Redeye

For five days in October, members of community groups, advocates and residents of the Downtown Eastside documented street sweeps and their impact on people’s lives. Vince Tao of VANDU was one of the people observing the actions of the police and city workers and conducting interviews with the people affected. He tells us what he observed.

South False Creek has been called one of the best-planned neighbourhoods in the world. Located between the Granville and Cambie bridges and owned by the City of Vancouver, the land is leased to 2000 housing coop, rental and strata units. These leases are expiring and the City of Vancouver wants to negotiate an entirely different relationship with this community. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his regular City Beat report.

Emergence: Out of the Shadows is a feature length film is about the strengths and struggles of gay and lesbian South Asian people in Metro Vancouver. For Kayden, Jag, and Amar, awakening to and expressing their sexuality within conservative South Asian families was a lonely and terrifying experience - and yet they emerged. The film showed at Kdocs Film Festival in early October. We speak with producer Alex Sangha.

When you look at Canada as a whole, 71% of Canadians are fully vaccinated. But if you look at individual provinces, the numbers vary quite a bit. Here in BC, we’re currently at 73% of the total population. In Alberta, it’s more like 64%. Although vaccine passports and other incentives have prompted some to get vaccinated, many people are still hesitant. To find out what’s behind this reluctance, we’ve contacted Taylor Lambert. He is the Alberta politics reporter for The Sprawl.

In September, leader of the People’s Party of Canada Maxime Bernier publicly urged his Twitter followers to ‘play dirty’ with the press and exposed the contact details of three journalists. Bernier’s account on Twitter was eventually suspended for 12 hours but Bernier himself was unapologetic. The incident forms part of an escalating pattern targeting journalists whose reporting is unpopular with some politicians and organizations. We speak with Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

In mid-September, vaccine protesters entered three schools in Salmon Arm to deliver notices of Vaccine Liability, bogus legal documents based on the ideology of the Freemen-on-the-Land. To find out more about this anti-government movement and its links to white nationalism, we contacted Edwin Hodge. He’s a lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of Victoria who researches extremism and white supremacist activism in North American societies.

More than 1,100 people have been arrested this year for breaching a court injunction while protesting logging of old growth at Fairy Creek. On Oct 4, protesters gathered at the BC Legislature to call on the government to take action to protect old growth, especially since its been over a year since Premier John Horgan promised to implement an independent old-growth panel’s recommendations in “totality". We speak with Ken Wu, executive director at Endangered Ecosystems Alliance.

Under Canada’s Indian Act, prior to 1985, a woman who married a non-Indigenous man lost her Indian status, and risked being evicted from her reserve. A new documentary tells the story of a Mohawk woman who lost her status and fought for more than two decades to get it back and end sex discrimination under the Indian Act. We speak with Mohawk writer and director Courtney Montour.

Vancouver City Council is back at work and one of its first tasks was to hear a motion by Vancouver Councillor Christine Boyle about a massive $3-billion expansion of a liquefied natural gas production and storage facility in the Fraser River. In City Beat today, Redeye collective member Ian Mass talks about this proposed LNG expansion, a new Climate Emergency parking program, a proposal for seniors housing and a new plan to supply safer drugs to people.

Two years ago, Environment and Climate Change Canada came out with a report saying that Canada is warming at more than double the global rate. Despite this, Canada increased its emissions more than any other G7 country since it signed the Paris Agreement. At the same time, Canada’s largest public pension plan has increased its shares in fossil fuel companies. A recent report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives looks at the fossil fuel portion of the investment portfolios of Canada’s two biggest pension funds. We speak with co-authors Jessica Dempsey and James Rowe.

In 2008, Hassan Diab was a sociology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa when he was arrested and accused of involvement in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue. After a lengthy extradition hearing, in 2014, Diab was handed over to France where he was imprisoned, largely in solitary confinement, for over 3 years. In 2018, the charges were dismissed and Diab returned to Canada. But his nightmare didn’t end there. In January 2021, the French appeals court reversed the dismissal of charges and ordered a new trial. Colin Stuart is with the Hassan Diab Support Committee.

The federal government set a tougher target for reducing domestic emissions in 2020 yet the full extent of Canada’s contribution to the climate crisis remains hidden from view. Fraser Thomson is a lawyer at Ecojustice whose work focuses on the impact of fossil fuel operations on communities and the environment. He talks with us about the oil, gas and coal emissions generated by Canadian energy exports.

After 13 years of appeals and more than three years of corporate stalling, the contract laying out the terms of the sale of the Little Mountain social housing site to Holborn Properties has finally been made public. David Chudnovsky calls the terms of the contract “a sweetheart deal” for the developer. We talk with David Chudnovsky, spokesperson for Community Advocates for Little Mountain and former NDP MLA.

Cuba has faced sixty years of an economic blockade by Washington, including many additional measures brought in by the Trump administration. The Biden administration, rather than normalizing relations with Cuba, has stepped up its aggressive rhetoric. The Canadian Network on Cuba in Canada is asking the federal government to condemn Washington's economic sanctions. We speak with Isaac Saney, spokesperson for the group.

Earle Peach is the director of three Vancouver-based choral groups including the High and Lows Choir and Solidarity Notes Labour Choir. He also plays a bunch of instruments and performs with musical groups. But in his new book, Questions to the Moon, Peach says songwriting is his strongest self-identification. The book is a collection of stories and lyrics, just published by Lazara Press.

As many B.C. regions experience severe drought, municipalities and First Nations are calling for the government to stop issuing groundwater extraction licences to commercial bottling companies. The province is currently sitting on at least eight permit applications for water-bottling operations, one of which concerns the town of Golden in the Rocky Mountains. Annette Lutterman is an ecologist and a resident of Golden.

Almost 100 years ago, the Canada, Manitoba and Ontario allowed massive flooding of the Lac Seul First Nation reserve for a hydroelectric project. The Supreme Court of Canada has found that Canada did not seek Lac Seul First Nation’s consent to flood the lands, nor did it expropriate them under the Indian Act. In addition, the Lac Seul First Nation were never adequately compensated for their loss. We speak with Chief Clifford Bull of the Lac Seul First Nation.

In its last set of meetings before a summer break, Vancouver City Council adopted an equity framework that identifies three sources of systemic inequity in the city: colonialism, White supremacy and ableism. Ian Mass tells how council intends to implement its new equity framework in this week’s City Beat report.

Anti-government protests erupted in various Cuban cities the weekend of July 11. People were protesting the dire economic conditions on the island, amid a surge in Covid cases. There were protests in six of Cuba’s fourteen provinces, including the major cities, but the largest protests were in Miami, Florida. CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin says the protests in Cuba can only be understood in the context of the U.S. embargo. Medea Benjamin is the author of several books on Cuba, including No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba Today.

In May, the federal government added plastic manufactured items to the toxic substances list of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Campaigners to ban single-use plastic say this is an important first step in reducing the amount of plastic garbage in the environment. Laura Yates is Oceans & Plastics Campaigner with Greenpeace.