Redeye

One of the consequences of the war on Iran is that it has provided the oil industry with the opportunity to engage in rampant profiteering. In the first month of the war, the Canadian oil industry made after-tax profits in excess of $6 billion dollars. If oil prices stay this high for a year, it’s on track to make $90 billion in profits. Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood says that the current windfall could be Canadian oil's final boom, so the proceeds should be taxed and invested into economic diversification.

Namesake has its West Coast premiere at the Doxa Festival this month. The film documents an ongoing conversation between the Tla’amin Nation and the city commonly known as Powell River over a proposal to reclaim the city’s name, which is derived from a recent colonial official. We speak with Dr. Evan Adams, co-director of Namesake.

Last week Mayor Sim and the ABC Council passed a motion to identify a potential ownership group for a major-league baseball team in Vancouver. Details leaked out this week about who that is and what they want. Ian Mass joins us with the details of this and much more in this week’s City Beat report.

Body cameras and increased security in grocery stores are a corporate response to concerns about retail theft. But at the same time, profits in the grocery sector are on the rise, food prices are going up, and food insecurity is widespread. We speak with Alissa Overend, who teaches and researches in the areas of health, food and intersectional equity.

In her latest film, There Are No Words, award-winning documentary filmmaker Min Sook Lee turns the camera towards her family. The film documents Lee’s search for memories of her mother, Song Ji Lee, who died by suicide when Lee was twelve years old. There Are No Words was produced by the National Film Board. It has its Western Canada premiere at DOXA on May 3.

This week, Vancouver City Council heard directly from sex trade advocates about service cutbacks, a questionable unity agreement crafted by the three progressive parties, lifeguards, community centre renewals, baseball and lots more. Ian Mass joins us today with his City Beat report.

African American sculptor Selma Burke chronicled many of the events of the last century in her art: lynchings, the Harlem Renaissance, the Holocaust, and the assassination of Martin Luther King. Two Calgary playwrights have created an award winning play based on her life. The manuscript is now a book, Selma Burke: Carving a Sculptor's life.   We speak with one of the authors, Caroline Russell-King.

Paloma Housing Co-op was founded in 1983 by a group of people in Vancouver. This year marks the coop’s 40th anniversary and there’s a film to celebrate that milestone. It’s called In It Together: Stories from Paloma Housing Coop. We speak with producer Pat McClain, an original member of the coop, and director Ben Walsh, who is currently the president of the board.

In Alberta, Danielle Smith's government is putting nine questions to a province-wide referendum in October. These include proposals to restrict social services for some immigrants. In a recent article, Esri Ari and Bronwyn Bragg say that these questions fuel an ‘us versus them’ divide in Alberta. We speak with Esri Ari.

In 2019, BC premier John Horgan and his government passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act or DRIPA. Now current premier David Eby says DRIPA poses “legal liabilities” for the government and was intending to introduce a bill to pause sections of the Act but withdrew it when it became clear that the government didn’t have enough votes to make it pass. Terry Teegee is Regional Chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations and a member of The First Nations Leadership Council.

Paueru Gai is the Japanese name for the Powell Street neighbourhood in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It was a place of early settlement for Japanese Canadians and of their forced removal during the years of internment in World War II. It’s also been a site of regeneration for the community since 1977 when the first Powell Street Festival took place. Emiko Morita was the executive director of the festival from 2015 to 2024 and is editor of the new book, Return to Paueru Gai, published this month by Arsenal Pulp Press. Emiko Morita joins us in this episode.

The BC government is currently reviewing the effectiveness of Bill 48 brought in two years ago. It established precedent-setting protections for platform workers. Platform workers are predominantly racialized, migrant and new immigrant workers. BC Policy Solutions advocates for closing the worker protection gap between gig workers and other employees. We speak with Véronique Sioufi.

If you have never been homeless, you probably have a lot of misconceptions about what it means to live on the street. Street Medicine 101 is a series of short videos that aims to dispel them. It features Dr Jill Wiwcharuk, known to her patients as Street Doctor Jill. She is a Victoria-based family and ER physician, specializing in addictions, inner city family medicine and emergency medicine. We speak with Street Doctor Jill in today’s episode.

At the end of March, the BC government quietly eliminated its Climate Action Secretariat. This is the long-running agency that produced and implemented climate policy across government ministries. The Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions says that although the Secretariat is gone, the cuts as a “reconfiguration.” To find out what’s going on with BC’s climate policy, we’ve contacted Sven Biggs, Canadian oil and gas campaign director for Stand.earth.

Next week, Vancouver City Council will be talking about the 2025 homeless count, a big money ask from the Park Board to deal with the poor condition of our recreation facilities and parks, and lots more. Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.

In March, public health care advocates across the country took part in rallies and news conferences in response to Alberta’s new two-tier health care law, which allows doctors to practice in both the public and the private system. In early February, we spoke with researcher Andrew Longhurst about the threat that Bill 11 poses to universal access to health care. In a follow-up to that conversation, he warns that Alberta’s new law opens the door to US companies selling private health insurance for basic care. Andrew Longhurst is a senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Oakridge looks like it is getting another massive development, there’s a new affordable mortgage model for the Heather Lands, more festivals are turning to the city as they struggle to survive and lots more. Redeye Collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.

Every member of a former panel the BC government appointed to identify old-growth for potential protection in 2021 says they're concerned about continued logging in those same forests. The five panellists voiced their concerns in a document sent to Premier David Eby and other officials last week. To find out more about the progress - or lack of it - on protecting old-growth in the province, we speak with Jens Wieting, senior forest and climate campaigner at Sierra Club BC.

As Israel and the US carry out devastating attacks on Iran, the Canadian oil industry and some politicians are seeing it as an opportunity to expand fossil fuel production.  Nick Gottlieb argues the fossil fuel industry is replaying its 2022 playbook, when they used Russia’s war in Ukraine to effectively destroy the Western climate movement. Nick Gottlieb is a climate writer and author of the newsletter Sacred Headwaters. We speak with him from Terrace, BC.

On March 4, the provincial government announced that it was making amendments to the Residential Tenancy Act to provide new tools to address health and safety issues in supportive housing. Christine Boyle, Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, said that the changes to the Act came in response to calls from operators of supportive housing. However, tenant advocates say this is the latest iteration of a political campaign to erode the rights of low-income tenants in BC.   We speak with Danielle Sabelli, a lawyer at the Community Legal Assistance Society.