a Freedom of Speech debate after [http://web.archive.org/web/20041031074247/www.abbotsfordtimes.com/issues04/072204/news/072204nn8.html an article was published] being critical of comments posted on his web forum. Mr. Etches created the forum in the post Sepetember 11th political climate which was critical of dissenting voices and saw the closure of the major discussion forums in Canada on the internet like CBC and MyTelus. In a response to the investigation, Mr. Etches declared, "As a free and open democratic society it is beneficial and necessary for us to have forums for the exchange of ideas from every point of view." Of the case, the RCMP spokesman said, "This is part of the fine balancing test set out by the Supreme Court between what is freedom of expression and what is hate propaganda or illegal ......... the comments posted by OWO(user who generated the initial commentary) would likely not meet the high standards required for something to be hate propaganda as set out by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Keegstra case"Currently Councillor Etches is the Chair of the Community Forestry Portfolio and has the following appointments:
* 2010 Olympics Mission Committee
* Committee to Approve Public Events
* Downtown Mission Revitalization Task Force Awards Committee
* Local Court of Revision
* Mission Old Age Pensioners' Organization
* Professional Learning communities Advisory CommitteeExternal links
* [http://www.mission.ca/Page587.aspx Official District of Mission web page for Scott Etches]
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