The nominees are all in for the Banff-Airdrie constituency Canada 150 Awards, and now the difficult process of choosing the people who'll receive the honours begins.

MP Blake Richards, who is giving out the awards in recognition of Canada's 150th birthday, says they extended the nomination deadline slightly past the original date of May 31st to ensure that all nominees were recognized.  "Some of them were still coming in, they let us know they were still getting their information together.  I think we've got the last of the nominations in now and my staff is busy putting together the packages for the committee who'll make the decisions."

Richards says that committee has a difficult task facing them in choosing the winners.  "I had a quick look through the nominations that came in.  There's a lot of names I recognize.  I'll tell you, that committee's going to have a real difficult time getting it whittled down to 30 winners.  There's a lot of deserving people there and it's going to be a tough decision for that committee but we'll be able to reward 30 people for a lot of hard work in the community and that's what it's all about."

Richards says the plan is for the committee to have the 30 honurees chosen by the end of June.  After that, the recipients will be notified.  "We wouldn't be releasing the names of the winners until the ceremonies take place and we'll do three of those ceremonies spread out across the riding so that people can have a ceremony close to home.  We're shooting to hold those ceremonies late August or early September depending on the availability of the winners of course."

The Banff-Airdrie Canada 150 Awards will recognize people who have accomplished things for the benefit of the community, through volunteerism, sports, arts or other community building activities.  An award can be won posthumously.  

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