Redeye

Vancouver City Council had its first meeting of the year this week and started off with a motion that got the attention of affordable housing advocates. Depending on who you listen to, single family neighbourhoods across Vancouver are either facing their biggest threat ever or just another small step in gentle densification. Ian Mass joins us to talk about this, and a whole bunch of other Vancouver Council issues in his regular City Beat report.

In British Columbia, the RCMP has a special detachment called the Community-Industry Response Group, set up to enforce injunctions and arrest land defenders blocking access to resource extraction companies. Molly Murphy is a BIPOC activist and journalist who’s experienced first-hand the violence of the RCMP at Fairy Creek. She explains what she’s found out about the background, training and tactics of the C-IRG.

Youth radicalization is on the rise in Canada. With increasing online promotion of far right ideas, young people are exposed a lot of politically motivated misinformation that can lead them to adopt extreme views. Teachers says they feel ill-equipped to recognize the signs of radicalization or know how to effectively intervene. Dr Kawser Ahmed is spearheading an effort to provide resources for educators in Manitoba.

A federal court has ruled that RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki violated her legal obligations when she took more than 3years to respond to a complaint about RCMP spying on anti-pipeline activists. In a groundbreaking decision, Justice Gagné said that the RCMP must respond to complaints within 6 months of receiving a report from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission. We speak with Jessica Magonet, lawyer with the BC Civil Liberties Association.

There was a time when the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and Justin Trudeau was described as ‘hostile’. The industry didn’t like the PM’s suggestion that domestic drug prices were too high and should be regulated. But now Trudeau is supporting the industry in its opposition to a drug patent waiver. Nikolas Barry-Shaw is trade and privatization campaigner for the Council of Canadians.

Last week, the federal government and First Nations leaders announced a $40 billion agreement-in-principle to compensate young people harmed by Canada’s discriminatory child welfare system. The agreement also sets aside half the money to reform the welfare system. This comes after a 15-year long fight begun by Cindy Blackstock and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. Sarah Clarke is a lawyer with Clarke Child and Family Law. She has represented the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society since 2009.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu passed away on December 26 at the age of 90. For much of the 1970s and 80s, Tutu was one of the foremost critics of apartheid, the South African government’s official policy of racial segregation. After apartheid ended in the early '90s, Tutu was named chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This part of Tutu’s legacy is generally known. However his activism encompassed a great deal more. Bill Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum and a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies.

City councils across the Lower Mainland are waking up from the holidays and gearing up for municipal elections scheduled for this upcoming October. In today’s episode of City Beat with Ian Mass: more money for police, a housing plan for potential homeowners priced out of the market, plus hopes that the three levels of government will cooperate to buy and operate SRO hotels as social housing.

Fossil fuel divestment campaigns started a decade ago on U.S. campuses. By 2015, fossil fuel divestment was reportedly the fastest growing divestment movement in history, and campaigns are starting to show results. Emily Lowan is currently studying at the University of Victoria and led Divest UVic’s campaign for 2 years. She joins us to discuss the successes of and barriers to student-led organizing against fossil fuel investment.

After almost two years of the pandemic and in the midst of a massive wave of Omicron infections, we are now also seeing rising inflation rates across the country. Some critics say the only answer is to cut government spending, raise interest rates and slow down the economy. Sheila Block disagrees. She’s a senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. We speak with her about her suggestions for a made-in-Canada solution to high inflation.

In July 2017, residents of a suburban development in Markham, Ontario  awoke to find a giant chrome replica of a cow called Charity facing their homes. The residents had never been consulted about the installation and  quickly rose in opposition to the  sculpture. The interactive documentary, Charity, looks at the controversy and the bureaucratic processes involved. It raises questions about the role of public art. We speak with Ryan Ferko, one of the documentary’s creators.

The Yellowhead Institute is a First Nation-led research centre based at Ryerson University. They produced a Red Paper in 2019 about land back, the project of reclaiming Indigenous jurisdiction and breathing life into rights and responsibilities. Executive director Hayden King and Matthew Norris of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives discuss the concept of land back in a conversation recorded on December 2.

The pandemic has brought into focus the urgent need for a public health that serves everyone in the community, including those who have traditionally been marginalized. A new book by Zena Sharman asks what health care could look like if queer folks had access safe, appropriate and compassionate medical care. Zena Sharman is a writer, speaker, strategist and LGBTQ+ health advocate. Her new book is called The Care We Dream Of.

In 2017, the Elephant Hill wildfire in British Columbia burned close to 200,000 hectares throughout Secwepemcu’lecw territory. An Indigenous-led review has found there was a disregard of Indigenous fire management practices and local knowledge leading up to and during the Elephant Hill fire. We speak with Sarah Dickson-Hoyle, co-author of the report and a doctoral candidate in the faculty of forestry at the University of British Columbia.

The City of Vancouver 2022 budget complete with a 6.35% tax increase and rezoning for rentals dominated the mainstream civic media these last two weeks. Slipping under the radar were two other important policy and funding initiatives addressing climate change and social infrastructure. Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.

In 2017, the New Westminster school board approved a sanctuary schools policy which aims to give every school-aged child in the district access to education without fear of their personal information being shared with immigration authorities. Yet, on November 30, a mother was handcuffed and detained by Canadian Border Services agents after she dropped her child off at kindergarten at a New Westminster school. We speak with Omar Chu of Sanctuary Health.

A U.S. federal jury has said that three major retailers helped flood two Ohio counties with addictive opioids in a first-of-its-kind verdict. The two counties argued that pharmacies at CVS, Walgreens and Walmart did not stop mass quantities of opioid drugs from reaching the black market. We speak about the verdict with Gerald Posner, an investigative reporter and author of Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America.

The River Forecast Centre operates a provincial system that issues flood warnings yet this fall’s abundant rain and intense storms did not appear to trigger critical responses that could have better protected British Columbians. A decade ago an expert report called for changes and increased staffing at the River Forecast Centre, but those recommendations have not been acted on for more than 10 years. We speak with resource policy analyst Ben Parfitt.

Judging by the constant stream of news reports of standoffs and confrontations, it’s apparent that Canada’s reconciliation project has gone off the rails. Standoff is the title of a new book of essays by lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor. In it, he examines why reconciliation is failing and what needs to be done to fix it. Bruce McIvor is a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation and a partner at First People’s Law. He represents First Nations across Canada from Wet’suwet’en opposing the Coastal Gas Link pipeline to Mi’kmaw exercising their fishing rights in Nova Scotia.

It is estimated over half of B.C. workers don’t have sick benefits from their employers. That gap moved into sharp relief at beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many workers felt forced to go to work while they were sick. And while gaining any paid sick days is an improvement for many workers, advocates say five days falls short of what is needed for a healthy community and a healthy economy. Alex Hemingway is a senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.